All my favourites in this one. Brunning & Price non-pubs, geographical labelling errors, jam jars with rubber stoppers, real ale fails, and polite society. See, Oxfordshire does do pub drama.
Obscure Oxfordshire, too. A hamlet with not much more than a pub.
The Greyhound is in Bessels Leigh on the map, Besselsleigh on What Pub, and it’s probably pronounced Bezzle by the pashmina wearers debating starters as I arrive.
A good start though, as I spot Berkshire’s top flammable CAMRA magazine at the entrance.
After a slimmed down version on the edge of Windsor Great Park, this was back to identikit Brunning & Price. A fussy rambling building occupied entirely by jacketed diners.
And a particularly unhelpful note on the bar (the next hour from when ?), but oddly none of the other customers at the bar seemed as distraught as me.
Loads of handpumps were affected by some major cellar work, which clearly couldn’t have been done outside licensing hours, oh no.
As I often say, B&P’s staff are it’s main asset. No cider or bottle-conditioned beers*, so the helpful chap offered me something from the keg selection.
“Ignore the Leffe” he said, “it’s a West Berks IPA“. Clearly KeyKeg, even if I couldn’t be sure; I joyfully claimed my tick, and enjoyed an unlikely soundtrack of Babies. The Pulp track from ’93, not the BRAPA favourites.
Of course, at that precise moment, the pumps started working again, and I suddenly had my doubts about the authenticity of that keg beer. It was very fizzy.
So, just to avoid any doubts on the deathbed that I actually had done the Greyhound authentically, I had a half of the Mild (NBSS 3.5). It was a bit frothy.
“Top it up or put a flake it in it” said barlady to barman, and he did.
* I realise all this “must have a real ale in the GBG pub” stuff is nonsense, but it’s my nonsense.
retiredmartin 
With all those “coming soon” pumps, are you sure this isn’t an up market Spoons?
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Only in the sense that, like Spoons, they have lots of hand pumps as fashion accessories but no-one actually buys it.
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Is that unfair ? I think 10 years or more ago folk went to the Spoons to drink real ales (not just at Fest time), but not now. Can’t imagine any CAMRA folks making a branch trip to a Brunning & Price for a beer.
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““Top it up or put a flake it in it” ”
What, like a Cabury’s Flake?
(so that’s how they get the chocolate flavour in the Porters!) (LOL)
As for the map, I could have a lot of fun with that. For example:
Q. What’s a ‘Longworth’?
A. ‘Littlemore’ than a ‘Kingston Bagpuize’. 🙂
Cheers
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Kingston Bagpuize (Bagpuss) is the classic there, of course
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I was going to do a flake joke – but Russ got there first…
…but I might as well ask…did it sink to the bottom or float?
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They’d have been gourmet flakes in Brunning & Price, would have hovered above the common pint of beer.
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I love Magg’s Mild.
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I feel the same way about my missus. Waaay prefer mild version to the bitter one. 😏
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This was very good. Also like Good Old Boy in a good, busy pub.
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It’s a necessary nonsense…all men have quirks and lists it’s essential
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All that not stepping on pavement cracks as a kid was just a precursor for later essential nonsense.
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Less superstition, more “rules is rules, Guvnor” 😉
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Always perplexes me when people in a service industry decide to ‘take the service off line’ during the hours they should be providing the service. All to fit into the agenda of other people (people who they are paying usually) but never the people they should be serving. It’s a bit like when during a face to face engagement with someone and they suddenly break off to answer the telephone. How they can tell that the person on the phone is more important than me is baffling?
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As always, spot on.
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