July 2024. Milton (Cambridgeshire).
After a glorious sunset in Sheffield on Friday,
I headed south to the parents for 5 days mainly focused on helping Dad escape the house.
Labour had just announced plans to accelerate housebuilding, citing the Northstowe development near Cambridge.
25 years after it was first being touted as the answer to Cambridge’s burgeoning population, Northstowe still hasn’t got an artisan deli. Dad said “It’ll be nice when it’s finished“.
Much of the demand for Cambridge housing comes from the hi-tech sector, places like Milton’s Science Park where clever folk are working on something which will give beer the taste imbued by an autovac without killing you.
Workers here head for one of Milton’s four (4) pubs, astonishingly all surviving periods of gentrification and worse since I had my first house (£41,950, walls made of paper) in the year Coventry won the FA Cup.
The White Horse was the plainer of the set then,
and perhaps still is, despite being the best beer option.
Lots for the Proper Pub fan here, from “preferred payment pronouns”,
to a pool table, an ancient fireplace, and a preference for Boring Brown Beers.
A larger choice (ugh) than on my last visit here in Tier 1 “substantial meal” days of December 2020, which suggests I make it here every 4 years (there’s a word for that).
But Madri has taken over now,
and I feared the worst, particularly as disaster struck at the bar…
But the Sea Fury was great, cool, rich and (yes) chewy™. I think every beer I have in the White Horse has been a 3.5, though my notes from 1987 were lost in the storm of that year.
Proper Pubs have proper menus. Note the clear words, the £ signs, the central alignment.
There were, I’m afraid, some crimes against pubs, but youngsters grew up with vertical queues in Spoons, and to be fair the bar flies made standing horizontally tricky.
I was going to comment on their lanyards but they’re not wearing them. Whither lanyards ?
They were more decisive with their food orders than me, dithering over multiple options around home made macaroni cheese, chips and garlic bread. I made the right choices, it was trencherman fayre.
“Did you enjoy that, Dad ?”.
He did.
NB There’s a classic rocking horse in the playground. I didn’t break the seat.
retiredmartin 
£41,950 is almost exactly what I sold my first house for.
There was such a “CASH IS KING” sign in the Lake Road Inn where I had lunch with Kentish Tony and Trish Wells last Sunday. Despite a “Card Only” sign forty minutes beforehand, the Inn on the Square was very happy to accept proper money for my pint, especially as I gave the exact £4.90 rather than a £5 note and suggesting he kept the florin change.
“No more Cash for Bill” signs have appeared at election time in Stone this century before last week.
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Is Courage Directors treated similarly to Bass by the beer elite?
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No, I think it’s suffered through changes in ownership over the last 20 years, although I’d still drink it if I saw it. Was a great favourite of mine (and Mrs RM) 30 years ago.
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I did a tour of the Courage brewery in Bristol shortly before it closed. They explained they only brewed one beer, Directors. They watered it down a bit to make Best and a lot to make BA.
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I’d heard that Bill but liked all three. I found the rare Directors in London fifty years ago, drank the Best in Stafford after the 1979 Allies-Bass-Courage pub swaps and knew the BA from staying in Bedminster twice a year during the 1980s.
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As a general principle, I think you should be able to pay by cash or card in pubs, but understand why many now prefer the latter. As well as the security issues involved with storing large amounts of cash on the premises overnight, there are also charges for paying it into the bank on a regular basis, even if you can find a local branch (although I’m not sure how they compare to the transaction fees for card payments). Would it be uncharitable to suggest that the licensees of some pubs also prefer cash as it’s easier to hide from the taxman?
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Hi Mathew, people think that it’s easy, not declaring cash, or not putting it through the till, and you may well get away with it for a while. The trouble is, people become greedy, and then should HMRC conduct an audit, any discrepancies will stand out like a sore thumb.
Banks of course make charges for paying in cash, and as you say, there are transaction fees for card payments. If you’re a licensee, the best way of avoiding the above charges, is to pay cash for items such as wines, spirits, pub snacks etc, at your local Cash & Carry – the clue is in the name!
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