Ironically, the one time I have very little to report because of pubs being closed is the one time I actually have time to write more, because my workplace closed on Friday March the 20th. My last pub visit was on Thursday March 19th as I had my regularly scheduled night in the Society Tap Room, Runcorn, followed by the Lion, my local.
The next day the Lion did open, and it was announced that all pubs and bars would close the following day at 12. It didn’t seem right to go out ‘one last time’. The Lion doesn’t serve food and can’t do takeout services so it just sits, unoccupied. Hopefully once this lockdown is suspended it will bounce back – I predict it will be packed to the rafters in the first week.
Society however, was able to stay open as a takeaway. I think (I hope) the closest I will get to experiencing wartime measures will be wandering down with my plastic firkin to have it refilled, getting my £2 deposit back and trying to get the beer back to my house without it exploding, which it does pretty much every time.
My week usually looks like this – Sunday nights is quiz night at the Lion, then I will usually be there at some point in the week to watch football. On Thursday I have my tea at Society tap room with my pal Vinnie and later we go to the Lion again. Then I usually have plans on either Friday or Saturday. I recently worked out that I am personally putting £3000 over the bar at the Lion each year – about £250 a month at a conservative estimate. If you multiply that by all the regulars there is some serious money currently floating around my ends with nowhere to go. I might buy a boat.
Now there is still a quiz on Sunday but it’s done over Zoom with some pals I know from the forum for a band called The Cribs (I did an article called Tasting Notes which describes which beers you should drink whilst listening to each album) while we all drink. There is another virtual pub quiz with my performing arts group on Thursday, and then there have been various meetups in my virtual pub the Dancing Donkey.
My beer supply has come from a mixture of helpful people with cars who are able to get to supermarkets, like my cousin Mark, the one who fell over, the co-op at the end of the street and the aforementioned Society Tap Room takeaway. (Or outdoor as my nana used to say). I’ve also had a couple of bottles of wine which is easier to carry than a crate of beer, and when I was asked to go into work for a day in Liverpool I was able to pick up a bottle of vodka which was both a treat and a terrible idea as it ended in drinking games.
Ah drinking games. My friend Vinnie is a master of these. Granted they mostly consist of listening to a song and drinking when you hear a certain phrase. Here’s a tip – in Black Betty they say bam-a-lam twice as much as Black Betty so choose your phrase carefully. Roxanne has also been attempted, we hope to move on to Beat It this week which I predict will end in instant death.
Cheers, and stay safe, until next time.
ladysinksthebooze 