“What did you do during the Corona, Daddy ?”
“I re-read old football programmes, took photos of local closed pubs and ate crispy shredded beef, Son“.
And I’m proud of that.
June at least brought a date for pubs re-opening, and there was wild speculation about how we would register for our pub visits, whatever that meant.
Easy to forget, but it was a tremendous Spring into Summer; pub gardens would have been heaving.
Shame I had to content myself with a never-ending series of walks around Swaffham Prior (no offence).
After a closely fought contest between 88 small Fen Edge villages, Reach was awarded the prestigious Pub Sign of the Lockdown award. Perhaps Prince Charles can present it.
James came back from super Sheffield with a First and a year’s worth of washing, and we started to seriously contemplate heading back there, permanently. You can’t beat living next door to overgrown dead pubs.
Matt had moved to a dystopian place called Salford Quays, but was already hoping for a transfer to Manchester. The Tevez of barbering, perhaps.
Folk were really missing their pubs by now, and a controversial trend of buying pints to drink in the street had started to send folk on Discourse, Mumsnet and Twitter into #Covidiot meltdown.
Posh Chipping Sodbury came in for particular hand-wringing as they flaunted their plastic pints of Peroni on the pavement.
I wasn’t much better, enjoying 8.5% Vermont murk on the wall outside King’s College.
Frankly, I would have needed at least six of those to cope with the plot twists in German noir series “Dark”, the Netflix highlight of the month.
Next up – 4 July.
retiredmartin 
I still have no time to read your blog Martin, I’ve not read it twice tonight and will probably do the same tomorrow.
I remember June as the publish date for my groundbreaking, and barely read ‘Pub Games Trophies‘ trilogy. I often wonder whether the achilles heal of my blog is that it’s too specialist, June confirmed this. Perhaps a stuffed mascot would help…
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I think the key to getting folk to read your blog is probably to offer a free pint of Doom Bar in a chain dining pub, Mark. Have you done that yet ?
On Christmas Day 2015 my 6 month old blog received a grand total of 5 visitors (9 views). I thank them all now.
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I see now where I’ve gone wrong. There is a long-standing invitation to a game of Fives & Threes in a ‘Doms Bar’ of their choice. Foiled by a typo once again!…
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(slow golf 👏)
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Reviews of two different months on the same day? Things must be slow!
Christmas Day was surprisingly busy here, much to our surprise (just the two of us at home, alone). Got up at 5:30am to watch via Skype as our only grandchild (a boy, 22 months old, to carry on the Smith name) opened his Christmas presents. The early hour, combined with a few Baileys’ miniatures that my darling wife put in my stocking (the liquor, not the Kentish gentleman) , meant I went back to bed for an hour… or two… after all of that excitement. It was then a day of phone calls, Zoom calls (my wife was a tad discouraged that ‘only’ 15 of various siblings and/or nieces and nephews showed up for her family chat), more phone calls, two episodes of Yellowstone, the 2nd one combined with our afternoon meal – Cornish game hens, which necessitated a quick nap as it was quite filling! — and then a two hour Skype with both our boys, their better halves, and our grandson! (again). We found out said grandson will apparently become a big brother next June (!) and the better half of our youngest is the co-author (along with 15 others) of a paper to be published the same month. That resulted in a celebratory beer (or two) which, combined with the ones earlier, means I’m off to bed after posting this!*
* – and all of that whilst wearing long pants, a dress shirt, and a Christmas sweater. 🙂
Cheers!
PS – the ‘year’s worth of washing’ was deserving of a slow golf clap 😉
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Grief that sounds like hard work to me Russ !
Congrats on your double good news !
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Russ,
“to carry on the Smith name”
Related to John or Samuel by any chance ?
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Don’t I wish! 🙂
Cheers
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From many of us “What did you do during the Corona, Daddy ?” will get a reply of two words one of which is “all”.
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“Nations” ?
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Ah, yes, and Mrs TSM got eggs from there.
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By coincidence, that Queen’s Hotel is imminently going to appear on my Closed Pubs blog.
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T’other Mudgie,
Joey’s Macclesfield one looked to be going in that direction but it had had a refurbishment when I used it in January, but with its beer in firkins rather than hogsheads its long term future can’t be certain.
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Give it a month; it might re-open as a Brunning & Price, surely !
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But with permanently closing venues recently I doubt if they’ll take on new ones.
More likely Marstons.
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Sorry I’ve been missing in action a lot lately, Martin– clearly I need to give greater scrutiny to my priorities in life!
This year 2020 seemed determined to interfere with the one last activity that brings joy to people, by which of course I mean pub ticking. That being said, I do think crispy shredded beef may be the one thing that can get us all through these dark days… 🙂
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I’ve been following your exciting (and glamorous) career on Twitter and Instagram, Mark, so I knew you were busy.
Yes to crispy shredded beef !
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