Being a card carrying CAMRA member (I do travel the country and you never know where there might be a discount!) I receive the seasonal publication Beer. In this year’s Spring issue there was an interesting for and against argument as to whether one's local is the nearest pub to where you live or the one that you visit the most because it ticks all your boxes, and is also near to your home.
I myself have long considered this quandary and got around the problem by using the distinction of 'geographical local' and 'local'. The former being the closet pub to where I live and the latter being my regular drinking hole of choice. I have had a good few locals in my time and drank beer at all of them although I am a rather late convert to real ale, I have to admit. I remember drinking Trophy in my first local which was a Whitbread pub, remember those? I always thought it was funny that it stood almost opposite a Bass pub. Those were the days when you could walk into a pub and tell which brewery owned it, from what was on the bar, lagers and all. I suppose that is still possible now to some degree, only it’s now Greene King and Marston’s to distinguish between, amongst various regional breweries. Anyway, I digress from my digression; Trophy was a truly a lifeless, bland beverage and I'm somewhat pleased that it has completely disappeared. But at least it was weaker (and cheaper) than Pedigree which was the hand pull and as young 'un's we couldn't drink much of that in a session, and I didn't like Boddingtons which was the other (electric) alternative.
Now that pub, (my first local; the Cross Scythes in Totley) was my favourite pub in the area and also the nearest to where I lived. It had pool, snooker, a juke box, sold pork scratchings and had character to spare (wallpaper peeling off the walls), what else did a teenage boy need? A local borne of proximity was also true of my next home, even though I was only there for 10 months, which was regrettable as the nearest boozer was the Rising Sun in Nether Green. I used to pop in there with my compatriot from the Totley days and play darts, and to be fair that is why I frequented it; it had a dart board. Oh the horror. I’d like to think that we did sample a few different ales but I can’t be sure. Not that I have anything against darts you understand, I just lament a missed opportunity to really appreciate a fine ale pub.
In the pursuit of darts, ale and downtime John and I have a long list of ours under our belt that acted as our local for our intents and purposes. Two other pubs were regularly visited in Totley; the Fleur De Lys (the former bass pub, turncoat! Although I later went on the work for Bass Leisure Retail/Six Continents/Mitchells & Butler), where we learned to appreciate Stones and the Shepley Spitfire which at that point was still a Kimberley Ales pub. This was before Greene King bought them and continued to cement their reputation as the bully of the brewery industry. We also used to visit the Yellow Lion in Apperknowle (the asshole of North Derbyshire, although this was before I visited Clay Cross), the Market in High Green, the Arundel near Ecclesfield (now an Indian restaurant), the Travellers Rest in Ecclesfield (Tetley’s Smooth, nooooo!) and the White Lion on London Rd.
I have just moved from Highfields where I lived for almost 6 years but my first local there was the newly refurbished Earl of Arundel and Surrey. That didn’t last long as landlords came and went and then completely gave up. From there I stuck with the White Lion for a good while, sinking many pints of hand pulled Tetley’s. For some reason the Sheaf View wasn’t quite on my radar at that point and I also occasionally dipped into the Golden Lion on Alderson Road, a pub that had never heard of real ale. But after a while good sense prevailed and the Sheaf stuck as my local, and it is contestable if that was actually the nearest pub as I lived about halfway between there and the Cremorne. But either way it is the place that will always be my local at heart and I am loathe to move too far away from it! Crazy perhaps, but sometimes that is the power of the local on a dedicated beer lover.
I am now living (as of last weekend) in the limbo area between Heeley and Meersbrook. So happily the Sheaf View is still nearby but it is not the closest pub anymore. But there’s no way in hell I am going to call the Old Crown my local as it hasn’t seen a hand pump since about 1968. Well, maybe 1999 as it was a Wards pub after all. Still, the White Lion is the nearest decent ale pub and that suits me just fine. But I guess I do subscribe to the view that my local is the nearest great pub that I don’t hesitate to visit with any excuse.
It is very subjective though; I used to call in the Yorkshire Grey (may it rest in peace) a lot and often referred to it as my ‘local in town’, as it was where I always ended up. Black Sheep, pool table, video games, food, outside beer garden and a mixed clientele meant that it covered a lot of ground. I don’t really have a local in town though although I suppose frequency might dictate that it’s the Red Deer. Even though the Harlequin probably isn’t my most visited Kelham Island pub, I would still say it’s my local in that area as I now meet John there once a month (darts are no longer thrown even though it does have a darts board!) and I got with my other half Pip there and so where else could I propose to her last summer?!
So ends my thoughts on the ‘local’ issue although I seem to have almost detailed my entire beer history, sorry!
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