The title of this article makes it sound like the anguished lament of a dipsomaniac. However, as all will testify, as we travel around the country we see it littered with boarded up and closed pubs that will never reopen. Some will be, or have already been demolished while others, empty and forlorn, await their fate. Some will be converted for other uses, it is always sad to see a good old pub converted to a fast food place selling tasteless junk food burgers, we stand under those arches and weep at the sight.
Our British pubs, along with the church, have been an important part of local communities, they have always been places where friends can gather and socialise, they are places where, after a long day at work you can call in for a pint and relax. It is even better if the beer is good.
My first experience of purchasing alcohol was as a spotty faced 16 year old in the early 1960's. This was not in a pub but a club in my local town where I used to go, not really to have an illicit beer, but for the music and to meet up with my other local 'Mod' pals. The beer was purchased not because I particularly liked it, in reality I thought it made me look cool and older than I was. When I went to the bar I was sometimes asked if I was 18, when I told the fib that I was, it depended on who was serving if they believed me or not. These days when youngsters enter a pub there are signs saying: "If you look 21 you have to prove you are 18", which is madness, if they look 18 or older why should they prove their age as they are allowed to purchase alcohol at 18. Now they have to prove their age with some sort of I.D. Cynics, myself included, see this as a way of making the younger generation being forced into to using I.D. cards, and accepting them without protest, for the day these nasties of the police state are enforced upon us and what remains of our liberty and freedoms stolen.
Other than a taste of my mom's sherry or my dads port at Christmas, or family events as a child, I had not really experienced alcohol which at that time of my youth in my local club my choice of alcoholic beverages were somewhat vague. First I would sidle up to the bar and hope I would not be asked if I was 18, once past that hurdle, I would look up and down the array of varying bottles of beer and pick one at random. Some I would think ok, others not so, then one night I chose a bottle of Makenson stout, which was a beer I really liked and from then on that was my beer of choice.
At the age of 17 I began work in a large store in Birmingham city centre and still frequenting the club with my mod mates and drinking Makenson. There were also times I would go to a pub and if served would stick with my stout. That continued and and then, one lunchtime, a couple of pals who worked on a different department to me in the store were going for a lunchtime pint and invited me along. The pub we visited at that time, like a lit of city centre pubs, had been made to look like some sort of imitation Victorian drinking establishment, all the beers were keg, as were all city pubs then churning out beer based on quantity and not really bothering about quality. My pals were mild drinkers so, like them, I had a pint of mild, it was bloody awful and, although I did not say anything to my pals to show my beer drinking ignorance, I thought if this is mild I will have something else next time.
The next time I went for a pint with some friends was after work. We would scuttle out of the store's staff entrance and within a short distance we would enter the portals of 'The Windsor'. This was an older city pub and during the lunchtime opening hours the bar upstairs was used for diners only then open of an evening which was where we would go. Downstairs, as you entered from Cannon Street there was a bar with a snug just off it and at the back was a lounge, usually with a large contingent of Irish drinkers. The Windsor at the time had the reputation. For serving the best Guinness in the city. It was usually after work when we would go there when the store closed at 5.30 pm and, thanks to the pub opening hours in those days, that was the time the Windsor would open. This was to become my first regular watering hole.
My first time there, due to my poor experience of drinking mild, I sampled a pint of bitter, which I found more to my taste. What I had not realised then was the fact the pub that served the revolting mild, also served revolting bitter, which I discovered on a later return visit to that imitation Victorian ale house. I was on a learning curve and was to realise the quality of the beer depended on the dedication of the landlord and the skill of the cellarman. However, in those days keg beers ruled and city centre pubs, to a degree, were not really too bothered about the quality of their beers as long as they were flogging the stuff, and, with us being young and not fussy just used to get it down our necks.
After I had been frequenting the Windsor regularly for a few weeks, Ivy, the elderly barmaid one evening said: "You come here often, what's your name?", to which I replied "Derek". For ever after that she would always greet me as "Cedric'. No one ever queried Ivy, I just let her continue calling me by the wrong name. It was the same when it came to paying for our rounds. Despite the fact we would buy the same round of drinks each time, sometimes she would charge more and sometimes less, no one said anything as we all knew it would balance out in the end.
Eventually I left the store and by then I had met my wife to be, we would go out to a range of pubs during our courting years, one of which was the Longhorn which was close to where I lived with my parents. Although the beer was drinkable (just), no one went there for the beer, they went there for the antics of the landlord who was quite a character. A few years later when we were marred and moved from our first home, the Longhorn became our local. Due to being bored with the telly we would often walk down to the pub about 9.00 pm and meet friends in the pub's snug where we would play darts and have a good old natter. Then the pub closed for refurbishment, the landlord moved on and the pub was never the same.
We then moved on to another local pub about a mile or so away, the Three Crowns, which had been built in the 1930's and later renovated, it was still a nice pub and a big advantage for us going there was we could take Sandy, our stray mongrel dog with us. She soon became well known in the pub, as soon as she heard the rattle of a packet of crisps being opened anywhere in the pub she was off to help eat them, then would shortly return with a satisfied look. It was in this pub where I changed my opinion of mild as this was a pub that served the locally brewed Highgate mild, this now long gone mild was a lovely dark creamy beer, however, it was a beer that needed a landlord who knew how to look after it. After a couple of years frequenting the Three Crowns we got the dread news that the brewery were to renovate the pub at a cost of £750, 000, we and all the other regulars knew this spelled doom for the pub and our days there.
When it reopened it was more like a canteen and set up for selling food rather than beer. Worse still, there were children running amok in there due to part of the renovations including a child's playroom. The regulars returned and promptly left for pastures new. Once the novelty for those, with their unruly offspring had worn off and another pub, somewhere else, had been through the same process of ruinous renovation, all the new visitors vanished leaving the pub with few customers and facing the inevitable end. It finally closed, there were plans to convert it into flats but in the end it was demolished with plans for new homes to be built on the site, but now it is just boarded up and sad.
The next destination was the Broadway in the opposite direction, this was an early 1960's built pub. One of my friends from the Longhorn snug had a moment in his life with this pub. In his young days he used to race around in a Mini Cooper and one night, just days before the pub was due to be opened with s grand ceremony with the Mayor cutting a ribbon to officially open the place, my pal came racing along, lost control on the roundabout in front of the pub, hit a mound of soil that was waiting to be moved, flew through the air and ended up embedded into what was to be the pub's outdoor. The grand ceremony had to be cancelled and put back , the mayor had to find something else to occupy him and my pal had to be bailed out from the local nick by his dad.
This was quite a good pub, it also sold by now my favourite beer, Highgate mild, yet once again after a couple of years as regulars the dreaded news came that the pub was due for refurbishment, we all knew in our bones we would be moving on. On the last Sunday lunchtime in there, the day before closure, I ordered my usual pint of Highgate, when returning to the bar for a second I was told I had drunk the last pint of that enjoyable mild. Some time later when it reopened, and like most pubs at that time, was set up more for selling food than beer, we went to take a look and I asked for my usual pint of Highgate to be told they did not sell mild. My claim to fame is that I was the person to drink the very last pint of Highgate Mild ever served in the Broadway.
During the renovations our friends moved to the bar in a local hotel, it was not much of a place and there were no real ales, in fact the keg beer was not good but as most of our friends drank larger they were not that bothered. We used to pop in there once a week just to see those we knew, but I never liked the place.
By now I had begun to be involved in politics and in 1996 I had joined the Referendum Party and by October had been selected as its Walsall North Parliamentary candidate. By 1997 I had been fortunate enough to have a really good team of people willing to help my campaign and, along with the Walsall South candidate one Saturday we all turned up in the town centre and spent the morning handing out Referendum Party leaflets and trying to convince people to vote for us. By the end of the morning we were all ready for a drink and headed into a pub at the top of the market area which, a couple of years previously had been fully refurbished by Ken, who was a well known local businessman. Unlike most refurbishments to turn traditional pubs into soulless trendy establishments which destroys the character of old pubs, Ken had done to opposite on this previously run down pub.
When he purchased the place he also purchased the adjoining unused Salvation Army building and added hotel accommodation, He created a central bar and added old oak beams which gave the place a really old traditional pub feel as well as introducing a good range of real ales. The moment I walked through the door I fell in love with the place, from then on this was my pub of choice and my new regular watering hole. We used it often, after the demise of the Referendum Party I quickly signed up as a UKIP member and this pub soon became our local UKIP headquarters with our meetings held there, thanks to Ken allowing us to use a meeting room for free. I would often refer to the pub as my second home.
Sadly, during the Covid madness, in November 2020 Ken, who had suffered heart problems, died and his widow took over the running of the pub. She found it hard going and sold up to a newly established small hotel pub chain. When they took over, other than reducing the number of real ales, nothing really changed and we continued using the pub, by then my UKIP days had finished after I walked away from the party in 2019 due to not being happy with the direction UKIP had taken. After a few years the new owners decided the pub was not wanted in their group in the future and sold up to people who did not have any experience of running a pub. Sadly, due to it not being run well customers began drifting away, the quality of the beer began to go down and after being regulars there for 28 years, the longest we had continuously used a pub, our days there have come to an end apart from calling in on occasions to keep in touch with old friends who are still using the place twice a week. I suffer one pint of flat beer for the sake of friendship.
All however is not lost, For over a year we have been calling into the Great Western pub in Wolverhampton a couple of times a week where the beer flows like nectar, it is the best drink of the week. We have also been returning to an old local pub in Rushall, the Manor Arms, which also has good beer and a garden to visit when the weather is good. This is an old establishment with the novelty of having no bar, all the optics and beer pumps are on wall, as you can see here. So we have moved on and I still get my daily pint of real ale, but for how long?
For decades pubs have been closing and since Labour came to power in 2024, with its complaints manager Chancellor wrecking the economy "at pace", as Labour minister like to say, all our hospitality is now in real trouble with both pubs and restaurants closing daily. Add in things such as alcohol duty adding to the cost of drinks, the insanity of net zero adding to the ridiculous cost of energy bills for businesses, also with business rates and rents at eye watering levels, it is no wonder many have lost the fight to survive. At sometime in the future there will be anther Labour Government bombshell that will do immense damage to those pubs just about holding on, the reduction in the drink drive alcohol level will, sadly, put many drivers over the limit with just one pint of beer and ensure a mass extinction of hostelries.
For those such as myself who appreciates a good pint of real ale and sticks to their own limit, which in my case is a pint and a half when driving, or not, thanks to a new reduced limit it will mean we can have no more than half a pint to be on the safe side. For drinking such a small amount many will consider it will not be worth bothering, this means, just like what happened in Scotland when the drink drive limit was reduced, many pubs closed due to the loss of customers who stayed at home to drink in front of the telly. However, for those who were prepared to take liberties with the old drink drive limit, they just carried on taking liberties with the new until caught. The reduction just stopped social drinkers from going out who would have a limited amount and the immediate loss in trade for many, especially pubs in rural areas where a car is needed to get there it was devastating. Those dangerous drivers who did not bother with the old limit also did not bother with the new. The roads are no safer either.
So there we are, I have spoken about the pubs I have loved and lost over many years in this article, soon, unless politicians come to their senses, there will be a nemesis for pubs and hospitality, included the brewers that produce the sort of real ales enjoyed by those like me who enjoy the simple pleasure of using a pub, getting to know the staff and other regulars and, most importantly, enjoying a pint of excellent ale. What could be more British than that? Which, sadly, is the problem, British values are under attack and being destroyed by this and past governments who seem to hate their own.