While I was running around
Nottingham on a fact finding mission yesterday, (in which the only real fact I
found was that Trent Barton buses don’t seem to understand the concept of the
Kangaroo ticket and didn’t let me travel back from Hucknall), Mandi texted me
to ask if I fancied meeting up for a quick teatime drink in town. I wasn’t
really dressed for a Saturday night out, although I did, (though I say so
myself) look good; black jeans, Converse, black-t-shirt, and black blazer. We
went to The Bell and had a pint each* and something to eat.
*It’s a sign
of how times have changed and how we are thankfully more open-minded in this
day and age that a couple can have a pint each. I’m old enough to remember when
women didn’t drink pints, not only that but women had their own different
shaped half pint glass and if you asked for a half then the bar staff would ask
if it was “for a lady”. If you asked for lager, you automatically got a half in
a woman’s glass. Crazy days, if you tell that to one of the youth of today,
they won’t believe you.
I wasn’t in the mood for a
hearty meal that stuffed me and made me uncomfortable, so I settled for ham egg
and chips. We don’t eat in The Bell often enough, and we easily forget how nice
it is. Ham egg and chips isn’t the first thing you’d think of having at all,
never mind in a pub, and it is one of those quick and easy meals that makes you
wonder why you don’t eat it all the time. The ham was delicious, and halfway
through my meal I decided that I would take some ham home for the cats. As the
last mouthful of ham went into my mouth I remembered this, and came to the
conclusion that what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. There was a choice to
be made; stay or move on to another pub. We decided to have a drink in The Malt
Cross, where they do a lovely pint called Music Hall (named in honour of the
fact that The Malt Cross is an old Victorian music hall). Mandi wanted
something in a dark, chocolaty ale and didn’t get what she wanted there. We
were in a real ale mood, and caught a bus to a pub called The Lincolnshire
Poacher, by now it was still only about six o’clock, and I had to face up to
the sad fact that I was going to miss That Puppet Game Show. With
that in mind, I decided to roll with it and allow myself to sink into a beer
night. Mandi finally found her dark beer in the Poacher, Salem’s Porter. I tend
to think of real ale as going through seasons and so wouldn’t entertain dark
ale until winter, by which time I’d probably have switched back to Guinness. At
least lager season is over for another year it would seem from the weather.
Saturday night isn’t my favourite time to be
out on the town, but we chose our pubs well and avoided the Saturday night
idiots. After a couple in the Poacher, we headed across town again to a pub I
can’t remember the name of, (because I didn’t look at the sign on the way in or
out, not because I was drunk) in Canning Circus, known for Blue Monkey brewed
beer. I had obtained the advice of my former radio colleague Erik Petersen,
(remember him Sunday Alternative fans?) who is a bit of a real ale expert and
writes about pubs for The Nottingham Evening Post (as I still call it). I
wanted to know if it was a take-your-girlfriend type of place or not. He
recommended it, and he made a good call as it is a lovely place that I had
previously never been to. Canning Circus is, on the surface at least, a bit of
a dump. However, it does have a reputation for nice bars and restaurants. It
isn’t really our part of town and as such we don’t think to go and drink in
this neck of the woods. Perhaps if Junktion 7 was still operational it would be
different, but the area has nothing to entice us there. That is until we
discovered this pub of course.
Older generation Nottingham
people will remember (and wax nostalgic to the point of tedium) about the two
main breweries in the city; Shipstones and Home Ales. Through a rose-tinted
memory, these were the drinks that were supped in pubs across Nottingham that
no longer exist. This was of course in the era of limited choice, and ale-wise
there was nothing else to choose. My dad tells me that Shipstones was the best
laxative there was. They had a massive brewery building in Radford that still
stands, unusually for Nottingham, as a listed building.
Now used as offices and
for a college as far as I know, it is a reminder of Nottingham’s past life as a
city of industry. My dad used to live in between the Shipstones brewery and the
now demolished John Players cigarette factory, and said that if the wind blew
in a certain direction at the right time of day, you could smell tobacco and
beer in the air and the area smelled just like a pub, (a pub when you could
smoke in them of course). Although not made in the big brewery building
anymore, the Shipstones name has recently been resurrected. Someone has bought
the name (and presumably the original recipe) of the beer and marketed it as a
bottled beer. As a son of Nottingham who has never sampled this liquid history,
I felt that I should give it a try.
All I can say is that I am
glad to be a hip young pub goer in this day and age where real ale is a
thriving business, and small independent breweries are popping up all over the
place. Shipstones is a fairly non-descript drop, that doesn’t really taste of
anything. Although I wasn’t stuck in the toilet all day, I was disappointed that
this wasn’t a nicer beer. It tasted neither nice nor terrible to be honest, and
put me in mind of a cheap supermarket shandy.
It was after midnight this
morning when we got home, and I hadn’t even thought about work for the whole
day. I really should make more time for relaxation, as I enjoyed last night
just spending time with the love of my life and talking and having fun. We were
sitting on comfy sofas opposite another couple on another comfy sofa who looked
as if they were on the verge of splitting up. At one point I felt as if I
should go over to them and kindly advise them to cut their losses and split up
straight away.
We stopped at an all night
shop on the way home and bought a multi-pack of Hula Hoops and other such snack
treats, and watched the remainder of The Mighty Boosh.
To say how much we had drank over thee few hours we had been out, there was no
hangover or any kind of bad feeling this morning.
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