A very swift half in the Running Horses, Erith. If you were to flick through local history books you would see that Erith once had many pubs in its town centre. Now it only has one. The Running Horses is a rather large and rather handsome 1930s building, overlooking the Thames. The Saloon bar is lovely, with what looks to be the original features, but is generally closed. The public bar is a fair bit more lived in, a reflection perhaps of it taking all the passing pub traffic alone.
I like a pub with a bit of history and a bit of a mythology. Places with a tale to tell, and a tale you can tell yourself when they are mentioned. There’s apparently been a pub on this spot for over 200 years. After its rebuild in the 1930s it was bombed in 1940 – killing the licensee Zachariah William Coles, an ancestor of comedian and Celebrity Traitors winner Alan Carr. There are tales of many years ago the upstairs holding a party and the floor collapsing onto the drinkers below. If you were to mention the pub to anyone local of a certain age they will more than likely tell you all about how popular the pub’s carvery was in the 70s and 80s, how it was the place everyone went on a Sunday afternoon.
The carvery appears to be back, although it doesn’t seem to be as popular as it once was. There are a few people having a drink waiting for it to open. A few others are playing pool. The Winter Olympics is on the telly. We don’t stay long, but there’s a lot to be said for pubs in town centres, where you not only grab a drink but rest your legs, use the loo, escape the shops for a bit. Pubs can, and perhaps should, be a refuge. And when they are they weave themselves into the fabric of the community. They don’t have to be a destination, just a stopping point on the way.
All of this made me think that sometimes we underappreciate pubs as pitstops. They don’t always have to be destinations in and of themselves. We don’t always need to settle in for a session. Sometimes pubs work best as somewhere for a brief reprieve from the outside world before you pop on your coat and brave the big bad world again.
Boak and Bailey wrote recently about honesty in writing about pubs and beer. It is for Patreon subscribers only, but it is well worth subscribing to them if you have any interest at all in the subject matter. I won’t quote from it, as it is behind a paywall and that doesn’t seem fair, but I will say it gave me plenty to think about – not just in terms of writing about pubs and beer, but in writing about anything.
I think all writing needs to be honest on some kind of fundamental and foundational level. Even fiction. If there isn’t some kind of capital-T Truth to writing then what is the point? It just becomes something empty, an attempt to please or a parlour game or just a means to some other end. Readers can sniff out inauthenticity, and if there is no honesty to the writing then the whole thing falls apart. I think this is one reason why AI writing is so unsatisfying, and basically offensive. There’s no humanity to it. It is just a Magic Guessing Machine giving you an approximation of what it has calculated you want to read. If nobody could be bothered to write it, I can’t be bothered to read it.
I believe that writing, or at least writing worth caring about, is a form of deep communication between writer and reader, a form of humanity in a world that often seems to lack it. Honesty is a key component in making that connection. Truly “bad” writing is when that attempt at connection is absent. Technically bad writing can still survive if there’s kind of humanity lurking underneath. I’d much rather read a failed attempt at Truth than technically perfect heartless prose.
However, when it comes to any form of criticism (be it of pubs and beer or music, books, theatre, sport) I think it gets a little more complex. Behind the pub or album or book is a human being, or several human beings, who were more likely than not trying their best. Where is the humanity in making them feel bad for their efforts? But then where is the honesty in only saying nice things?
I suppose this an ethical dilemma for anyone undertaking criticism, from the broadsheet book reviewer through to the person leaving a bad Google review about a restaurant. Is it fair to potentially put someone’s livelihood at risk, just because you didn’t like what they did? Should you demoralise someone and put them off their efforts just because they weren’t to your taste?
There is the risk of the writer just conducting an “Owl review”. I can’t find the original article on this, but it is the act of essentially criticising something for not doing what you want it to do, even if that wasn’t the intention of the originator. So, for example, criticising a book for not having enough owls when that was not something the author was setting out to do, just because you like owls. There’s definitely plenty of this in pub writing – most pub writers have a good idea of their Ideal and when a place doesn’t meet that Ideal it is easy to criticise it, even if the place is attempting to do something quite different.
It is fundamentally more difficult to write a negative review than a positive one. Enthusiasm is a great impetus to writing. Revenge might provide a similar thrust, but generally leads to less worthwhile results. If something is quote-unquote “bad” it needs a whole lot more context than explaining why something is quote-unquote “good”. Outside of reviewing just plain obviously terrible stuff or conducting a hatchet job, a reviewer needs to set out why something didn’t succeed, to be constructive, to illustrate their own viewpoint or if they can’t do that at least be entertaining rather than just dismissive.
This feels even more complicated with pubs. Often a review is only really seeing a snapshot of a place, how it happened to be at one moment in time. I know plenty of pubs that feel incredibly different depending on the time of day or day of the week, depending on who is working there that day and who is drinking there. I don’t think you can give a proper, full assessment of a pub unless you have got a feel for the ebb and flow of the place. Maybe you just caught it on a good day, or a bad one.
I suppose I have come a few conclusions on this. First, criticism is more valid (or if I’m being truly honest, perhaps just far easier) when you are punching up rather than punching down. Taking down a major writer or a popular band or a major pub company feels more constructive than taking down a self-published author, an obscure artist on Bandcamp or a local independent pub.
Second, any writer who is even considering these issues, who sees this as a dilemma rather than something to dismiss, is probably on the right track. We won’t always get it right, sometimes we should be negative and that might affect others, but at least in considering the consequences of our actions we will be attempting some kind of accountability and, well…honesty.
Finally, writing (especially criticism) is almost always just as much about the writer as the subject matter. In explaining what we like and dislike, and in how we go about that, we reveal just as much about ourselves at what we are praising, critiquing or condemning.
We were in the William the Conqueror at Rye Harbour last weekend. We went in at teatime Saturday after a stroll around the nearby nature reserve and it was a reminder that a long walk is improved immeasurably by a good destination. The place was cosy, calmly lit and while not too busy it wasn’t too empty either. The kind of place to rest weary bones and enjoy the post-windchill glow of cheeks.
It’s a funny old place in the sense that a lot of its business happens during the day, and so by teatime things are winding down, whereas in most pubs this would be around the time things start picking up for the evening. But it made for a nice refuge – the daytrippers and dog walkers had gone and there were just a few of us hardy souls still out here at the last pub before the sea. I like a pub that feels like an outpost. The last call of civilisation before the wilds of nature take over.
I had one of their last bottles of Shepherd Neame’s Christmas Ale. I can take or leave SN’s beer but their bottled ales are almost always worth a go. It was pretty strong but packed full of malty and spicy flavour. Best to only have the one, I think.
The other night back home and another trip to the Local Unfashionable Pub we went to last week where we got a warm welcome despite being far from regulars. It’s those little things that make a difference and help you to overlook any pub’s shortcomings. Give me a friendly pub over a quote-unquote “good” pub any day. The 6X was a nice surprise too, the kind of boring brown bitter that is still worth championing.
The place soon filled up with the Tuesday cribbage club. It seems to be the case that Tuesday night is cribbage night in this neck of the woods, or at least that’s how it appears from seeing it in one or two other places too. This lot looked more like the pros though, displaying a trophy and everything. The place would have been practically empty without them, and it was good to see some frankly pretty elderly people out down the pub of an evening. While I’m not a big fan of pub games, if it brings more people in I’m all for it, and if it brings in different kinds of people then all the better.
Friday afternoon, and the local town centre Spoons was rammed. In some ways it benefits from being the only pub next to the shopping mall. But I think it also benefits from not only being the cheapest place for a pint, but also the cheapest place for a coffee, or a meal. All things to all men and women. The real ale is generally disappointing, despite the local CAMRA regularly voting it in the Guide – I suspect a case of never mind the quality, feel the width. There’s lots of choice, it’s just not that well kept. I went for one of the keg craft offerings, Mad Squirrel Sumo and it was incredibly murky. I feel like we’ve gone past the craft murk craze now and this felt almost…old-fashioned?
I’m not sure I have enough to say on one pubby subject to justify a whole post, but thought maybe I could instead cobble a few things together – so this is either the first of a long-running series of disparate pub thoughts or a one-off experiment I will never speak of again. If it helps, just imagine me in the corner of an old boozer, rambling these thoughts to myself.
I went for a walk through London earlier this week, mainly around Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, both areas not short of pubs. I noticed a couple of things.
First, there seems to be the beginnings of a softening on eye-watering London prices. I saw a few different places either making a point of advertising they have at least one pint available for a fiver or offering some kind of Happy Hour promotion. Considering how prohibitive any kind of session has become in many London pubs this felt like a really positive step forward. I’ll happily try out a new pub for a fiver, I get more wary when somewhere new doesn’t clearly list their prices and I might be looking at a nasty surprise when they ring up my drink. These pubs, on the whole, seemed like nice ones too. It’s a really encouraging sign and I hope the trend continues – as much as I appreciate overheads are high, pubs do need to do more to meet drinkers halfway and give them a reason to step through the door. Having at least one pint at a reasonable price seems a good start, and a good principle for all pubs to have.
Secondly, I saw a few pubs being renovated and several others that looked like they had recently been refitted. The trend seems to be to make places look a bit more “craft-y”, if that is actually a style of pub. I guess when I say that I mean some form of pseudo-restoration where the carpets are pulled up, the wood revarnished, tiling laid in various places and a general clear out of pub tat in favour of the odd bit of art or an old mirror. Someone has worked out that there is a certain visual identity that is appealing to drinkers right now and it is something that feels modern yet respectful, that is tasteful but not really homely. The kind of place I can admire but probably not love. The funny thing is that many of these places haven’t actually become craft pubs – they have all the aesthetics but none of the beer. More often than not the drinks selection is pretty uninspired, either the usual suspects or (at best) the most pedestrian craft-adjacent stuff. I guess this might be a brewery thing.
Drinking more locally, on the unfashionable outskirts of London, I’ve noticed that London Prices have very much made it out here – and in some cases have been surpassed. £7 to £8 for something not hugely exciting has become the norm in some of the more fashionable/”upmarket” places. My suspicion is this is to weed out a certain kind of customer, as much as anything.
However, we popped into a very unfashionable pub near us the other night and the prices weren’t so bad and there was a nice mix of people for somewhere that in the past has either been a bit dead or a bit “local pub for local people”. We took the dog along, and it was a reminder of how much a dog can be a great ice breaker when it comes to venturing in a pub where you aren’t known and aren’t sure what kind of welcome you’ll receive. The person behind the bar couldn’t do enough for our furry friend, the regulars made a fuss of her too and I guess in the process we showed we aren’t too awful either!
Finally, I watched the 1969 documentary I Love This Dirty Town on iPlayer. Margaret Drabble laments what has happened to the city and decries the facelessness of the suburbs. There are plenty of arguments I imagine people would still agree with today, although I think I’m a little too attached to the suburbs to accept all her criticisms. But I certainly agreed with her words at the end of the film:
“Neighbourhoods need pubs in the same way they need a church to bring in people – in a word this is…Life”
Image from First In Last Out in Hastings, a lovely pub with a proper pub interior and a real community feel.
I had some time to kill waiting for a bus and so had a little play with the Nomo Cam app. The app replicates old camera styles and I stuck to one of the free ones on offer, that essentially has the look and feel of an old disposable film camera.
There’s a double nostalgia to these kinds of apps and these kinds of photos. They look like old photos, so they jog a memory there. And I think they also, more directly, look like a memory – slightly blurred, ill-focused but still familiar. Or perhaps I have been so influenced by photographs taken on cheap film cameras as a primary document of my past that my brain has rewired itself to see all memories that way, or at least recognise these kinds of photos as a kind of memory?
I feel like all of this then influences the kinds of shots to take with this kind of app (or this kind of film, if you still have it). It seems to make sense to take photos of scenes that are relatively timeless, or of things that were about when these kinds of cameras were popular. It is almost like recreating the past. A more modern scene would be jarring, awkward…although maybe it would be an interesting exercise to see that kind of juxtaposition between old tech and new subject, to see if they play off each other in interesting ways, or just look like a corny Instagram filter.
I couldn’t properly see my screen when taking the photos, as the light reflected off it. This was initially frustrating, but then I thought it was entirely apt. You would have to wait to get the film developed in the past, and so only really seeing my photos once I was home felt like a sped-up version of that. I stopped overthinking what I was doing. I could also tidy up the shots later.
I enjoy these kinds of apps as I’m no great photographer and my phone camera is even worse. And these kinds of things help me to create something novel despite those limitations. It’s a great way to create something quickly, and to then contemplate the act of creation more generally – that art is so often a consequence of its tools and its context.
Wait until next year 