Olde-Worlde (and -Peopley) Pubs

Because of the smoking ban, many pubs are concentrating on offering high quality comestibles to entice customers into their gloriously smoke-free environments. Wetherspoons have just made their low-price grub even cheaper, though this appears to have had a curious effect on their mid-morning clientele.

My ladies (my wife and four month old daughter – the boy was in nursery) and I popped in for a cup of tea and a fry-up the other morning and found that, even adding our three ages together, we were collectively the youngest person there. Great herds of wrinklies seem to have eschewed their traditional haunts of greasy caffs to migrate across to a more pubular watering hole.

Nothing wrong with it of course, the atmosphere was charged with life and noise (though that could have been because they were all shouting due to their dodgy hearing), and an ironic glitterball effect could be seen with shards of light rebounding off fifty pairs of bifocals, but it felt odd to encounter so many in a town-centre pub.

The throng at the bar was resplendent in taupe and grey, topped off with either shiny liver-spotted chrome-domes or purple rinses. In some places it was three-deep (there were adequate staff to serve everyone, it’s just that they were probably all paying in pennies “Three pounds eighty you say? Let’s see now, there’s ten, twenty, twenty five, six , seven, ni…? No hang on, let me start again… my son Michael lives in Australia… half past three… yes… etc.”)

It was a like a day centre, or that bit in the Thriller video where hordes of mottled zombies halt their cheesy ‘80s dance moves and start stumbling around, walking into trees etc. except these living dead were holding hot cups of tea. Alternatively, it was like being caught in an episode of Last Of The Summer Wine, and ironically, there were two old fellas on the leather settee next to ours, though neither were sporting tweed jackets or were slowly rolling down a hill on it, accompanied by a jaunty noodling cor anglais melody and hilarious laughter from a canned audience.

Talking about Last of the Summer Wine, the stunts were always crap because the actors, given their age, were fairly fragile, and no doubt the production company didn’t want a hefty insurance claim for incapacitating a number of them. Now that Die Hard 4.0’s out and Bruce Willis is gettiing on a bit the producers should consider drafting him in as he always insists on doing his own stunts. He might even encourage the other chaps to follow suit:

“Right Mr Sallis, I’ll be abseiling down this burning cowshed in a string vest to blow two henchmen away with a harpoon. In the meantime, I want you to ride this rickety old bicycle into a wall at breakneck speed but in an amusing fashion.”
“Ooh, ‘eck Mr Willis! That’ll smart…”

I don’t think Brucie will be appearing in Wetherspoons anytime soon though, not if he sees the queue for the bar anyway.