Preserves Online: Best Brew Pubs

Thursday 19 July 2012

Best Brew Pubs

As a kid in 1968 I didn't like beer. The fact that I found beer revolting at one time will shock those who know me now - but it's true when I was a wee whippersnapper I hated the stuff. My mum and dad once kept an off licence and general store in the Black Country and I can remember one Christmas that, when I finally got permission from the old man to have a sip of his Ansell's, I nearly wretched on the stuff. "Ugh, it's 'orrible" I said as I almost spat it out - couldn't quite do the latter as I'd have been sent to bed before my deadline of when the end theme to Coronation Street kicked in. How I hated that tune! And, unlike today where hoards of brats are running around the pubs, I hardly ever visited a boozer when I was a kid. It was on the odd occasion when my parents nipped in for a few drinks on the way back from somewhere exotic like Stourport that I was allowed a bag of crisps and a bottle of pop whilst I sat outside in the cold as they enjoyed a beer in the boozer. Pubs were simply places where you were bored waiting for them to come out or where you played with some other little urchin in the beer garden.