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4. Don’t pipe music. The very last thing a pub needs is muzak, the siren-call of a place where drinkers don’t want to talk to each other or think alone. Any radio should be a no-go, except perhaps for Test Match Special. If you must have a jukebox, there is a by-law: no compilation albums. (Live music, of course, is a very different kettle of fish, and the gig pub is a fine institution.)
No compilation albums allowed (Chris Ware/Getty Images)
5. Don’t offer tasters of beer. This business of try-before-you-buy has gone too far if it’s reached the pub bar. OK, inspect a small glass jar of the beer like a medicinal specimen if you must, but commit to a pint – or a risk-averse half. This is not the place to sip, sniff, swill and refuse.
6. Don’t fill the room with those bizarre high chairs. Having stools at the bar is one thing, but to fill the rest of the pub with towering chairs that leave your legs dangling like a schoolboy in the headmaster’s office is simply not on. Many landlords, especially those in cities, have convinced themselves that they must cater for the potential arrival of a Brobdingnagian stag party. Why?
7. Don’t fetishise the handled glass and its quaint dimples. It’s neither new technology or a true reflection of tradition. Your simple and straight pint glass doesn’t feel any need to glance at itself in the mirror.
8. Don’t allow tables to be reserved. The pub should be a free-for-all, of shoulders rubbing with shoulders as patrons come and go. If ‘Suzi’ or ‘Xander’ has chosen to arrive with five acolytes at 7.30pm, who is to stop them? But the idea that they can oust others from their pre-appointed ‘area’ is perverse.
9. Don’t upgrade your toilets. The gents in a pub is a strange, almost sacred space (I draw a blank on the ladies). It should achieve only the simplest of objectives. If it’s an Edwardian masterpiece of civic pride, all to the good. But if it’s a wall of sheet metal, it’s still a keeper. Leave it – and its eye-opening chalkboard – be. If you want to spend some money on the pub, fix the bar billiards table, triple the quiz night kitty, or build a bespoke Aunt Sally venue.
10. Don’t plaster the walls with TVs. The last thing the pub-goer needs is a mural of rolling news. Yes, turn the TV on for sports of national significance, and perhaps the odd coronation, but spare your drinkers a visual bombardment. (I can forgive the dedicated sports pub, where TVs are part of their raison d’etre.)
Of our 50,000 pubs in the UK, every now and then I stumble across one that satisfies these rules with ease. But with 20 pubs closing each week, and new ventures finding it impossible (and illegal?) to take the minimalist approach, that search is becoming harder.
This all matters: the relentless closure of post offices, the steady diminution of church congregations, and the gradual disappearance of village halls make the pub the true social hub of the community. But as well as bringing people together, the pub should be an escape, abetted by alcohol, from present-day bothers. Part of that escape is secured by drink, part by the solace of the past. One final rule, then: a pub that looks to the future is a pub that has lost its way. With this I hope George would agree.
Because you read about drink
Also by David Butterfield
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