Two Nation Stories

Me - before the beer.

After the big march in London last Saturday 12 May, my friend Geoff, with whom I have collaborated on some songs, and I went to the Moon Under Water in Leicester Square. The beers were all right, and I had a couple brewed in the East End that I doubt I'll see in Merseyside. The prices, around £3.55 a pint, although cheap in London, were dear by Southport standards - and I don't mean Southport Wetherspoons where the normal price is £2.15 a pint.

I later met my niece in the Rocket in Euston where I was paying £4.40 a pint. Again, the beers were unfamiliar and were okay, if slightly lacking in life.

Breaking my journey home at Wigan, I went into Wigan Central, a bar under the railway arches, and was charged £2.95 for a much better-kept pint of real ale served by a much friendlier barmaid. I was recognised by Zoe who knew me from the Wigan beer festival, and I saw several other familiar female faces: it was the hen night of the Central's bar manager, Jo Whalley, whom I also know from the beerfest. All were dressed to the nines with hats and fascinators (see - I know sartorial terminology). Unfortunately, I had to dash for my train and so couldn't stay to chat.

Reaching Southport, I called in for the second half of the Bothy Folk Club cèilidh, where two good Southport beers (Golden Sands and Monument) were on sale at £2.50 a pint. After the event had officially finished, I asked for a half, thinking I didn't want to detain them. "You, a half?" he said chuckling incredulously, and proceeded to pour me a pint. This happened twice: it's good to be known.

Thank goodness I don't live in London.

That T-shirt looks pink in the photo. It was bright red when I bought it.

Pub appeal against planning permission upheld

One thing that irritates me is when people move into an area where noise might reasonably be expected, and then object to the entirely predictable consequences. The best example around here is people who buy a home near RAF Woodvale which is between Southport and Formby, and then complain in the local papers about planes taking off and landing.

Another silly example I came across was when our CAMRA branch visited the Tetley Brewery in Leeds a few months before it closed. There was a fairly new block of flats nearby and our guide wryly commented how, having bought flats near a large, very visible brewery, some residents then complained about the noise.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised to read that the Court of Appeal has overturned planning permission for the building of new flats near the George Tavern in Stepney, London, a well-known live music venue where the likes of Nick Cave, Snow Patrol and John Cooper Clarke have performed. Tower Hamlets had originally rejected the application but the developers won their appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, and it's that decision that has now been reversed.

Celebrities such as Ian McKellan and Kate Moss supported the campaign to oppose the demolition of a derelict former night club next door and build a block of flats. The grounds of appeal included the prospect of the new residents complaining about the noise, along with the the fact that the development would have cut off natural light to the pub and adversely affected a photography business in its upper floors.

This issue has been going on for nearly a decade so there may be further appeals, but the decision is still highly significant and, in my view, very welcome. I see no reason why planning applications for residential developments should automatically take priority over all other considerations.

A demonstration of price differences

Last Saturday I went on the anti-Trident demo in London. Amazing turn out: Trafalgar Square was packed with people of all ages, various ethnicities and a variety of political and religious persuasions. Despite the numbers, I managed to meet my friend Geoff, who lives in Hounslow.

After the demo, we had an hour before I had to catch my bus back to Merseyside, so we decided to go for a drink in the Clarence on Whitehall. As well as a few predictable beers such as Sharps Doom Bar and Atlantic, and Adnams Bitter and Ghost Ship, they had a beer from Twickenham Brewery. I decided to have that, as I hadn't had it before, while Geoff had Doom Bar. It was a pleasant pint, though to my taste nothing special, and I was quite happy to have a second one when it was my round.

Until it came to paying, of course: £8.80 for two pints. I know London prices are steep, but that surprised me. In my local in Southport, I can buy three pints for that amount with 70p to spare.

I don't understand why Southern, particularly London, prices are quite so steep. My friend Alan was on holiday in the West Country several years ago, and he arrived home in time for a quick pint in our local. I happened to be there, and when he returned from the bar with a pint of Wadworths 6X, he told me he had had the same beer a couple of days earlier in sight of Wadworths brewery in Devizes, Wiltshire. Despite a difference in delivery distance of 200 miles, 6X was actually cheaper in Southport.

Me in the Clarence after the demo
(expensive pint not shown)

Make of that when you will, but I find it difficult to accept that all the price differences across the country can be attributed solely to higher costs. A significant factor must be the capitalist tendency to put prices up as high as the market will stand. That might be an acceptable business practice, but it tends not to go hand in hand with value for money.

First HS2 pub victim identified

Photo borrowed from pub website

A bit out of my area this, but I was really quite sorry to hear that a pub near Euston station in London may be demolished to make way for a proposed rail project.

I discovered the Bree Louise in Coburg Street, NW1, a couple of years ago after we had been on a massive anti-austerity demo in London. It was a real find in the normally boring landscape of London pubs, which so often just plump for the obvious and unoriginal - and then charge you through the nose for the privilege.

The Bree Louise, on the other hand, had 6 handpumps, and 11 beers on gravity dispense, plus an extensive range of real ciders. We didn't have any of the food, but it looked good. The beer was £4 per pint, but the discount for CAMRA members of 50p brought it down to a more palatable - for this Merseysider, anyway - £3.50 a pint. The pub was busy, but with a relaxed atmosphere and we were a bit disappointed when we had to go for our train home.

I've just learnt that one consequence of the High Speed 2 (HS2) railway development may well be that this pub might be demolished, which would not only deprive the licensee, Craig Douglas, and his staff (to whom he pays the living wage, not the minimum wage) of their livelihoods, but Craig and his family of their home. He named the pub Bree Louise after his daughter who had died, so it is clear this pub is much more than just a job. Let's hope the government sees sense, and doesn't apply plans that result in the unnecessary closure of successful businesses such as this one.

More info here.

You're not going??

Around this time of year, someone usually asks me: "I suppose you'll be going to the Great British Beer Festival?" It's funny the surprise the answer "no" seems to elicit. I have been to the GBBF twice: it was in the late 1980s when it was in Leeds. It was a much smaller affair than it is now, and I did enjoy my visits, staying in student accommodation and working on pub games for the most part.

But London? The cost of travel and accommodation (and admission if you're not volunteering) would add up to a tidy sum even before you raise your first glass to your lips, and frankly I wouldn't find it worthwhile any more. I could easily wander around Southport pubs and find twenty different types of real ale in a day, although I'm not sure whether I could manage that in pints nowadays. The next day, I could travel to Liverpool and find an even bigger range - and this is before you consider Wigan and Preston. Admittedly, these choices will include some familiar beers, but increasingly with the proliferation of micro-breweries, I can usually come across quite a few that are new to me. If I want to try a good range of beers, I can do so with the minimum of travel, and sleep in my own bed.

I'm not criticising the GBBF. It provides tremendously good publicity for real ale (the press loves it), the beer awards are widely broadcast and are taken very seriously by the industry, and it is clearly enjoyed by those who attend, both customers and volunteers. Plus it annoys the craft keg advocates who fulminate that it's an outdated dinosaur, like CAMRA itself, even though the rising attendance figures of the festival, like the membership figures of CAMRA, tend to disprove such arguments.

It's just that if I think about going, the first things that spring to mind are the hassle of travel, finding somewhere to stay and the overall cost. The choice I have in pubs within - say - an hour's travel from home means that the lure of being able to try different beers is much less of a unique selling point than it once was.

But that's just me, though: if you're going, I hope you have a good time.

The Great British Beer Festival - 11 to 15 August at Olympia, Hammersmith Road, London, W14 8UX.

Spooning in Hounslow

Photo pinched from the JDW website

I was down in Hounslow over the weekend, booked to play at a birthday party as a duo with my friend Mick, a very good lead and acoustic guitarist. The party went very well, but as it was a daytime do, we wanted to wind down later. There's only one Good Beer Guide pub in Hounslow: the Moon Under Water, by the name obviously a Wetherspoons.

It looks as though it's been converted from three shops, so there are three front doors, and the pub has a beer garden out the back. A horseshoe-shaped drinking area surrounds a central bar with local history illustrated on the walls. It's about 14 years old and in the original Spoons design. The customers were mixed in age and gender: it's clearly popular as a local. The overall atmosphere was good-humoured, and the staff were friendly and efficient, keeping an eye on who was to be served next, unlike some Spoons where they just call out "Who's next?", which often just results in the pushiest customer jumping the queue.

£7.39 for two meals is not the price we'd expected to pay in London, and the real ales were £1.99 for the Ruddles Best, and £2.15 for all others - certainly no "London price blues" here. The range was good: Ruddles Best; Abbott; Acorn Old Moor Porter; Nottingham Dreadnought; Burton Bridge Stairway to Heaven; Oakham Inferno; and Old Rosie cider. I enjoyed both the Stairway to Heaven and the Dreadnought, and my friends seemed happy with the beers they'd chosen. There were quite a few adverts around the place for a forthcoming cider festival.

The pub was busy and buzzing, and my friend Geoff, who lives Hounslow, said that it contrasts with most others in the area which generally are not so well used. It's close to Heathrow so you get loads of planes flying overhead, but if you're staying overnight prior to a flight, this would be a much better choice than any soulless hotel bar.

The London to be demolished

The London Hotel, Southport

Closer to home than my previous post, Sefton Council, which covers Southport, has agreed that the London Hotel in Windsor Road can be demolished to make way for a housing development. I wrote about the rumours concerning the pub's future in December last year, and followed that by contacting the owners, Barnsley Brewery. They were reluctant to reply and I had to send reminders before I received any kind of admission that the pub's future was in doubt. They admitted planning permission had been applied for but still claimed they wanted it to continue as a pub, but I'm not convinced. The local branch of CAMRA has opposed the closure by attending the planning meeting to see objections lodged and by press releases that have prompted one or two letters from the public, but it's now a foregone conclusion.

In January last year I explained how the term "community pub" applied to the London, with various teams using it as a base, and it also providing entertainment for its customers. It wasn't helped by a lack of investment - it badly needed redecoration - and weird opening hours such as, for example, closing at 10 pm on Wednesdays. With the town centre pubs only 10 or 15 minutes' walk away, you can't do silly things like that, but the tenant told me that it was a brewery decision, not his own.

I'm not convinced this pub had to close; there are pubs elsewhere in Southport a similar distance from the town centre that are doing well, and the London has the advantage of no competition in the immediate vicinity. It is the only local outlet for Oakwell Brewery, and its beers have always been extremely reasonably priced. I consider that it has been in a state of managed decline until it became uneconomical, thus justifying closure and clearing the way for a windfall from the sale of the site.

The pub, which was opened in 1866, will close on 1 May.

Picture 'borrowed' from CAMRA Southport & West Lancs Facebook page.

An Olympian Festival

The Great British Beer Festival, CAMRA's main festival of the year, is taking place from 7th to the 11th August. I've no idea whether being held at the same time as the Olympics will be good for business or not - I suspect the latter, but I'd like to be wrong. I've worked at the GBBF twice in Leeds in 1988 and 1989, and although it seemed massive, it was much smaller than it is now. It was held in huge former tram sheds, which were subsequently demolished and redeveloped long ago.

I went with my friends Graham Donning, now organiser of the National Winter Ales Festival, and Peter, AKA the beer blogger Tandleman. We stayed in student accommodation and spent most of the time working on pub games, which was fun, until I slipped on some spilt beer and went flying. Fortunately, nothing broken - just bruises to my thigh and ego. Pub games were very popular and we raised a lot of money. A beer festival organiser asked us whether we'd do the same at his festival. Graham and I agreed and found ourselves a few weeks later at Alfreton beer festival stuck in a dingy corner where hardly anyone noticed us, and we were bored silly; a complete waste of time.

I've never been tempted to attend the GBBF after it moved down south, and from what I can see, it looks a much slicker operation now. However, friends who do go all seem to enjoy it; I just feel it's an awfully long way to go for a pint. This year, travel to and from the festival is likely to be difficult with the Olympics hogging the transport system, but if anyone feels tempted to try to get around "over 800 different British real ales, ciders, perries, and foreign beers", here's the GBBF website - and if you go, good luck. If you don't fancy the journey, click here for details of more local beer festivals.

It will be held, appropriately enough, at Olympia, Hammersmith Road, London, W14 8UX.

Demo and a few pints

"By the time we got to Piccadilly, we were half a million strong..." as Joni Mitchell didn't quite sing. Unfortunately Chris and I had to leave the big demo there, as we couldn't get to Hyde Park and then return in time to catch our train back to the north. However we did get to Euston with over 30 minutes to spare, so we went into the Britannia in the station which had four real ales on: Fullers ESB and London Pride, Speckled Hen and I forget the fourth. ESB it was, but at an eye-watering £3.70 a pint. It was served in a special pint glass, which looked a bit like an oversized brandy glass, but okay when you got used to it. Full-flavoured and bitter without being astringent, it went down a treat. Pity we can't get it in Southport.

I had to change trains at Wigan, but we decided to have a couple of pints first. The John Bull Chop House, down a narrow alley off Market Place, is a local rock pub.  "Get It On" by T-Rex was playing on the juke box while we ordered our Thwaites Bomber, which was fine. Then to the Moon Under Water where I bought two Elgoods Thin Ice, using one Wetherspoons coupon for 50p off. The barmaid gave me the wrong change, so I began to point this out, but she and a colleague both cut me off, saying, "It's gone through the till and that's what came up." I replied, "Okay, but I thought you'd given me too much change." I went back and checked and she had.  Well, I tried...

Chris left to go home at this point so I went to have a pint in the Boulevard, a cellar bar that sometimes puts on live music.  After that, I caught my train to finish the night off in the Guest House in Southport with 3Bs Brewery Doff Cocker.  I was one of the last to drink up, and the landlady shouted at me: "Neville, you've still got a full pint!" 

"No, I haven't," I replied, "It's a short measure!"  But I drank up quickly anyway.  After a day of marching, and good beer in three towns, I had no trouble getting to sleep last night.