I was watching a truly terrible film at the weekend called The Best Bar in America. In it a cliched Hemingway wannabe was embarked on a personal odyssey to find this elusive tavern. There was the potential for a great road movie but it was squandered on, well I don’t know what it was squandered on, but it wasn’t dialogue or acting lessons.
Anyway, it got me thinking how much I love the pub and how much I, like millions of others, miss it. I don’t know what the best pub in Britain is, and I’ve been to hundreds of them, but I have some ideas as to what the best pub would feature and what it wouldn’t.
My first regular pub was The Foelallt Arms in Llanddewi Brefi. Can’t put my finger on why I loved that place so much. When I was first drinking there the beer was shit, the jukebox even worse and the locals could be difficult too. And yet, this tiny pub just 100 yards or so from my house, was the first great pub love of my life. Me and my sixth form friends playing pool, talking shit, dreaming of escape and wishing that someone would put something decent on the jukebox. Those summer nights between school and university were magical and the Foelallt, with its dim view of things like licensing laws, was a big part of it. Me and my brother occasionally fantasise about winning the lottery, buying the place and doing it up a bit and restoring it to some kind of alternative glory, where the beer didn’t give you the shits and the temperature was somewhere above zero. I loved the place though, for all its faults, and whenever life in my twenties got too hectic with women trouble or any other kind of trouble, a trip back home and a couple of nights in the Foelallt served as the kind of corrective space necessary to make appropriate adjustments for life back in Cardiff.
The next regular was a true love of mine. The Elephant and Castle. Fuck knows why a South London estate had a pub named after it in rural west Wales but there you go. I was from South London and so it seemed to fit that I would love this place so much. First date with my first serious girlfriend was in the Elephant, the first place I’d go after a row (and usually, before it) was the Elephant. Found out I was going to be a Dad there, took my son there to be christened in the world of booze, a baptism involving me having a very quick pint of Stella while the landlady cooed at a two week old boy in a pram.
The Elephant had a U-shaped bar. It got progressively lighter as you moved round it. Dark corners are a key part of any great pub. I wasn’t one for the dark side of the Elephant though. I went to where the light was, by the pool table, by the jukebox and the dartboard. The Elephant catered to all my adolescent needs except the carnal. 30 years since the place closed and I can still recall the numbers of key songs in my musical education provided by the Elephant’s proper rickety jukebox. 183 – She’s Not There. 157 – Whisky In The Jar. 191 – Lola. 147 – Dock of the Bay. Every time I hear any of those songs, I close my eyes and picture my dear friends Garry, Steve and Bevan rolling cigarettes or cueing up an unlikely pot on the bright blue baize of the pool table.
God how I loved that pub. When it closed its thick oak and metal door for the final time, it felt like the end of the world. It was more than somewhere to go - it was somewhere I belonged. Most students avoided the place, too far, too dark, too dingy for them. They preferred, still prefer I imagine, the bright lights of the Dairies with it’s Sky TV and new furniture. The Elephant was a tatty, fearsome old beast and I loved it dearly.
Me and my friends needed a new base and settled upon The Blue Boar. The Blue Boar was a great pub. Its main architectural feature was a pointless aquarium that seemed to take up half the place. Again, dingy. Darkness is good. People don’t want to sit in the bright light, the pub is for contemplation, reflection and self-admonishment. Nightclubs are for parties. The boozer is for boozing. I was always in awe of the daily drinkers in these places, the coming in and getting your head down and drinking the days away. A foolish, youthful romanticism I know but already I felt a kinship with these guys. Outside of the pub, you could be stuck in a dead-end job, a damaging relationship or some other intractable reality. Inside, sat with a pint and a couple of fellow minded travellers, you were free from all of that, princes, for a while, of your own sainted kingdom.
The Blue Boar had all the facilities the youthful me required. Jukebox (CD – hundreds of albums), pool table and, most importantly, atmosphere. It was a lively place, the Blue, if you caught it at the right time. The best hours in a pub are often the weekday nights just after everyone’s fucked off out of work. Only going for one, two at the most, the joy at not being behind a desk or till is palpable when these people enter the pub. A couple of hours there and they leave a little bit of that joy hanging in the room when they go. Sometimes you can taste it.
Eventually, I had to move town. I’d run out of people I could safely owe money to and my time in Carmarthen was up. And so to Cardiff. I didn’t have a regular for years, preferring to give a different pub it’s moment in the sun for a few months. The Rummer Tavern with it’s medieval darkness and subterranean pisser, Dempseys with it’s famous four bars, the Goat Major with it’s distinct lack of pool table and jukebox but a fucking huge weighing machine in the toilet. I loved them all, the Borough on a Friday night could turn a bit tasty at the drop of a hat but it had atmosphere by the bucketload.
When the Wetherspoon Revolution came around, I found a new home. Mulligans, an authentic Irish bar at the bottom of the world famous chip alley. Fuck me, I loved that place. I’m about as Irish as Mo Farah but something about being served by a proper Irish family amongst timetables of Atlantic crossings from Cork whilst The Dubliners chirrup away in the background spoke to me. Mulligans was ace. They looked after their regulars. You didn’t have to queue for a drink if it got packed. Thirsty drinkers would have to pass the Stella back to you if they wanted to get served themselves.
These were the days when my drinking companions included Mad Michael. Michael was his own man. He wore a bobble hat beneath which his 12th century haircut strained at the leash. He had been a monk but gave up the monastic life when, in his words, he really fancied a pint one afternoon. Same age as me and probably the cleverest person I’d ever met. Translated ancient texts for universities on the side. You’d be sat next to him in a call centre and he’d be gabbing on to some old lady on his headset whilst deciphering ancient sentences with his non-typing hand. Funny as fuck, too. The language on him after five pints. Came back from the gents with his old boy still hanging out and, when this was pointed out to him, merely stretched his jumper down to cover the tip. Went mad in the end, properly, terribly, horribly mad. I’m not saying it was because Mulligans changed hands but I’m not saying it wasn’t either.
Mulligans famously employed The Hardest Bouncer in Cardiff too. These were the days when you didn’t need a license. You can mention Lloyd’s name to a certain older generation of doorman in Cardiff and they’ll get all misty eyed. Lloyd was about 5 foot 6, 9 stone wet and was not a man to tell you things twice. Everyone had a Lloyd story. Like the Sex Pistols gig in Manchester, everyone was there the night Lloyd threw a man who’d hit his girlfriend out the doors so violently he ran into and bounced off a bus turning into St Mary’s Street. I made the mistake of testing Lloyd’s patience one night and, luckily for me, he only whispered in my ear. Not only did I instantly leave, I was back the next day with apologies by the dozen. All was forgiven, I was a regular. But I wasn’t to take liberties again.
Anyway, after Brains decided that what was really needed was to turn an authentic Irish pub in the city centre into an “Irish-themed” pub, I stopped going and so did everyone else. I had another child by then and my days of leisure had come to an abrupt end.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get to go to a pub again but by God, I’ll enjoy it if I do. I’ll make it a regular pilgrimage, make it my home from home. I want to see friends again, I want to spend hours with my friends laughing and joking and hiding from real life. Lord knows we’ve had enough real life to contend with of late.
All I dream about is the last year before the pandemic and the joyous pub-based occasions therein. The shitfaced Dixieland night at the Old Duke in Bristol, the epic walk around the pubs of Treharris and Nelson in search of food and quizzes, the Estonian barmaid in Treforest who loved 1982-era The Fall, the hugely hungover trawl through Tenby and its myriad takes on hair-of-the-dog and finally my dear friend Steve’s 50th, days before the first lockdown and a night of regrettable tequilas, strange guilt and determined celebration.
I feel for the kids of today, watching on as their supposed elders and betters vote for them a Britain without the same access to Europe as we had. I worry about what effect the pandemic will have on their development as young adults. As dangerous as alcohol can be, the pub as a place to amass experiences, consolidate friendships and celebrate milestones cannot be underestimated. As my dear friend and stoic drinking partner Mark said to me only today, man is a social animal. I hope that all of us can socialise again soon. It is the way in which ideas are best shared, in person, not online, not in secret. If things ever get back to normal again, I hope that all of us can be social again, can find places to share ideas, problems, joy, sadness – the stuff of all human life. Without seeing familiar faces, this life loses meaning. When the pubs reopen, let’s not ruin it by just getting blindly drunk, let’s seize the opportunity to reconnect with people, find new friends, build relationships, communities and plant the seeds for new, happy memories.
