I ought to colour code these posts so you can dip in and out more selectively.
Perhaps;
- Green for your Complete Tourist Guide (e.g. to Nuneaton)
- Yellow for reflections on changing underpass art or shopfronts (e.g. in Stoke)
- Blue for Pub Cats
- Red for Draught Bass (obvs)
- Orange for a quick dip into a plain old pub
- Black (for death of pubs) for a micro
This one would be an orange post, a ten minute foray into the Old Function Room in delightful Darwen, the posh bit of Blackburn (i.e. you can get a macchiato there).
After a twenty minute stroll from the station past solid boozers I guess I was expecting the Function Room to be a café bar type thing, particularly with “Pub. Kitchen” emblazoned on the scaffolding-scarred walls.
How wrong I was. A Social Club in all but name, the food is just Sunday lunches (rag pudding and treacle) and there’s some serious Professional drinking here.
And beers that you’ve heard of. Lees and Unicorn the beers I saw, and I wasn’t interrupting the bar flies to find out if they really stretched to Worsthorne.
On the day that one of our most respected newspapers (they’re all garbage) berates the £22.50 pint,
it’s opportune I tell you I got this gorgeous Unicorn (NBSS 3/3.5) for £2.60 a pint. That wouldn’t buy you a pound of faggots in Darwen Market.
Shame the seating is such a mess, but at least it is seating, and it gives you a great view of Phil Thompson going “Oooh !” and the waistcoat choices of the family group.
A no-nonsense place, with no-nonsense film posters in the Gents.
Only a Lancastrian will understand the strange messages carved on the wall in 1887.
*I’m joking. I’ve never seen a James Bond film in my life. Or Star Wars. Or Game of Trolls. Or whatever.
retiredmartin 
Weren’t tempted to the keg Boddies then? (or was that thread exhausted several posts ago?).
BTW, I wonder if the chap in the Sun is typical of their readers, in that he knows from personal experience what drain-cleaner tastes like? (not wildly dissimilar to an obscure micro-brewed triple-IPA but cheaper by an astonishing amount, I suspect!)
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I certainly was tempted by the Boddies, Clive ! If I see it in a Brewers Fayre or similar I’ll compare it to the Doom Bar.
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You can form a good impression of the taste from the smell.
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There was a time when it was an analytical (British Pharmacopoeia) requirement to record the taste of all the chemicals
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“in that he knows from personal experience what drain-cleaner tastes like? ”
Over on this side of the pond, if someone says something tastes like sh*t, I like to reply with “lacking your culinary expertise, I’ll just have to take your word for it”. 🙂
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Since I appear to be the only one here(?), I shall grasp the opportunity to alert you that there’s at least(!) one word missing from the sentence beginning, “Shame the seating…”
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Well spotted Clive. The intruder appears to have stolen the word “least”, oddly.
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Damn! An intruder!
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Less than three quid a pint ..like it! Champagne Charlie is better than Thommo at the “ooooh” clap/chant …I love James bond films
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Great colour coding proposal. Hope PUB don’t insist it’s universally adopted though. Went to Darwen Tap before the Reading game last week- inevitably a micro but a friendly one and better than the pubs nearer the ground.
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Should have done it (and the Kirkham craft place) but when you’ve got eight to do that are in the Guide you need to take it easy.
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“I ought to colour code these posts so you can dip in and out more selectively.”
Plus pink for the ones that cater more to Prosecco and purple for the new wave type of pub.
“(i.e. you can get a macchiato there).”
I thought that was a type of insect.
“particularly with “Pub. Kitchen” emblazoned on the scaffolding-scarred walls.”
It looks like ‘Pub & Kitchen’ to me. And according to Streetview it used to be Craiglands Function Rooms years ago. So at least they’re keeping part of the name. 🙂
“Bar flies”
What’s the difference between them and bar blockers?
“Extract from the Sun 29/8/18”
Love how the caption shows £886 rather than £8.86. 🙂
“and the waistcoat choices of the family group.”
Ironically the waistcoat on the fellow in the green shirt doesn’t reach his waist. 🙂
“with no-nonsense film posters in the Gents.”
Was not happy when I saw the film. In the book Honey Ryder wore only bikini bottoms; not so in the movie.
“Sanskrit”
Well, it’s definitely ‘sans’ comprehension. 🙂
Cheers
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The £886 has been causing much amusement over here !
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Breaking news … The Sun assembles a weird cohort of people who don’t like progressive beer, get them to taste it and then publicise the fact that they don’t like it ..?
And surely with Phil Thomson mentioned it should be Dr Nosey?
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Oh well done Sir.
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I read that as “Yellow for a reflection of changing underpants”. Possibly a new brewing adjunct?
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Is a macchiato some weird form of potato produced by a machine? Why can it be obtained in Darwen? I want to get one in Rishton.
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