Look ! Bass clickbait !
There IS some Bass coming up in National Bass Week, but it wasn’t on in the Angel in Westbury, my next stop on the Wilts Wipe-out.
I haven’t been too kind on Westbury (Latin Motto – “At least we’re not all la-di-da like Frome“), as you can see from my visit to the Horse & Groom in 2017. “The unheralded town of Westbury, which has much to be unheralded about“, I wrote. What a brilliant and original line.
But I note my previous visit here in 2018 found The Hollies “Very blokey, very cheery, very boozy. Like a Bass local in Swadlincote, without the Bass“, which is more encouraging.
Mrs RM decided she wasn’t joining me in the Angel, and on balance she was probably right.
The Angel is “Very blokey, very cheery, very boozy. Like a Bass local in Swadlincote, without the Bass“. There’s a theme here.
Bass mirrors, Bass glasses, a beer range centred on everything but Bass. A pint of Plain, or was it the Usual ? I don’t care, and with half a dozen blokes seated along the bar discussing Ted Deighton I couldn’t read any of the pump clips even if I did. How do people score beers on What Pub when they can’t read the pumps.
I’m not complaining, not more than usual, I just want to see lively pubs full again. The Angel isn’t an obvious “ale pub”, most here were on lager, but at £3.30 a pint the cask sells well enough.
And you won’t beat seating like this;
My seat by the roaring fire provided a snatched view into a secret room full of books, as if you were in Hay on Wye.
It’s great (the beer is OK), and you get to run the full gamut of “pop music”, from 1982,
to 2007;
Nelly, Justin and Timmy Tim have probably never been to Westbury, though it’s an ideal stop for washed-up pop stars on the way to Glasto, so who knows ?
What might put them off is the difficulty in accessing the internet to update Instagram, as the WiFi password on the bar was completely unreadable. Unlike the health advice.
A typical Westbury GBG entry, and nothing wrong with that. OR the street art outside…
Bass is so last year
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Yes, I hear some of its biggest cheerleaders didn’t even make it out for a pint on National Bass Day.
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Once they’d picked up the cheque from the brand owner why would they. Finest undercover marketing of the decade.
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They paid you off. I knew it.
Will you be cheerleading for Hartington next ?
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Too small a budget. Carling is the new craft.
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Beer from the home of brewing.
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I’ve asked bar staff for the WiFi password in pubs on several occasions, and I’ve never been thrown out on my ear yet. Speak up, young man!
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For me, the larger problem has become the venue is only providing wi-fi for 5G devices (sorry but I must get technical here), and my laptop is a 2.4G device. 8=(}
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I had no idea. Thought the Internet was just the Internet. I am Jen from IT Crowd.
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I’m trying to remember where my best-ever pint of Bass would have been. The Chequers in Stanton-by-Dale or the Royal Oak in Ockbrook, maybe.
Thanks for the memory jog whatever, Martin.
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Ockbrook was great. Probably still is !
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I remember being shocked at 16p a pint, the most I’d ever paid for a draught beer, for Draught Bass in the Whittington near Kinver in February 1974
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My furthest back memories of beer prices are 1/10d for Kimberley Mild and 2/- for bitter at the White Lion in Bramcote, though only for a week or two, Paul.
In 1972 I paid 15p a pint for keg Newcastle Exhibition at my student hall bar in Camden Town. I’m not sure to what extent the student discount offset London prices at this distance in time though.
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Etu,
I only used ten London pubs during 1972 as I was still attending school until the summer of 1973 but think 15p for a stronger beer does represent a “student discount” there.
From April to October 1972 I think I was paying from 7½p to 9p for halves of Whitbread, Watneys, Courage, Charringtons or Ind Coope but 12p for half pint bottles and my pint of Watneys Red at the infamous Alexandra Palace Beer festival was 19p.
I remember paying 13½p for a pint of Newcastle Exhibition in Newcastle’s County Hotel in August 1972
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You’re just a tad younger than me Paul, but I could only go into pubs accompanied by an adult at the time that I mention, like we did, eh?
😉
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Etu,
I remember acting like a responsible adult, asking for neither a taster nor a top up, and getting served without being asked my age everytime while sixteen and seventeen,
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