Posted by: Lois Lindemann on: January 18th, 2015 
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It appears that we need to get out more.
Last January, on our annual jaunt to London, we were sitting in the pub that we like to refer to as our London local, enjoying a beer and the amazing view of the river and St Paul’s, when I had a slightly worrying thought. We had visited that particular pub more times than any other over the previous twelve months (and no, we hadn’t spent a lot of time in Londinum Town that year).
It appeared that the Founder’s Arms, with its amazing view, wasn’t actually our London local,it was our local. Unfortunately, it is a bit too far from our house in Sheffield to qualify for that description. As I said, it appears that we need to get out more.
Once upon a time we had a couple of local pubs in Sheffield which we liked to frequent. They ticked all the right boxes: nice beer, nice atmosphere (largely due to having a great landlord), a good quiz and bonus points for having hideously patterned pub carpets. But times change, the great landlords both retired and were replaced by not-so-great landlords. In fact one of the replacements was exceedingly annoying and seemed to feel that brusquely interrupting your conversations was a key part of his job description. The opening hours got extended, so the pub quiz suddenly started at a time when I am thinking of heading home for bed. The annoying landlord sacked the DJ who ran a brilliant music quiz and replaced him with distinctly un-brilliant quiz questions on a PowerPoint. (And yes, he then read the PowerPoint slides to us. And yes, that was the last time we went to that pub’s quiz.) We drifted away from our former locals, but we didn’t drift into anywhere else.
This year, as we sat in the Founder’s Arms, we concluded that it wasn’t the pub that we had visited the most over the last 12 months, but it was still in the top 10.
There appears to be a vacancy for the post of Local Pub. Job description: must have nice beer, nice atmosphere, be within walking distance of Crookes, preferably not filled with televisions. And if you have a quiz that finishes at bedtime rather than starting then, the job is yours.
Time to get out there and give one or two candidates a try.
Image Credit: Image of Founders Arms: Untitled by Peter Harris, on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons Licence.
Strangely enough, the Founders was actually one of my real ‘locals’ for a while when I worked on the South Bank in the nearby building that looks like an eight storey high pile of concrete railway carriages.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampson_House#mediaviewer/File:Sampson_House,_Hopton_Street_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1347010.jpg )
Our nearest drinking venues were the Founders Arms and the Doggetts. Actually the Doggetts Coat and Badge was a hazardous venue because of traffic until they opened the pedestrian underpass under Blackfriars Bridge.
I love that description – an “eight storey high pile of concrete railway carriages” is exactly what that looks like 🙂