retiredmartin

5th March 2023.

Not enough/too much Smiths references on this blog.

I’ve been coaxing Mrs RM out of the house for strenuous walks around Sheffield. As some of you will know, if you don’t keep active in your 50s everything stops working at 60.

The walk from the Blind Monkey up to Crookes is Lincoln Steep Hill levels, and I would have love to have rewarded ourselves with a well-earned Portuguese pastry but all the cafes along Crookes were full.

I’d have been quite happy to bag the 472 calories walked off and feel virtuous, but Mrs RM was uncooperative.

“Have you taken me in there ?”

“No, Mrs RM, but I was having a day off the beer”

“Oh, go on, I deserve it”.

And of course she did. The Hallamshire is the one with the painting on the wall of a fox flicking away a (rare) black Bass triangle.

I’m a bit surprised the Hallamshire isn’t in the GBG, but there’s other Thornbridge houses in the Guide and, unlike a certain Norfolk city, Sheffield doesn’t have 31 entries.

Sometimes it feels like the Hallamshire has 31 beers to choose from, cask and keg taps on 3 sides. And they were pushing those (short-lived ?) hard liquors at me last time.

So what to choose Mrs RM, shown here in rare shot with mobile phone on Shazam attempting to identify the Harry Styles track.

No idea why, but I made her move to the (full-size) snooker room to enjoy her Jaipur and a soundtrack shifting from “Take on me” to this one;

And she did enjoy it, though like my clean, crisp, Pale Rider it was teeny tiny bit thin (NNSS 3).

Someone is now bound to say “Pale Rider, not brewed in Sheffield is it ? Not what it was“. But I’m reserving judgement.

The pub, however, looked better than ever, and on a Sunday afternoon had a quite wonderful mix of Commonside life spread across its four contrasting rooms.

If you could just get the children to switch from Pagos to Pales you could up the NBSS by half a point, and then you would be on to a winner.