Wait until next year

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.