retiredmartin

April 2023.

It’s traditional in these posts to give you a nice map extract which shows where you the place I’m rambling on about is in relation to other major cities, so you can rearrange your road trip accordingly.

Stony Stratford, half way from Heathrow to Leek, if that helps.

The Beer Guide determinedly plonks Stony Stratford (pop. 7,73) in with Milton Keynes to prop up that city’s meagre entries (Central MK – zero), but feels a world apart from the indoor ski slopes, Slug & Lettuces and shopping arcades of MK1.

And sure enough Wiki labels Stony (as the kidz, were there any, call it) as one of the MK “constituent towns“, just like Stockport is a constituent town of Manchester I guess.

But Stony is where Mrs RM used to visit her aunt before the first of a million roundabouts were built; possibly before Van Gogh ripped off the original “Sunflowers” as his own.

It’s my last Buckinghamshire GBG23 tick. I’ve missed that thrill of showing use a fully pinked county, but then I’m not really doing the Guide. Or am I ?

This is a nice place to finish. A town I don’t know much about, on a glorious Spring day.

A lot of history here, none of which interests me.

You’ll have heard of “a cock and bull story”, said to originate around the time when pub tickers in the 18th century would meet up in the eponymous pubs and tell wild tales of having visited one hundred pubs in the first half of April. And remember this was before the days of our famous integrated public transport.

Pubs for fans of pub signs jutting out into the street, too.

As you see, it’s (not) a bustling town, the Woburn of the slightly more northern Bucks.

My new Guide entry is in the Conservative Club, which you should never assume has anything to do with politics.

Look ! There’s me in the mirror, just like in the Michael Jackson song.

As with all clubs with entry allowed to CAMRA members, it’s a sod to find the entrance. When I finally find the right bell to press on the third attempt I enter to the sound of “Iko Iko“, but not the Belle Stars version.

They’re pleased to serve me a solid NBSS 3+ Rev James, the house beer, but I guess it’s the homebrew Locale on the other two pumps that gets it in the GBG.

The gentlefolk “banter” concerns Chinese takeaways, and an assertion that Chow Mein and Chicken Sate is “all you need and’ll last yous two days“. This assertion is repeated a second time, word for word. Now, that may not be a cock and bull story, but it’s certainly heretical. Crispy Beef and Singapore Rice is, of course, the One True Way.