There once was a time when you could go on a pub crawl without leaving your immediate neighbourhood, the pub being a hub of the community where everybody gathered. Before mobile phones you had to go looking for your friends in the pubs, if they weren’t in you had to look in another. If you really wanted o find someone without the hassle of walking around, (if it was raining for example) then you would ring the pub and ask if they were there. I’ll never forget how grown up I felt the first time my name was shouted from the bar to inform me of a phone call*, something that the mobile phone has taken away forever. The pub no longer seems to feature in our culture as it once did, little things like the entire workforce walking as one to the pub at lunchtime, and again when the final whistle went. It is a sign of how soft we have become when you think that machine operators used to have a pub lunch with no detriment to their work, but nowadays we don’t have dangerous jobs anymore (maybe a few) and most people sit at screens  yet aren’t allowed to drink at lunchtime. On the other hand you sweated it out in those days, not so easy in an air-conditioned office.

The reason I was drawn to writing about this was a sign I saw outside the Horse and Groom on Radford Road in Nottingham.

Radford Road is a very long road indeed and the fact that there is only one pub is a very sad fact as there used to be loads. From the Horse and Groom to the Gregory Boulevard split there are three noticeable empty pubs, seemingly abandoned; The Scotholme, The Cricket Players, and most scandalous of all, The Old General. I have written at length about what a punch in the throat to Nottingham’s history the closure of The Old General was, especially the death of the tradition of dressing the statue as Santa Claus at Christmas. A once proud landmark that welcomed you to Hyson Green, (once a quality shopping area, now a ramshackle assortment of pizza takeaways and shops that make Poundland look like Harrods), stands derelict, as does The Cricket Players. The Scotholme is now an Indian restaurant, quite a nice one but at the expense of a pub.

Nottingham’s way of life has changed somewhat over the years, especially in areas such as Hyson Green. The local pub no longer features in the lives of the people who live there. Hyson Green has a large population of families for whom the pub isn’t part of their culture (to highlight this fact with a heavy dose of irony, a nearby pub on Alfreton Road is now a mosque), because their religion doesn’t allow the consumption of alcohol. A person’s religious belief is their business and I’m not here to criticise someone for having faith, but the last time I checked pubs sold soft drinks, they even sell tea and coffee these days, who would have predicted that? For this reason there is no excuse to not ‘join in’ with the local community. If entire neighbourhoods met up at the pub then certain barriers would be broken down between cultures.

We need pubs back, we need people to use them, and we need to allow smoking. Did The Moon Under Water really exist? I’d like to think so, it sounds like my kind of pub.

*As I alluded to, the mobile phone has ruined this and therefore people my age will be the last generation to appreciate the feeling it gave you. It was a bigger deal than being served alcohol in the first place. You felt like a man, more so than your first date. More so than your first sexual encounter. More so than moving out of the family home. More so than holding your newborn baby in your arms. Walking to the bar to take a phone call was akin to growing a beard right there and then, and on your way back to your seat you developed a strut, as if to say to the world “fuck yeah, just took a phone call”. This was your validation as a regular and it cannot be replicated with a text message asking where you are.

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