OUTDRUNK BY SEPTUAGENARIANS FROM FRATTON

July 2023. Sheffield.

It’s a good job I finished the Beer Guide last year; I’d never have made it in 2023.

I’m the Nico Rosberg of GBG completion; get it done in an easy year and then retire and do more interesting things. While Nico has become an “eco-entrepreneur”, I’ve been content to blog about churches and get distracted by cider.

And so it was that after a slightly disappointing pint of cider at the Pax, I spent the walk home searching What Pub for another fermented apple pulp venue.

And, just over the bridge, the Harlequin smiles its toothless grin and offers me one of the best choices of cider from the box in the city.

This is an unassuming joy of a pub, the equivalent of the Angel in Manchester or the Live & Let Live in Cambridge, just out of the Kelham run but hanging on in there.

The first two tracks I hear are only nine (9) years apart, unbelievably.

Consider that.

There’s a huge beer board listing all the flat ciders, “more cider than you can shake a something at” it says, but I pick the French Revelation for inexplicable reasons. Why ?

It’s nice enough but it’s definitely keg and not the still stuff the Harlequin specialises in.

Never mind. I get to chat to a lady from Portsmouth who tells me she’s seventy-five (75) but I don’t believe her till she tells me about her time living on Cambridge’s Mill Road (where I was born) with a detail that makes her story plausible.

Her and her hubby are on their annual pub crawl round Sheffield and are having the time of their septuagenarian lives putting back the halves.

She reminisces about potentially poisoning politicians, I stop for a Pranking Pole as “Rock Me Amadeus” replaces “Joe Le Taxi“, and all is well with the world.

Except for the person who left their Vanilla Custard at the pedestrian crossing.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

19 thoughts on “OUTDRUNK BY SEPTUAGENARIANS FROM FRATTON”

      2. The Harlequin – the Wards pub – was originally just around the corner from the present pub, on Spitalfields rather than Wicker, I believe. The present Harlequin was called (I think) the Manchester Arms. The Harlequin name was revived by the people who resurrected the pub 15 to 20 years ago.

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  3. I hope we are still doing pub crawls at 75 ! Just discovered it takes 2 hours to get to Hastings on train these days ,so we are busy planning a crawl round Folkestone this week (an hour on the train ) Not as pretty as Hastings but on the up,I believe, & there is sea & pubs.It will be fine by the way we are nowhere near 75

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    1. I hope you are too.

      It has been enlightening while down in Ry to see how long it takes to get to some places (and how expensive the trips are). Canterbury and the Thanet towns are quite quick from Rye.

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      4. Thanks for that, a detailed and interesting review.
        I’ve spent eighteen nights at Hartington Hall from 1981 to 1990 and attended a wedding there since then.
        I best remember a national conference I helped organise there in 1988 and how very helpful the landlord of the Devonshire Arms was with providing a remarkably good lunch for about £1.10 a head and accommodating the band I’d booked for an evening. His DBA was drinking very well until we drank him out of it, twice during the weekend

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  5. Very surprising to see an actual Irish beer on tap outside of Ireland. Although I don’t have many fond memories of that particular beer, but I think I’ve mostly had it in bottles.

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