retiredmartin

2 February 2020

Tonight’s Top 5 Trending on Twitter (great alliteration there) makes fascinating reading;

#IfTheWorldIsEndingSoon, by the way, is a hashtag started by the residents of Maidenhead alerted to BRAPA’s impending visit. Go, Si.

But even more important than the end of the world, it’s old Top of the Pops night, highlighting middle-aged UK’s sad/happy obsession with ’80s pop.

Detailed research shows that at any time 77% of UK pubs will be playing songs from the years 1984-86.

Short of jumping in the Thames, there’s no escape from pap in Sunbury.

Attractively situated between Kempton Park racecourse and the water treatment works, I make the White Horse the 4th different pub to grace the GBG in a decade, but I would never suggest rotation. Oh no.

As I was telling Simon this week, Surrey has plenty of Proper Pubs where locals still sit at the bar, play pool, feed children fizzy drinks, and sing along to Hazell Dean.

A couple of blokes were on the Pride, a wise choice, though if they’d had the Doom Bar I’d have been conflicted.

Six new pubs in this bit of Surrey inside the M25, and not a weird beer in any of them.

I digested the stats from City’s hammering of Spurs,

and enjoyed a cool, rich Pride (NBSS 3) with Boy Meets Girl thudding away in the background.

“Dog trying to lick me” say my notes, but I clearly escaped unscathed.

I can’t help thinking a boozer like this, the sort of ordinary pub you get in Milton but not in central Cambridge, is something to be treasured, even if you’d prefer DIPAs and Mogwai to Doom Bar and Minogue.

It got even better in my final two ticks in wonderful Walton.