SPOONS LIFE, WOODSEATS PALACE

April 2024. Woodseats. Sheffield.

Usual pattern; couple of nights in Waterbeach to start the week, then back “home” to Sheffield to forlornly try to get the laundry dry.

Though, as Angela Rayner is finding out today, is “home” actually home if the neighbours say you’re never there and the grass is too long. We helped the Walkley Wombles pick up litter on Sunday, perhaps that helps determine our true address is Sheffield.

And then, almost immediately, a desperate urge to get on the road again but I can’t because Mrs RM has an electrician coming and I have to pick up something from Dunelm and the weather is still to grim to venture far anyway.

So I walk into Sheffield’s transport interchange and literally get on the first bus, the Number 25 towards Bradway.

Well, this is exhilarating, this not knowing where I’m going; it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.

Or a man with a £2 single ticket, anyway.

I get off at Norton Woodseats, whose Pyramid Carpets came to our rescue when we moved in.

On the route to Chesterfield, Woodseats is akin to one of those “pleasant” suburbs south of Digbeth, well-served by American sweet shops and carpet warehouses but scarred by the A61.

I may do an analysis of the opening times in Woodseats that day, but suffice to say it was Spoons or bust.

A former cinema, it seems, though you wouldn’t know that from the interior, bar the advert for Elvis in King Creole.

I thought I’d been in the Woodseats Palace before, either under “Sheffield”, “Norton”, “Woodseats” or “North Dronfield” headings in the GBG, but I’d actually only stood staring forlornly at it during Lockdown when Sheffield was cruelly placed in Tier 3 while all other tickers were (it seemed) in Tier 1.

Which means that pint of (just pulled) White Star (cool and chewy but “long pull”, NBSS 3) might not only be one more CAMRA token used to save pubs, but a potential future Guide entry. The Bankers Draft used to be GBG, you know, and the Woodseats has a pretty good range.

And a great range of custom, all ages and social types and party sizes and alcoholic preferences.

The bloke with the five bottle of Newky Brown fell asleep with head slumped on the table just as I got up to go. Stick to cask, mate; you’ll never get drunk on cask.

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.

11 thoughts on “SPOONS LIFE, WOODSEATS PALACE”

    1. Well, we had some people believing that vaccines contained atom-sized microchips to enable Bill Gates to take over our brains, and that swallowing bleach was a better idea, so some certainly did, Bill.

      I last went to Woodseats in 2013 to buy Farrow and Ball paint for my West Yorks bolthole. The Homebase there was the nearest to stock it. My choice was unusual at the time, but now everyone says that my living room looks like a gastropub.

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    1. Aye, but Spoons aren’t alone in that, Paul.

      There’s a syndrome in some busy pubs where all the unoccupied tables are a mess, but every present customer is nonetheless zealously asked “if they’ve finished with” a glass quarter full, and are stood over while they drain it, to have it whisked away before it’s even touched the table.

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    2. We don’t ALWAYS agree on Spoons, Paul (and that’s a good thing), but I’m going to have to agree with you on this occasion.

      Incidentally, if I make it to Dundee and the Jolly hotel in Broughty Ferry then that one is potentially the scruffiest Spoons I’ve been it, though I suspect you have better options in Broughty.

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      1. I might use a voucher there on the Saturday evening, and dress scruffily so as to not look out of place, but will it be a replacement taxi again ? .

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      2. The Counting House – on the other hand – only seems to require that one doesn’t start a fight.

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      4. In 2015, while our two teenage lads watched a film, Mrs RM and I visited all the central Glasgow Beer Guide pubs I had still to tick. 4 Wetherspoons, 1 Nicholsons and the Pot Still in 90 minutes. Think I used the Laurieston for the first time that night.

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