I have just returned from a few pints of HSB in the Spotted Cow, may I add 3D TV to the list?
They have just had it installed, mainly for the footy, I had a look using the glasses suppled, some blue people cartoon thing trial, but I was really amazed at how good it is. In my day it was cardboard green & blue [or was it red?] specs and a very odd picture, not on TV or cinema, I'm so old it was in a booklet showing Hawker Hunter & De Havilland Vampire aircraft
Something about having to wear glasses makes me less attracted to the idea, may change my mind once I have seen it though.
Also your timing is unfortunate as I just noticed this Not Safe For Work link go by on a tech site I watch.
Do they still do round pool tables? I remember seeing one years ago in the Jolly Farmers in Cliddesden near Basingstoke.
I used to go in a pub that had Super League Darts, you weren't even allowed to breathe loudly never mind buy a drink while someone was at the oche
There are loads of things that shouldn't be in a pub. Top of the list is the juke box. I don't care how good the music is, there will be some people who don't want to hear it (possibly me) and I don't see why you should be allowed to foist your rubbish musical tastes on to any one else. If it's music you want get yourself a walkman, or better still buy yourself a gramaphone and stay at home and listen to it.
Next are the high stools that come with high tables. Fine if you're 6' 5", but if you're 5' 0" then it's the devil's own job to get up on them. Mrs R with one hand on the back of the stool, and the other on my shoulder, trying to lever herself up on to the bloody thing is not a pretty sight!
Sofas blighting the modern pub has already been covered - well done that man.
Mobile 'phones - I was in a pub recently when an oaf conducted a heated conversation with what I guess was someone in a call centre, bellowing into his 'phone for an hour, during which time he ordered drinks at the bar, and ate a meal without pausing in his tirade. Quite a performance actually, but I could have done without having to listen to it.
And I've seen rather too many people in pubs recently who clearly go there to enjoy themselves, indulging in loud laughter and the like. Where will it all end?
Obviously I don't go to the pub to enjoy myself. It's my duty to the licensed trade. That's why I enjoy going to the pub with Maldenman - he's an even more miserable sod than I am. We just sit there and moan and whinge about everybody and everything. We had a great evening last night in one of London's more gruesome high street Wetherspoons, where there were ample examples of the sort of people and activities on display to keep us whinging all evening!
Hoping not to drift too far off topic, has anyone else read Maurice Gorham's "Back to the Local"? Re-written in 1949, but drawing on his pre-war drinking experiences in London, he covers the sort of games and the like that could be found in pubs then. Bar billiards were "new-fangled"; shove-ha'penny had only become fashionable (in London anyway) during the previous ten years; dominoes were on the decline; and the newish fad of darts had threatened the very fundamentals of pub society itself, by encouraging toffs to migrate from their natural habitat of the saloon bar and invading the working man's holy environment of the public bar, because that's where the boards were located. So, what should and shouldn't be in a pub is a debate that has raged for the last century or so. But it's a debate that is well worth conducting.
Last edited by Rex_Rattus; 24-05-2010 at 19:05.
Moaning and Whinging.....nothing wrong with that. Us Brits have raised it to an art form for which we are known around the World. Not for us light hearted banter and false bonhommie, we leave that Jonny Frenchman. Jack Tar was probabley having a good moan about having to eat more salt pork while at the same time sinking the French ( and Spanish ) fleets at Trafalgar.
RR and MM are merely carrying on a proud tradition. I suppose they will eventually get round to sinking French cross channel ferries in their own time.
There is nothing like sitting in a pub with a friend of whatever gender and pulling fellow customers apart for their behaviour or dress. In hushed tones of course unless they happen to be wearing the colours of the oppositions football team. In which case it is useful to know where the rear exit is. Something every pub should have in the event of a raid by the coppers or more likely the DHSS agents or the Office of Fair Trading looking for DVD copies.
I will leave you to discuss the merits of Blackpool or Cardiff for the Premiership. Blackpool may have the edge in that it has more Lapdancing Clubs. There is more to this game than just football
Chuckling away to myself reading this, perhaps we should arrange a miserable buggers pub crawl or something?
We even seem to have managed to upset the guv in Woodies tonight, not too sure why as we were drinking up in normal legal time, perhaps he had other ideas for later on?