Last Orders At The Bar

L does he first run since Beachy Head and is delighted that she can remember how to, I shall try tomorrow.

The lunchtime pub trip throws up Ossett Cherry Porter which is good but not as good as it could have been. When Burton Bridge put fruit into a Stout or a Porter the effect is awesome.

I must mention photographer Chris Etchells project ‘Last Orders At The Bar: The Demise Of The Great British Pub’. With 52 pubs closing each week, Chris has decided to highlight their plight in photographs. Increased alcohol tax, the smoking ban, cheap supermarket alcohol and the drink driving laws have all contributed to the demise of the traditional British pub. It’s true also though that the industry is in a transitional stage and shedding many pubs that are remnants of a by-gone age. An age when pints had handles and any man drinking a half pint of anything from the bottle, let alone something with ‘Breezer’ in the title, would have been escorted off the premises. It was mainly the men, who did drinking so much better than women in those days. Of course the women have now caught up. It was also a place to get away from the wife and put the world to rights with your mates. The wife is clearly more accommodating these days.



My opponent cries off squash due to feeling like s**t, which is the fourth week in a row he's been ill but unlike last week, when he soldiered through, he reckons there’s a distinct possibility that he could throw up mid-game. Which sounded like an opportunity for a victory to me but never mind, probably best to call it off.

L texts from town to tell me that the council gritting lorries are out. Glad I’m not on my bike, that’s just what my gears and chain need, another load of wet (pointless) grit ground in to them. Pointless because it isn’t going to drop below zero tonight. Then come January when it does actually get cold they’ll announce, as they did last year, that they’ve ran out.

It's Guy Fawkes Night tonight, which I had forgotten about, and I was considering taking the dogs for a run as I'm home nice and early. The first explosion of the evening scuppered that. I did manage to get Doggo outside for a few kicks of his ball before he ran inside to build himself a temporary Morrison Shelter once the serious shelling started. MD however was not so easily displaced and we continued our game of ball for the next hour and a half, on and off, while explosions went off all around us.