Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [75]
An expert summing-up of good and bad in pubs came from Mrs. Madge Dawkes, of Spalding, Lincs, who grew up in the business. She knows the giveaways—tables sticky underneath, stale flower-water and dead flowers, stingy ice in drinks, lighting you can’t see your change by, miserable bar staff. The last one, of course, points straight to the landlord, who is the heart of any good pub.
On the other side of the bar, words of wisdom come from Mr. Al Hix, in London, needless to say an American, but one who knows us well, and our pubs. “I want my pubs to look like pubs,” he said. “I want them to function as a place where I can drink and talk with friends or read. My local is my club.” And what decent club has a juke box?
The most informative and best letter was written by Mr. A. Gurr, of Evenley in Northants, for many years a tenant landlord. He puts all the postwar changes down to economics— falling beer sales, the gap left by the disappearance of Lyons and other tea shops, the publican’s handy share of fruit-machine profits, the working wife who wants to come to the pub and brings the kids. “One can’t stop it,” Mr. Gurr concludes sadly. But cheer up, sir—a rare three-litre bottle of twelve-year-old malt Scotch whisky is on its way to you. Thank you all for your letters. Answers coming.
In discussing the wine problem a couple of weeks back, I let fall the information that myself can sometimes be seen drinking the stuff. This may strike some readers as a base betrayal of my crusade against wine. And maybe it is—but the distressing fact remains that there are occasions when not to drink it becomes virtually impossible. For the moment I’m referring not to mealtimes, but to before, after and between— especially before—and even more especially to those situations where, for one reason or another, the gap between starting to drink and starting to eat is going to be unusually wide. A long session, that’s to say, quite likely with rounds being bought and the speed of intake thereby hotted up.
Now of course there’s always gin, and always a lot of other things like that as well, but I personally find that after half a dozen large Dry Martinis and a proper lunch my customary skill with the commas and semicolons becomes a little eroded. Whereas if it’s the evening, let me just say that I like to make my way to my carriage unassisted.
Well, there’s always beer too, but here again the way is far from easy. In the pub, almost any decent brew is almost equally shattering on the timescale we’re talking about, and quite a number of topers past their first youth probably find with me that the sheer bulk of beer of any strength gets too much, well within an hour of the start.
The various objections to sherry, vermouth, wine aperitifs, etc., can wait for the moment. Wine remains the practicable alternative—if conditions are right.
In the pub, in the average pub, wine is a dodgy option, a really boring drink if not positively harmful—especially the red—and nearly always overpriced. So find a pub where these matters are properly seen to, or go elsewhere, go to a wine bar, go on to the restaurant, stay at home. Assuming you have control over your choice of tipple, my advice for a pre-meal wine would first of all be to avoid red. Red wine, to most stomachs, is more closely associated with food than white, and even a single glass can set off internal expectations. Keeping these unsatisfied for an hour and a half or so does no good to the digestion and general wellbeing. Nibbling away at nuts or dry biscuits doesn’t do much either, except make sure that if you ever do get to the table, you won’t feel like eating anything else.
White wine steers you clear of the difficulty. Frascati, as mentioned before, is an obvious choice, but there are others no less worthy.
As anybody who goes there will soon see, the national drink of Germany is beer—1364 breweries in the Federal Republic at the last count known to me, as against fewer than two hundred in Britain. Germany