"You know," I said to OH a couple of weekends ago when we were out having an Italian meal, "I can't remember the last time you and I went on a proper pub crawl. I think we should have one this summer."
And when Random declares that something "should be had", it usually is before the month is out. After the thundery interlude earlier in the week, the weather had picked up again. I enjoyed the respite we got from the sky watering our allotment for once and enjoyed decluttering and putting stuff on the internet to be sold. I had also ordered a new drawer for our kitchen unit that houses all our cutlery. The old drawer was made of plastic and had broken several times, releasing showers of metal into the back of the kitchen carcass and I'd had enough of that. The new drawer arrived but unfortunately came with very odd instructions that I couldn't do anything with so I went "Help! Help!" and OH stopped what he was doing and sorted it out inside an hour and a half. Now we have a solid-wood cutlery drawer and I felt a reward coming on for my initiative and OH's excellent carpentry skills.
This summer, quite a few new places had opened and OH and I had been wandering into town a few times already to frequent one particular place with a really lovely view -- but where the pint of cider costs £3.60 (probably the Lovely-View Surcharge. It's almost hilariously overpriced but it does discourage the usual p***heads from pitching up there and ruining everyone else's enjoyment). East Anglia is both London Overspill and God's Waiting Room -- the only group of people left in this country that has money to spend is wealthy pensioners who've sold up in London and moved here. It's what I noticed the most this summer. Yesterday was payday, and in previous years, practically everyone in town who could walk would be out and about eating, drinking, queuing up for the clubs, or for kebabs, and at 2am, scrapping with each other. Last night however was surprisingly quiet -- except for the OAPs. If it weren't for them and their spending money, the town might as well board itself up and go fishing.
OH and I started our crawl at 6pm with a half pint of local farmhouse cider in a newly opened pub around a lovely old courtyard. We were on our own apart from a baby blackbird, a bumblebee, a hoverfly and a pair of noisy crows. Then tried getting a table at the new posh eaterie next door, the one with the Lovely-View Surcharge, and were told by the trendily-bearded maitre-d' that we couldn't have one as they were all "fully booked". I looked around. The place was empty except for a table with, you guessed it, wealthy-looking pensioners. Ah, I thought, we're clearly not the right age. Or perhaps he can see that my top is from Marks and Spencers and the skirt a ten-year-old little blue number from Matalan.
"You're welcome to take your meal outside in the beer garden," the maitre d' trilled. But I didn't fancy eating my Cromer Crab for £12.95 on a two-plank, splintery and uncushioned pub bench so I said sweetly "No, thanks!" and dragged OH away. The next two places were similar: expensively refurbished, with uninspiring run-of-the-mill menus.
"We haven't tried that Thai place yet," I said to OH, so that's where we ended up. The Thai place had been infected by the mentality of the surrounding wannabe-posh restaurants and was also rather pricey. OH had the Mussaman beef and I the Panang chicken but they only brought us one bowl of rice instead of the two we'd ordered -- and then tried to charge us for two at the end -- and the beef Mussaman bowl still had cling film stuck to it, which isn't a great sign. Still, the meal was enjoyable and we were seated directly beneath an open window, the service was nice, the food was good and it made a nice change from a Chinese takeaway.
We wandered off to our next choice, a lovely pub in a medieval half-timbered house, and had another cider there. It was so dead that they had to unlock the courtyard for us. About 5 years ago when we visited the place last, the courtyard was buzzing with people and I had managed to attract the attention of the local town confessor, a very drunk woman about my age who told me her entire, very sad lifestory. Like I said, we've not been back in 5 years.
The son of the publican, whom I happened to know, briefly popped downstairs to say hello but left soon to carry on watching Game of Thrones. So that's where all the young people are on a Friday night these days: either watching telly or serving food and drink on the minimum wage to the 40+ segment of the population. OH was getting into the swing of things though and began to regale me with tales from his misspent youth and I just enjoyed listening. "Feel free to talk whenever you like." OH said with a grin and then launched into his next story.
Our next stop was another brilliant place, this time with a nautical theme -- ropes, anchors, pictures of tall ships everywhere, and a beer garden with a fantastic view. The whole place felt like a ship, with wooden steps you had to climb as if you were getting on a deck. The "deck" itself served food under a canopy of vines laden with real grapes. The owner, unfortunately, is a known sod, brusque and miserable. He does have his fans -- again, mostly among the elderly. I saw maybe one couple our age there, the rest were pensioners. I had heard from others that the owner was a tough nut to crack so I thought I'd give him my best and brightest smile and involve him in some conversation. Who could possibly resist me?
"What can I get you?" he asked.
"Do you have any cider?" I beamed.
"Cider's out."
"Oh."
He looked offended. What sort of pussy wants cider anyway. I spotted the tap with the Krombacher sign on it. Good man -- proper German beer.
"I'll have a half pint of Krombacher's, please." Big smile from me. Come on, you iceberg. Melt. You know you want to, really.
"It's proper beer, not like that muck over there." He pointed at the taps with the watery French and Belgian beers. "The Germans are still enforcing their Purity Law. And every brewer has to have a license."
Ah, I thought, that's an excellent sign. A true connoisseur. Maybe we could bond over our shared appreciation of all things German.
"So, do you drink it then?"
"Nah, never," he barked.
"What?"
"Nah. Only this." And he pointed to the ale taps. Yuck. Ale has dead rats in it. How could he. And he hadn't smiled even once. I had failed.
"Don't worry about it," OH reassured me as we gingerly, and already a little tipsily, negotiated the stairs to the "food deck" with our drinks, "He's known for it."
Our next stop was what used to be a real dive but I'd heard live music coming out of it on a few occasions now and I wanted to try it out. The place had evidently tidied up its inside and a student band was playing all manner of songs and were really quite good. OH and I leant against a round bar table at the back like two regulars and had cider after cider and reminded ourselves that for all its faults, the place where we lived was as good as any.
Finished the evening with a coffee and a baklava at our friend's place, and OH managed to cheer him up no end when he told him that his establishment was the only one on the street with a cleanliness rating of "5".
Walked home pleasantly but not excessively lubricated, to a house with a cleanliness rating of probably something in the region of "minus-3", and were thankfully too tired to do anything about it.
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