29 March 2020
Two weeks since my last pub, a week since I last drove anywhere. How’s it going for you ?
Of course, it’s the key workers I care about now, whether in Addenbrookes or Booths Supermarket or on the trains.
Mrs RM hasn’t left the house for more than 2 weeks (literally), thereby following Government advice to the letter and leaving me to occasionally scavenge for bottles of Doom Bar and chilli peanuts in the village stores. The supermarkets are places to avoid, folks.
The roads are eerily quiet.
Luckily I’d stockpiled 3,000 posts and some 20,000 photos so I can construct “Best Of” posts for months, but it’s not the same as writing in the here and now.
My alcohol consumption amounts to less than a pint in a fortnight, and I’ve spent less than I have since June 1983, the month I started work.
Each night I Skype the other 2 pub tickers and we sing Kumbaya to raise our spirits .
I’m sanguine, I guess, rather like I was when a head injury at a Cambridge v Exeter game aat the Abbey caused a 40 minute hold-up years go. Accept it, don’t get in the way.
And if I see anything of note on my hour walk I’ll be sure to let you know.
This was my trip to Landbeach and back (which isn’t a Saxon track).
Stay sane, stay safe.
retiredmartin 
Cambridge 4. You can live in hope 😉
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It’s sixteen days since my last pub, and twenty days since I last drove anywhere and that was just to Stafford railway station and back to pick up our daughter.
My alcohol consumption amounts to nothing in sixteen days and all I’ve spent is £1.30 twice on the local newspaper, and that’s just for the letters page !
Our garden is though looking better than ever.
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This is called wrecking the economy, Paul 🤔
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Oi oi! Buller’s here, so stand by them beds.
Now come on, why all the long faces? Give us the old Golden Mile, gawd love us!
We’re a long time brown bread, so let’s be jolly with a sing along –
A-one, a-two, a-one two three,
Ah-with our ‘ead’s tucked underneath our arms,
We walk the Bloody Tower-ah!
Gaw’ blimey, that went down like the Moon in June, what?
Now then, clever Buller’s got everything that the panic buyer wants but can’t get.
Pet Munchies, toilet rolls, scratch cards, cheese strings, spaghetti hoops, turkey dinosaurs, and chicken nuggets…
Oh, and I’ve got some stuff for the kids too.
Still, can’t hang about.
Catch you further down the frog.
Pity the old rub-a-dub-dub’s shut, but needs must.
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What put me off folk clubs in the 1970s was the suspicion, that just beneath the surface, however cool, there always lurked a Kumbaya…
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You should hear the Radiohead version though…
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No thanks!
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It all chimed in with the the Sound Of The Commonwealth, Two Way Family Favourites on the BBC, linking up with the British Forces Network, and with other efforts, apparently to enlist us all in a collective fantasy, that Britain still had an empire for me. Programmes, like Grandstand, used to have military music for sig tunes.
Those old school atlases, with half of the world pink, confused me as a kid quite frankly.
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Yes…. staying safe seems a bit easier than sane at the moment, even if that’s not actually true. Beer really is for pubs and friends and socials isn’t it? Sadly whilst I can match the beer absence I do like red wine and after a week of enjoyable cooking whilst tipsy have now put in rules – weekends only…. Still like TSM says – Garden is flourishing!!
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Our neighbour runs a wine shop in Cambridge, specialising in French vineyards, and Mrs RM has been carefully matching the Languedoc-Roussillons with the home-made chocolate brownies.
I’m a Malbec man. The bottle I shared with Mrs RM over steak and chips in a Buenos Aires cafe was life changing.
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The realisation that you didn’t need one each ?
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There’s a fantastic Argentinian Steak House in Cologne, that my colleagues and I make a point of visiting, when we’re in the city for the International Dental Show. The show is held every two years, but fortunately 2020 was a non-show year. Whether 2021’s event will take place is anyone’s guess at the moment, but we’ll no doubt cross that bridge a bit nearer the time.
Returning to the steak, chips and Malbec – yes, a divine combination. I’ve never been a huge steak fan, but the cuts at El Chango, in Cologne’s old town, are out of this world.
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Another for my long list of “Things to do when normality returns” Paul.
Your recentish posts piqued my interest in a return to Cologne, which I only scratched the surface of.
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My last pub was a week ago on Sunday (I know – but it seemed churlish not to have a couple while I was waiting to collect some bottles). Alcohol consumption is now a bottle of beer and/or a large glass of wine (Norton Malbec until it runs out) in the evening, without which I think I’d lose the plot. Some might suggest trying it but I’m not willing to take the risk lest I increase the burden on our straining NHS. Selfless to the end, that’s me.
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Last pub was March 17. Been coping with The Distancing OK till today, when cabin fever set in big time. Now want to borrow my nephew’s rifle and shoot ornaments.
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I share your, not pain, exactly. Just sense of nothing.
Still, mustn’t grumble.
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Bill,
But with Mrs Bill safe ?
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Mrs B is safe, I wouldn’t dare…
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It’s been three and a half weeks since I had a beer in a pub. I had a bottle of Czech pilsner at home last Saturday but that’s been it. Can’t say I’m really missing it, the beer that is; the going to pubs, well, that’s a different ball game but all rather academic as even the pubs aren’t “there” right now. A good mug of tea, that’s what’s getting me through, so far.
It’s a shame about the pub thing because about two months ago I discovered a pub 7 miles from where I live that has not only pump but also gravity dispense and a constantly changing selection of really good ales, well, it did have.
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Glad you followed the Government guidance too, Tony.
Like you, I’m not missing beer at all. Tea and good coffee and an occasional homebaked treat will do till pubs reopen.
Name and praise that pub!
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It’s called Monks Inn.
It occupies a former betting shop on the edge of Hemel Hempstead’s sadly under-utilised market square
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Oh yes, missed it on my recent trip. https://retiredmartin.com/2019/10/13/an-unexpected-visitor-in-hemel-hempstead/
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Hi Martin,
If you are taking requests for blogs, how about a retrospective on your visit to my home of Ilkley?
Kind regards
Robin
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Hi Robin.
Oddly, I haven’t been to Ilkley, or even Otley, since I started the blog 4 odd years ago, which suggests Bar T’at was the last new pub in the Beer Guide.
I’ll do a compilation from nearby villages and nick some stuff from BRAPA’s blog.
Cheers.
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Definitely worth a trip nowadays with Bar T’at, Flying Duck, Friends of Ham and Fuggle and Golding. Otley has the Old Cock which has been in the GBG since around 2012, I would guess. Plus it has all the pub heritage from the days when it was a market town with afternoon opening..
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