What a marvellous sight Worthing’s Henty Arms is.
Sky Sports, vintage motor, sign with the sign fallen out. Sunday lunch, “Child friendly”. The antithesis of the “people like us only” micro that had dominated new entries in the Sussex sections of the Beer Guide in recent years (honourable exceptions like Anchored in Worthing exempted).
This year, NO new micros in hard-to-access 1930s shopping arcades along the A2031; just a series of Proper Pubs with a manageable number of pumps. As Marvin Gaye noted, presciently, What’s Going On ?
My next tick requires A Change At Angmering (great name for a band) to access the local service back to Brighton.
The station is Goring-on-Sea,
but the Henty is in Ferring, one of Worthing’s limitless suburbs. Plenty of choices for next year’s GBG, then.
Bing Maps wants to send me round the houses (20 mins), but Google offers this scenic and muddy walk along the fence. One for Si to do in pitch black.
Some people know how to arrive in more style.
The essence of community pub, with United’s capitulation being aired to indifference on the big screens and a waft of pork roast and broccoli in the air.
But mostly, Ferring folk are there for “pub”.
Exceptionally friendly and inefficient in that South London overspill style, the Hophead was fetched from the other room.
It was cooler and thinner than the Dark Star in Brighton, but just as good.
I’d allowed 10 minutes, with a 30 minute train service and a 9 minute walk back, and that was enough to see Rashford flailing and our pubbers recall a certain Jarvis Cockerel of Pulp fame. One of you is bound to start naming all our BritPop stars after dogs now.
“The antithesis of the “people like us only” micro that had dominated new entries in the Sussex sections of the Beer Guide.” It does seem that your first new ticks are more interesting than last year. Is this by selection or is there a change in what style pub is new to the guide this year? You’ve been to far more pubs I would want to visit than I recall you doing last year after the guide was released.
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My “more interesting” is someone else’s “plain” of course.
Yes, fascinating. Perhaps there really is a finite amount of 55 year old IT pros wanting to start a micro to drink with their mates.
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Fair point Dave, but to be fair, many of these – ever rarer – so-called Proper Pubs were very much “people like us only” too, it’s just that they were a different kind of people.
And in micro pubs and craft ale bars that selectivity – real or imagined – isn’t generally imposed by a historically-implied threat of violence either.
The very best to them
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My Proper Pub is rather different to a Pub Curmudgeon or Etu or Boak & Bailey Proper Pub, I suspect.
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Oh, absolutely, the definition inevitably means very different things to different people.
I seem to remember people previously falling out over what that definition should be, so I’ll leave it there.
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I thought we were all agreed on the definition of a Proper Pub.
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Well if I was going to commission anyone to write a definition I’d certainly get you and British Beer Mat to do it jointly!
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I’m old enough to remember Alec Guinness in Change at Angmering, an Ealing comedy about hop pickers failing to get the Kent train.
BTW I’m sure your esteemed readers won’t be indulging in dog naming nonsense but I thought you’d want to know our neighbour’s dog is a bit Richard Hawley.
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TWM,
My mother went hop picking during the war.
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What made me think of Alan “Fluff” Freeman just then?
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Alan spent his childhood picking hops in the suburbs of Melbourne, escaping a few years before the BRAPA visit in 2016.
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Oi oi! If the poor old thing’s a bit Richard Hawley, then get him down the Aunt Bet’s pronto, sunshine.
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But oh no it has all those rugby World Cup thing flags out. Though I did benefit from an early tick in Portishead when one opened up to show the England rugby last Saturday.
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Come on my son, a single verse of Gawd Save The Old Baked Bean and all’s forgiven.
That’s unless some geezer’s Cherry Hogg starts licking Martin’s daisies.
And never mind if you have to stand.
Who wants a dose of the Chalfonts anyway?
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Who’s going to name their pooch after the lead singer of Menswear? That is the question!
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