I’ve always preferred ‘old man pubs’ to bars, old man pubs being the kind decked out in mahogany and offering up a gin and tonic to anyone clueless enough to ask for a cocktail. Having just moved to Glasgow, I find myself surrounded by these sorts of places, Scotland practically being the home of pubs so wooden they’d float. There’s a joy in walking into a pub and the staff knowing your name.
I’m 33 and I’d like to meet someone, but I also want to make friends. My initial idea was to use dating apps to contact people in Glasgow. I recced Hinge from Bath, where I last lived, and set up dates for the first week I arrived. It was all too easy – I only had to say I was new in Scotland and I was immediately offered a dozen tours.
What I really wanted was to be ‘friend-zoned’ by my dates. I purposefully didn’t dress up for the first meeting, thinking that if I looked like I hadn’t made a proper effort, it would signal a friendship rather than something more romantic. Twice it worked. But on a few other occasions, I didn’t get another call. They already had friends and didn’t need new ones. One guy did suggest meeting in Glasgow’s oldest pub, the Scotia, for our first date, which was a great shout, but looking around at all the interesting people I could be talking to, I decided after a month to keep the pub and lose the man.
It’s the characters who make these pubs so much more interesting than hipper bars. In one of my new locals, M.J. Heraghty’s, Jack the barman told me that the end of the bar was called ‘the deep end’ because it’s where all the big thinkers stood while trying to work out life’s difficult questions. Have you ever been to a cocktail bar with a deep end? Or one in which people of different generations arrive with instruments and launch into trad Scottish music on a Monday night?
I like to go out on my own, and the question of safety is worth bearing in mind, but no one triple my age would legitimately try to chat me up with any seriousness. I feel safer alone in these ancient pubs than I ever would in a late-night bar filled with couples and potential conquests. Old man pubs are full of regulars. You quickly learn their names and they learn yours. What’s more, they start to look out for you. You became a pack. Obviously, I still stand out a bit, but my old-man-pub outfit (jeans, trainers, big coat) helps. I am usually the only girl alone in these places, but no one bats an eyelid. Everyone behaves as though I’m a widowed geezer.
The regulars are an encyclopaedia of the city, most having lived here for decades. I have a list on my phone of everywhere in Glasgow that I’ve been recommended for dinner, pints, art and books. One guy was related to a famous clairvoyant who once lived a few doors down from the pub. Sometimes the regulars are young. I met a guy a few weeks ago who’d moved up from London to work for the Ministry of Justice. Once I’d got over the fact that I was sitting next to someone English, the Scots being the only people I want to spend time with, we had a very interesting conversation about our worlds. I knew we’d never have chatted if we’d not both come alone to this pub. People feel like they can go on their own to these places for a quiet pint and chat to whoever’s near them. I find that very enticing.
On the apps, younger men keep suggesting cocktails in Glasgow’s hip bars. In a gender role switch I still find funny, it seems to be only men who suggest cocktails these days. Maybe that’s what some women want but it’s not what I want. I want an old man pub, full of old men.
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