THE WORST PUB

A village's pub is the soul of the community.  It's where you catch up on gossip, have a pint after work, meet friends and neighbours.  Not here.  Not in our village.  Even before our pub was condemned and closed it wasn't very inviting.

When we first looked at living here we were forewarned. "If you're looking for a village with a good pub, it's not this one.  Our pub is crap."  Point taken, but we loved the area and a pub was not going to make or break our decision, besides, we learned there were at least seven good pubs in a six mile radius, who cares if our local stunk.  "But you've got to pop in for a pint anyway," we were advised, "it must be visited."

Don't Go Here

Soon after we arrived we decided to check it out.  I've written about this place before... the low ceiling Husband cracked his head on, the dim lighting, the complete silence when we walked in the door, all eyes on us as we sat on the ancient cracked bar stools, the fire-place you could pitch a tent in. When the murmur of conversation resumed it became apparent that each and every one of the regulars knew who we were, while we had never laid eyes on any of them.  A guy at the end of the bar quoted Thomas Hardy's A Trampwoman's Tragedy at great length, then leaned in to us conspiratorially and announced in a beery, cheery voice, "There's wife-swappers up on your hill."

Husband and I weren't sure we'd heard what we thought we'd heard.  We looked at each other for corroboration.  Yes... he'd said there were wife-swappers on our hill!  Who among the elderly church-goers, the hard-working farmers, the sheep and the big black and white dairy cows, swapped wives? From then on we looked at our neighbours wondering, but never knowing.

Do Go Here

A man sitting next to us struck up a conversation.  A commuter, an outsider like us, he told us he pops in for pints every day on his drive home.  Within moments we realized he was a Man Who Knows Everything; the history of the old Bristol Road, where to travel in Albania, everything you never wanted to know about the Imperial measuring system, the body count of the Monmouth Rebellion, the best recipe for Spotted Dick, the origins of the Somerset accent, the meaning behind village names like Compton Pauncefoot and Nempnett Thrubwell, and on and on and on and on.  Husband reminded me of an imaginary commitment.  We excused ourselves and left. 

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com
/recipes/2686661/spotted-dick

The next time we dropped into the pub was many months later.  "Where have you been?" the barkeep said, like we were regulars who'd somehow slipped off his radar. 

My cousin in the Midlands called.  'So, I read about your pub in the paper while I was doing research for our trip to you,' she said.

What?  We immediately Googled it.  There in black and white in a local Somerset paper was the down and dirty on our publican and his wife.  Seems they had a neighbour, a recent widower suffering from dementia.  Seems they were assigned power of attorney over said elderly pensioner, and then pilfered funds for a splashy wedding for their daughter, and proceeded to drain his bank account.  They were charged and found guilty, and yet remarkably, they were still running the pub and not in jail... only fined.  However, we were told, they were running the pub accessorized by House Arrest Ankle Bracelets.

Evening Wear Ankle Bracelet

It was at this time we learned the difference between a Free-hold pub and a Lease-hold.  Free-hold means the publican owns the pub outright and can serve whatever he wants to serve.  Lease-hold means they have a lease, usually from a corporation, usually from a brewery.  Our local is a lease-hold, which means some brewery somewhere let ankle-braceleted felons pull pints.  

Beasts! we thought, how dare they roam free, well, semi-free, and serve the public.  Not for long.  One day we saw a big notice plastered across the pub's sign offering anyone with a pulse the opportunity to live the dream of running a pub.  The place had been shut down.  Again gossip filtered to us.  Turns out the pub's kitchen was a nightmare.  A real nightmare.  An unusable nightmare.  

A Business Opportunity

The publican was a large man who traveled in an electric scooter.  Unwilling to let the minor detail of a condemned kitchen hamper his food service he came up with an ingenious way around it.  There was a perfectly good kitchen in his home on the other side of the street; a major street, more like a small highway.  So the answer was simple.  Customers would place food orders at the pub.  Food would be prepared at his kitchen across the street, then the publican would ferry the orders to the pub across the busy main artery that connects this area to several other towns that actually have wonderful pubs.  He did this on his mobility scooter.  We were told that once this was discovered, it was the nail in the pub's coffin.  

A village without a pub is like a day without sunshine.  So this summer saw notices everywhere announcing pop-up pub nights on the cricket pitch.  What a perfect way to spend a summer eve, on gorgeous green lawns sipping a glass of wine, and watching a cricket match... all proceeds going to the club.  It was the best antidote to the bad taste left by the pub-that-will-not-be-named.