The Bakers Arms as I like to remember it...
‘Closed,’ said Velocipede.
‘Closed?’
‘Looks like it to me,’ he insisted.
I sighed a little. We were just passed The Cricketers, having decided to move on from an unfortunately overcrowded Glue Pot. There was room on the benches outside, but the evening wasn’t a warm one, so without seats available inside, we decided to move on. It was something we rarely did on our monthly meetings.
I wasn’t too keen to move on because the Entire Stout was on, one of my favourite beers, but didn’t fancy having to stand all night. Well, the old back was playing up. It was part of the reason I was getting back into – slowly, mind you, doesn’t do to push these things – walking to work. Trying to re-establish a level of fitness seemed to be provoking the old spine and I’ve never been all that keen on Mr Pain.
Anyway, back to the point…
We got closer to the Bakers Arms. I was telling myself that it never looked all that bright a place from the outside. But then, it’d been at least a year since I’d last been in there; perhaps more.
We were within twenty yards of the Bakers Arms.
‘No, it’s alway been a little dull where the light’s concerned. See, there are thick coverings over the windows stopping the light getting out.
‘Hm.’
Velocipede was dubious. I was getting less convinced of my own spiel the nearer I got. I was beginning to feel disappointment coming on.
‘Quiet, too,’ added Velocipede.
‘It’s never been the noisiest of pubs anyway,’ I replied, still not giving up.
‘Hm,’ Velocipede responded.
‘No, not the Bakers, it can’t close. I can remember many a happy time Blameworthy and I spent in here. One of only a few pubs in Swindon we drank in with any great regularity. Yes, back in the 80s, when we were in our twenties. Use to put away a great deal of 3Bs then….how I ever got up for work in the morning I don’t know. Often three mid-week sessions…’
‘Closed,’ retorted Velocipede as we go the entrance, cutting me off in mid ‘memory lane’.
It did look dark, he had a point, darker than I remembered.
‘Two sets of doors,’ I said, ‘not so easy to see the light through.’
I could be quite stubborn sometimes, especially when I didn’t want to face an unpleasant truth. I tried the door. It wouldn’t budge.
‘Closed!’ I mumbled.
‘Penny’s dropped,’ mumbled Velocipede.
I pretended not to hear.
‘Odd thing, though,’ Velocipede added. ‘The opening times are pasted up on the inside of the window.’
‘Probably months out of date,’ I sighed, trying to get back to reality, no matter how unpleasant.
‘Says spring opening times. It’s spring now isn’t it,’ mused Velocipede.
He was right. I looked at the opening times. It should’ve been open. I looked at the couple of benches out the front. I wondered it Blameworthy and I ever used those in the hundreds – possibly a thousand times we went into the place? I couldn’t remember, but then we’re talking over twenty years ago; possibly more.
A few memories drifted over. I’d played for the darts team very briefly. I’d been recruited by a chap Blameworthy and I referred to only as The Cap; short for Captain. Not particularly original, but there you go.
Blameworthy and I often played darts in there, while consuming copious amounts of three Bs. There was a bench seat along the wall with the window to the outside world and the dartboard wall met it some twelve or more feet from the table we always tried to get. Nobody sat on the bench when we played darts, but then once you’ve narrowly missed losing an eye, you do tend to be a little more particular where you sit.
I must’ve been having one of my better nights when the Cap came along to join in. We didn’t usually like to get involved in groups or play anyone but each other, but we there were no plans to move on, so Cap was in.
We played a couple of games when Cap asked if I’d like to play for the Bakers Team. I must’ve been a tad drunk – six pints of 3Bs tends to do that – because I agreed.
At that point Cap noticed Blameworthy was finishing one of the pint’s on the table. Cap’s permanent frown seemed to get even deeper than normal.
‘That’s my pint,’ he said indignantly to Blameworthy.
Blameworthy frowned slightly as he finished the last mouthful, looked at the glass, wiped his bearded chops, then looked back at the table. He picked up another half full pint of beer and said: ‘This must be mine then,’ and proceeded to empty that glass of beer as well.
So unashamedly did he do it that Cap was left there staring at his empty glass. I was caught between amazement that he’d actually done what he did and amusement at the recreation of a sketch I’m sure we once saw on a Benny Hill show.
I think it was at that point I distracted Cap about the next darts game and where it would be played. Shortly after that I believe we left. I don’t remember Blameworthy and I ever playing a game of darts with Cap again, nor seeing Cap let his pint of beer leave his site when Blameworthy was around.
The Bakers Arms was also where Blameworthy and I were subject to a challenge we just couldn’t resist.
There was a period of time in the early 1980s when the Bakers Arms was Managed by a chap called Hummer and his wife. In my mind, probably the best landlord the place ever had. Hummer had a predilection for singing as he went around the bar, or collected glasses or closed the curtains. ‘Paper Roses’ was a favourite, as was ‘Jealous Guy’, the latter belted out in a style somewhat similar to Bryan Ferry.
But what we found out in Hummer’s era was there was a group of locals who when time was called always hung back. Over a period of time we got curious about this and found out he served people he could trust after hours. Not strictly legal and a precedent which haunted quite a few landlords who followed.
Eventually, Blameworthy and I became part of that group and would often take advantage of a few extra pints after hours. However, we noticed we always left before any of the other privileged people did.
‘Wonder how long they go on before they close,‘ mused Blameworthy, one night when we left after putting away about ten pints. It was after 1am.
I shrugged. ‘Can’t be all that long.’
‘Hmm, I wonder.’
And wonder we did for quite some time. Then, one Summer night, a Friday, June 1983, which was unusual as we rarely went out at weekends, Blameworthy and I walked up to the bar in the Bakers Arms at around 8pm.
There weren’t all that many in the pub at this time, but we worked away at the beer and played some darts. Last orders came.
‘I’m going to keep going up until they stop serving us,’ said Blameworthy.
I gave Blameworthy the thumbs up, not because I couldn’t think of anything to say but because my mouth after ten pints was a little slow espousing the words quickly enough.
It was after finishing the thirteenth pint that Blameworthy came back from the bar, grinning.
‘They’ve refused to serve me!’
It’s not often either of us are happy when refused service at a public house, but on this occasion we felt we’d outlasted the landlord’s keenest to serve with our keenest to consume.
‘We did it then?’
‘Yep.’
(Please note that all the words spoken by Blameworthy and I at the time would have been slurred and really hard to understand after the aforementioned thirteen pints. However, as anyone who drinks above average amounts will tell you, if you and the person you are drinking consume equal amounts of beer, their ears are able to translate slurred and disjointed speech with such efficiency that either would think the other perfectly sober and remarkably eloquent.)
We walked home pleased with our victory. Last ones out and refused service!
I smiled to myself as the memories poured back into the old noggin. Velocipede and I were still strolling to and fro by the corner pub when I noticed my second disappointment of the evening.
The Bakers Arms sign remained in place, but above the side window were the words: Irish Pub.
Irish Pub? Irish Pub?
I sighed out loud, not a happy bunny, thinking that had it been open it would have had an Irish theme to it. Perish forbid! If I wanted to experience an Irish theme I’d go to Ireland, I’m sure they’re better at it than us. Besides, the thought of all that didily dee music quite turned my stomach.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike the Irish any more than any other nationality, but usually these sort of theme pubs tend to be insults to the type of pub they’re supposed to be emulating.
‘It’s closed, ha, ha!’
I don’t know about Velocipede but I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was the cackle of a laugh at the end of his pronouncement that did it, not his appearance. I’d seen the rather dumpy figure approaching through the shadows out of the corner of my eye.
Almost like a scene from the Exorcist...
‘It’s showing a Spring Openings time notice in the window.’
‘Closed! Been closed since a’fore Christmas…ha, ha!’ retorted the squat figure, with a head something like an egg with a crew cut.
The most curious thing about the head was that it appeared to have only one eye on the left hand side – his left hand side, that is. It wasn’t until he got a little closer that I notice he did have two eyes in the conventional positions either side of a straight nose. It was just that one eyes was squinting and the other wide open to, I guessed, compensate for narrower vision of the other.
‘Yep. Closed, ha, ha!’ he retorted again.
He reminded me of a Frankenstein assistant from the thirties films or indeed any mad scientist assistant who generally seemed to be saddled with the name Igor.
Our Igor paused about ten feet from us. It would have been closed had we not stepped back to maintain an exclusion zone of around ten feet.
This was getting to be rather much for me. The first blow was The Bakers Arms being closed, the second blow was at some point between my last visit and now it’d been given an Irish theme, and now we have a refuge from a thirties horror film.
‘Why did it close?’
‘Before Christmas, ha, ha!’
‘Do you know why?’ I repeated as he obviously didn’t understand the question first time around.
This time Igor shrugged.
‘Dunno, ha, ha!’
I wasn’t sure why the ‘ha, ha’ had to go on the end of every sentence or the accompanying cackle but on a dark night with little street lighting and near a closed pub, it was getting quite atmospheric. Unfortunately, not an an atmosphere I liked.
‘But it has a Spring Opening times notice…’ insisted Velocipede; who’d been the first to notice it was closed.
‘Closed last year, ha, ha!’
Velocipede and I looked at each other and shrugged. No Bakers Arms to sup in. Would it ever re-open? I was still trying to come to terms with the Duke of Wellington having closed down last year. It felt like someone had it in for my favourite drinking holes.
‘Whaaaahooo, ha, ha,’ Igor yelled out.
We jumped again, the cry going right through us, being so unexpected.
Igor was no longer interested in us but in three women about thirty yards away near to The Cricketers. One of the girls called out, slightly less demonstrably. The girls halted a while, looking to see who’d cried out.
Perhaps one of them was Mrs Igor and it was their ritual mating call?
They seemed to stare at Igor for a while, then as he got closer they went inside The Cricketers. I’m not sure whether that was where they were going to meet or so that they could avoid young Igor?
Velocipede and I, thwarted in our efforts to drink in The Bakers Arms, decided to go back to the rather crowded Glue Pot. Not a bad thing, the Entire Stout was on rather good form that night from my point of view and Velocipede had been enjoying his beer.
As we walked passed The Cricketers, Velocipede broke the silence that had formed.
‘Was he pissed or mentally challenged?’ he asked.
‘I would’ve said pissed if it wasn’t for the look in his eye and he could walk in a straight line!’ I replied.
We walked a dozen or so more paces.
‘Mentally challenged?’ I queried.
‘Well, a bloody nutter!’
‘Quite…’
TELLING TALES 
It’s not the quality of the book but the text within that counts. There; if I didn’t say it before, I have said it now. But is a kindle a book in any sense at all? It is an unnecessary piece of technology designed to replace the (much superior) book. And in the same way that itunes has devalued music to the extent that the worlds ipods are full of downloaded but unlistened to music, so there are whole libraries stored on kindle that no humnan eye is ever going to read. These toys appeal to the collector, not the true man of letters.
Was it you who once said it is not the quality of the book itself which is important but the words contained within it? (Or other words to that effect) Surely Proust on a Kindle beats the latest Pratchett, leather-bound. There’s just no pleasing some people!
The Tour de France is beyond me now, but I am considering entering the London Marathon in one of those lightweight racing wheelchairs next year.
Reading books on a kindle doesn’t count; it’s like doing the Tour de France on a trike.
Sorry, that should read Chekhov. In my drug-induced haze I was confusing him with the Check Inn, where I often used to go in the days when I still drank beer.
It is true that I have had a lot of time on my hands recently and although the medication I am forced to take affects my concentration, causing drowsiness and irritability, I was anxious not to let my literary standards slip during my recovery, knowing that GloomLaden would be ‘on my case’, so to speak. Fortunately, I have been able to use the Kindle belonging to Blameworthy the Younger (Blamerdigne-le-Jeune) and he has very kindly purchased for me, on Amazon, the complete seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ in the original French language version, which I am enjoying enormously. I have now reached Vol.6 ‘Albertine disparue’ or ‘La fugitive’ and I have to say, it has been a cracking good read which has gripped my imagination to such an extent that I have been unable to put the Kindle down for several days.
I have the complete short stories by Anton Checkhov lined up next – in Russian, of course.
( Incidentally, Blamers, I hope you are using all your time to do some decent reading – and I don’t mean Pratchett. )
Robert Robinson is still dead and I have now listened to all the archive editions of Stop the Week currently available to me via the internet. Some bloke on Facebook claims to have a vast archive of them but is not sharing it at present. But at least the regular reader, being as much a Bob fan as all other regular readers, will be thrilled to hear that Stop the Week contributor Milton Schulman’s daughter was on Radio 4 this morning. It is a measure of my Bobsessiveness that I am quite prepared to marry the woman by reason of this tenuous Bobular connection alone.
I can neither sit nor stand, being destined to remain perpetually somewhere between the two, but never resting. I cannot stand those who can sit and stand but choose not to. Neither can I lie down in comfort. They ply me with pills from which I suffer all the possible side effects with none of the promised benefits.
Still mustn’t grumble, eh…
Are you not getting any better Blameworthy? Naturally I don’t mean morally but physically. The pain not abating, no matter how steadily? The great Samuel Beckett was forever disabling his characters – some could not sit, others could not stand, yet others could not stand the ones who could not stand – so you should think yourself lucky if you are suffering in the style of such a great literateur.
I had heard that the other deaf bloke had eloped with the occasional listener, while the intermittent viewer was looking the other way. We should still meet our disabled quota though, especially with me being potentially notwithstanding at present.
Oh, the regular reader is more vocal with his informed silences than we with our futile back and forth insults. You’re right about the deaf bloke, though you have evidently forgotten the other deaf bloke.
Had I been trying to evince praise, GloomLaden, I would have gone elsewhere. It seems even damnation with faint praise is too much to ask of you. Your previous comment was full of damnation stripped bare.
There’s been very little input from The Regular Reader recently, or from The Deaf Bloke, for that matter. Although he might say he has heard very little from us.
Careful now, you’re trying to evince praise and we don’t do that on this blog – the regular reader doesn’t like it.
Whatever gave you that idea, GloomLaden? Potential for what, might I ask?
Ah, Blameworhy, I’m embarrassed to admit I thought you had potential. The disappointment, as ever, is all mine.
GloomLaden described me, rather vindictively, in a recent comment, as a busted flush. Just so that I understood the true meaning of the term, I looked it up in a dictionary of idioms which defines a busted flush as: ‘Someone, or something that had great potential but ended up a useless failure’. Now, I don’t recall ever having had great potential. Neither can I be said to have been dealt a good hand, or a bad hand. Having no interest in playing cards I would have requested not to have been included in the game at all, and thus would not have been dealt any kind of hand in the first place. I would, therefore, consider it unfair that GloomLaden also describes me as being ‘out of the game’, when it is manifestly clear that I was never in the game when it started. I have no quibble with the ‘useless failure’ element of the definition. I started out as one of those and have never made any attempt to rise above it. I do, however, have a busted flush in the downstairs lavatory of the 1950s house but, as you would expect, it’s contained within one of those cast iron high-level cisterns with a hanging chain. When my back problem clears up I hope to be able to repair the fault in order to keep the Sewidge flowing smoothly out of the Blameworthy household.
No, I have not considered becoming a twitcher. Have thought about becoming a tramp, though.
You would gain great benefit from a hobby which would provide you with good reason to get out in the open air more often. Have you ever considered becoming a twitcher?
My walking about the countryside looking for wildlife is, I admit, a bit like a dyslexic wandering around a library. I know the names of birds, trees, shrubs and geographical fratures without having much idea what they look like or, indeed, are. Is a tarn a bird or a hillock? Is a hillock a small brown mammal or a quince?
Had there been any larks over Eastcott, I have no doubt, having seen you coming, they would have ascended as rapidly as their little wings would lift them. However, I do grudgingly admit to them being smallish and brownish, and not all they are cracked up to be in the eyes and minds of Classic FM listeners. I bet Titchmarsh has seen a few in his time though.
You mean there were still larks out there when you last went out there. I’ve just come in from a stroll in the sun: no larks. Actually, I don’t think I have ever seen a lark. I somehow imagine them as blue in colour, though they must be small and brown, being British birds.
There are still larks out there you know, GloomLaden; I’ve seen them, and got quite emotional, even without the music. So it’s not all bygone.
Lark Ascending may evince human emotion from bucolic types like you, Blameworthy, but this is only because you associate it with a vision of a bygone England that never was. The regular reader, should he/she (come off itt, he) take a listen, will disvcover the most literally descriptive bit of music in the canon. You can hear the fluttering of the lark, here the updrafts of summer breeze upon which it rides, sense in the orchestral backdrop the swell of the hills over which it ascends. Lovely as it is, it is obvious, like one of those peieces from BBC Schools’ Music and Movement programmes to which one had to pretend to be an amimal (as if one weren’t already).
You’re punching above your weight as usual, GloomLaden. You cannot expect all those intelligent, regular readers of the Fitrambler blog to be hoodwinked by this attempt to stretch your meagre knowledge of classical music beyond its limits, and make a convincing case to support your muddled, ill-informed opinions.
The nearest you have ever come to demonstrating human passion is during one of your drunken Mark E. Smith impersonations, so you’re hardly qualified to critcize Vaughan Williams. ‘The Lark Ascending’ is about human emotion, another quality which you rarely excude.
Good grief; next you’ll be claiming to be capable of playing a perfect five minute solo on the triple-bell, rotary-valve euphonium!
Classic FM isn’t so much reverential and soporitic. Classical music, the station constantly seems to be telling us (not me: I no longer listen) is all about relaxation. The Radio 3 ethos that classical music is something to sit up and attend to is anathema to the pudding briained execs at Classic FM. Of course, when you have sciatica and are under the kosh of serious painkillers, you’re incapable of sitting up and taking notice in any case. But your liking for Classic FM predates your cripplehood. I think your affextion for it stems from the very English desire to render classical music ‘light’, to take the intensity and seriousness out of it altogether. Lark Ascending scores highly because it is tuneful and not about human passion; much as I adore it, it is musical scenery. I hope Gerald Finzi’s Ecologue got into the list quite high up – as Titchmarsh would say, its me fave-rit.
Simon Bates no longer works for Classic FM, having transferred to Smooth FM ( I kid you not) in 2010. They now have David Mellor, Alan Titchmarsh and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
Just to put your mind at rest: No.278 was Kol Nidrei by Max Bruch. And I say that – to myself – in the hushed, reverential tones of syrup on velvet, used by all Classic FM presenters, none of whom are ever disconcerted by anything.
The thing about the Classic FM top 300 is that I don’t think I know 300 pieces of classical music all told. I wonder what was No.278 more than I care what made the uncoveted No.1 spot. My nomination would be the Ensemble Moderne’s performance of Frank Zappa’s classical piece G-Spot Tornado. That should disconcert Simon Bates!
No, misunderstanding. No, not the music doesn’t sound good but the condition you’re in doesn’t sound good.
It may not have sounded good to you, but I’ve enjoyed it notwithstanding. Nice bit of Elgar at No.7 just now.
It doesn’t sound good. I hope you get better soon.
Out, Gloomladen?! Out?! Good God man, what came over you?
I’ve been in listening to the Classic FM Top 300 continuously for four days., just to see whether ‘The Lark Ascending’ will have descended the chart this year. You can still catch the Top 10 if you tune in now.
Interesting you should refer to me as Doctor GloomLaden, Blamers; I’ve always fancied the idea of being a medical man, though I would go in less for cure than bleak diagnosis. Superfluous in your case, by the sound of it.
It’s probably as well that you can’t get out. I’ve been out today and can tell you that there’s nothing out there and the weather is foul, as on all Bank Holidays.
The sofa’s in the shed by the way, Fitters. Which is probably where I would have been over Easter if I could walk that far. The severity of sciatica depends on how much the nerve is being compressed, and mine is being strangled like an unwanted kitten. The pain originates from damage at the base of the spine, but travels the length of the left leg to the foot. The lethal painkillers only take the edge off it. I thought it might be getting a little better last week, so I foolishly gave up the medication for a day…and discovered it wasn’t. Following my bout of shingles last year, it has been suggested that I’m going through the medical encyclopaedia starting with ‘S’. I don’t think they realised sciatica has a ‘c’ in it. At least it only leaves me with T-Z though. I’m glad I never started at the beginning. I’ve had a dose of the ‘Shits’ as well, but thought that was hardly worth mentioning, being a side effect of the medication.
When I need your advice, Doctor GloomLaden…
Well, let’s just hope I never get THAT desperate. Ooohh if only I could get my leg in the air, I’d be a happy man.
You don’t have a sofa, Blameworthy??? It can’t all be wing back chairs round at the 1950s House, surely? I seem to recal that you have to lay down but your sciatica afflicted leg up in the air when suffering – easier to do if you have a sofa. My advice: get one.
Um, what happened to the sofa?
Sorry to hear that. Being house bound must get your down. I’ve spent a lot of time being at home in the past and quite enjoyed it, but the difference was I didn’t have to stay in. Big difference. When you can’t do something or are told not to do something, it becomes rather more tempting to do it.
Before you explained about the pain killers I was going to suggest a visit – if it wasn’t contagious – and bring along a selection of bottled beers… No, perhaps not.
Sciatica? Hmm. Reminds me of Morecambe and Wise, Christmas Show. Eric gets in the side of the bed near the open window.
Ernie: ‘You’ll have sciatica in the morning…’
Eric: ‘No I won’t, I’ll have shredded wheat like everyone else…’
Just paused in this comment to check up sciatica on the net. Phew! I owe you an apology. I started checking it up to see exactly what it was and then started thinking about the pains I often suffer these days and wondered if I was on the verge of suffering from it!
Must be an age thing. Neatentidy and I use to talk about past drinking sessions, place we were going to or had been. Now the conversations involve at least 20% on the aches and pains and how difficult it is to do things we use to do without thinking…
There was a time I could put a desk or piece of furniture together in the middle of the room and then get up. Now, I have to use the arm of a chair or crawl to the door frame to help myself up. Even tying shoe laces is something I dread every morning.
‘Deep breath, bend…’ gasp, gasp. ‘Up…’ Fast breathing like a marathon has been run. Five minute break. Oh God…
Of course being a tab portly doesn’t help….
I still maintain that drinking at home is for lily-livered, namby-pamby lightweights; and in any case I don’t possess a sofa. As for the game: ’tis better to have played and lost, than never to have played at all. By a strange coincidence the thought ‘I wish it was him; he never goes out of the house anyway’ was going through my mind just before you posted that last comment.
From what he says, I fear Blameworthy is out of the game, a busted flush. You and I – and, come to that, the regular reader – may stride out across the plains of cement to enjoy convivial afternoons or evenings of alcoholic pleasure, but for out fallen friend there will only ever now be the internet ordered bottles of Spitfire (empahasis more on the spit than the fire these days) consumed on the sofa at home. And that’s only when the Doc gets him off those painkillers. As is always with a salute to a fallen comrade, the thought ‘Thank God that’s not me’ is never far away.
And before anyone corrects me, I know Ben Hur is on televison this very afternoon – but is only tallismanic when screened on Good Friday, Bank Holiday Monday being for Carry On films.
If I had been on a drinking session which put me out of action for as long as the sciatica from which I am currently suffering, I would definitely have gone permanently tee-total. Ironically, I deliberately had my annual ‘month on the waggon’ in February, only to be advised not to drink any alcohol at all with the medication I started taking in March. I’m sure GloomLaden will find that highly amusing. The leaflet which comes with the painkillers I have been prescribed doesn’t just advise not drinking, but implores me to avoid alcohol in foodstuffs or mouthwash, not just because of the possible side-effects, but because the merest whiff will result in guaranteed death. The effect of the painkillers is much like death anyway, with the occasional flicker of life as they wear off shortly before the next dose is due.
It’s not in my nature to be optimistic but I’m hoping it’s not a permanent condition. Some say my past sins have finally caught up with me, but I say to them: I am not to blame; it wasn’t me!
Much as I would like I cannot claim credit it for the picture that heads the blog piece. I got it off the net from an article about the Railway Village. I could have got an image using my own camera during daylight hours but it would have had the signs showing the Irish Theme thingys.
The other photograph was taken deliberately at night so as to recreat the atmosphere of 29th March, when Velocipede and I venture away from the Glue Pot to try out the Bakers Arms. It was most disappointing; I suppose it was probably a good thing it was not open being Irish Themed.
I have read that Arkells are interviewing potential landlords for the place. I hope he will not continue the Irish nonsense.
But to digress – which seems to be becoming more and more of a speciality of mine – I am concerned, Blamers, about your mobility. When you mentioned it in the first comment on this blog piece I thought it might be down to a drinking session – if I overdo it these days they stop me wanting or feel like going anywhere for days afterwards.
I hope this is not a permanent condition?
But, surely, you are using the same eyes to look at the Fitrambler photograph as you do when you walk past the pub. The fact that you can also appreciate the difference in image quality must prove something.
Or am I contradicting myself here?
The Bakers is never that focused when I go by there sober, but that’s my fault not its.
For your benefit, Blameworthy, I should just reprise my annual complaint about Easter, which I can’t stand. No one knows what to do on (or with( Good Friday, the weather is iffy throughout, they don’t even show Ben Hur on the telly anymore and Bank Holidays simply make me reflect on how much I woould have preferred a day off when every other bugger was at work. There. I’ll be saying the same thing same time next year, unless Death does the decent thing and intervenes.
Dark mild has always suffered from its association with little old men wearing flat caps and mildewy jackets whilst sporting bushy eyebrows and an abundance of nostril hair. The tenant at the Wheelwright’s Arms would probably have kept the same firkin of beer tapped in the cellar for many weeks, as a few old locals supped their way through it at the rate of two half pints per evening. If any of them complained about the acidity, the landlord would most likely have threatened to stop selling it altogether. Eventually the old men disappeared and mild was no longer brewed. It was as true then as it is today that image ranks above quality amongst the (relative) youth of the time.
Had Fitrambler and I had been able to drink regularly at the pub during the 1980s, the sales of dark mild would have gone through the roof and the quality would have improved dramatically as a result. The pub cellar would have been enlarged to provide space for the giant wooden hogsheads needed to keep up with the demand for a beer which, after all, was an excellent product when it left the brewery in Abingdon. It all comes down to a lack of discernment amongst pub-goers, combined with simple economics… and perhaps just a light sprinkling of fairy dust and the odd dewy eye.
Talking of quality; I was impressed with the sharpness of the Bakers Arms image which heads the Fitrambler post. I don’t remember the pub ever having been that much in focus when we used to drink there.
Blameworthy, these bygone beers you and Fitters wax lyrical about seem as often as not to have been acidic. One wonders whether it wasn’t just the fairydust of youth (relative youth, that is) that rendered them drinkable at all.
I would also like to take this opportunity to say an, almost tearful, thank you to GloomLaden for sparing me his miserable company on all those sessions which we did not set out on. At least I can say those days are gone; for him they mostly never happened.
Your memory serves you well on this occasion Fitters. The pub serving mild was the Wheelwright’s Arms at Lambourn. They ceased production of Morland’s Mild not long after, when the one local who was still drinking the stuff died during a severe bout of acid ingestion. The pub is still trading, although now owned by Greene King, who amazingly still brew a dark mild, even though it’s about as rare as Morland pub ashtrays.
I have tremendous problems with what Fitrambler rather wonderfully calls ‘date stemping the memory.’ I can seldom make statements as precise as he about when things happened, unless they are crucial life events (dropping out of Polytechnic, say, or the death of a certain Call My Bluff host). Adult life feels as though it is all of a piece, though I must have changed in character as well as girth over the decades. Blameworthy’s almost tearful gratitude for that bygone session betokens change, too, perhaps. Now that he is entirely incapacitated, I can finally be unequivocal and say that we should have done all those sessions we planned while the going was good. It’s not a phrase he likes, but those days are over.
Looking at Fitters tweets (try saying that with your teeth out) I was pleasnatly reminded of the series Space 1999 – wonderfully atmospheric in its first, oddly arty, series. The second series I remember as risible, especially an episode set on the planet Luton.
I have some, albeit vague collections, of sitting room style pubs, where you would order a couple of pints and the landlord would go out back to get them.
One memory around those days was a pub, my memory says it was called the Wheelwrights, although I could easily be wrong. I think we visited it more than once. We, or at least I, tried a mild in there and it always seemed to taste of vinegar. When we mentioned it to the landlord he was unperturbed and told us the locals liked it that way…
We also went to a pub on a hill where I ate a couple of rolls and acquired a Morlands ashtray. The pub was memorable in that the landlord looked somewhat like Amos Briely…
I think I tried to write about those days with any degree of accuracy I would have to join forces with yourself and make notes; after prompting each other’s memories. Or make 90% of it up….although there is a certain amount of making it up in what I write on the blog, it’s more in presentation….
It often amazes me how some of the actors who write their biographies with such accuracy around their early years; although I do ‘date stamp’, so to speak, certain events, there are many I would never have a hope of ‘date stamping’.
Some events seem a long time ago and are fairly recent and there are others which seem recent and are a long time ago.
Age and the memory I guess
Like GloomLaden, I have stayed at home over Easter, although in my case it is out of necessity rather than choice, having lost the ability to move more than a couple of yards. By coincidence I have also resorted to nostalgia as a distraction. While searching for something entirely unrelated, I came across an old 1980s publicity leaflet for Brakspear’s Brewery, listing their tied houses. It reminded me of a day out which Fitrambler and I had around 1984, when I persuaded him to drive us around a selection of Brakspear’s pubs in Buckinghamshire.
Before the family sold the Henley Brewery to property developer’s, Brakspears had, in my opinion, the best pub estate in the country and brewed some of the best beer. Searching through some ancient photograph albums, I found prints of the fourteen pubs which we visited during the lunchtime session. Most of them were simple village alehouses where the locals would gather and passing strangers were rarely seen. Sadly, most have now been converted to luxury residential properties or turned into gastro-pubs. I’m sure we called in at a few more pubs on the return journey through Oxfordshire but by that time I had probably forgotten how to use the camera; there are no more photos after 2:30 when, in the early 80s, the pubs would have closed for the afternoon.
Those who knew me back then may have seen me as a selfish, ungrateful, manipulative bastard. Those who still know me today will find comfort in the knowledge that not everything changes with the passing of time. But, in 2012, if you travelled the length of England and back over the course of a week, you would not find more than a handful of pubs as good as the ones we visited that day. In ten years time those that remain may have also disappeared. So, although it may have taken me 28 years, I would like to take the opportunity to say: thank you, Fitters, for driving the old Cortina – Chloe to those who knew her – on one of the best pub crawls I’ve ever been on in all my born days.
Another four or five years were to pass before I returned to Buckinghamshire for another round of country pubs, after an unexpected offer of a lift from Mrs Gowithit. I hasten to add that this was in the days before her first marriage, when she was known as the young Miss Pelling. But that’s another story…
The regular reader, at least, will be interested to hear that while Robert Robinson is still dead (I know, I know) I have been spending the past week listening to a cache of old episodes of his seminal conversation programme Stop the Week which I happened across via a Facebook group, of all things. I never thought I’d hear those shows again and now I have. Unusually, they were as good as I remembered – mostly, the rosy glow of nostalgia does something of a job on the perception and you get disappointed. It got me thinking how lucky we are to live in an age when a lot of culture can be recorded: one doesn’t have to rely on dewy eyed rememberance, as one must in the case of, say, the comedians Sid Field or Dan Leno. ‘You can never go back’ people say, but in some respects you can. Mind you, the Bakers will never be the same, even if someone else is foolish enough to try their hand at it. I’ve only been in their twice and was so drunk on both occasions that the place made only the most tangential impression on my consciousness.