August 2024. Sheffield.
Mondays mean closed pubs, even in Sheffield, so we took little Dave out for a trip in the Rivelin valley.
Dave started in my back pocket, but ended up in Mrs RM’s bag, which will be relevant later*.
From the Blind Monkey you can be up Bole Hill on the edge of the Peak in 20 minutes,
admiring alpacas in 25,
and doing the Rivelin trail in 30.
Most little folk go to splash in the mini lido and eat too much ice cream, and the nearest pub has been closed through summer,
but the Holly Bush has just reopened so Mrs RM wasn’t allowing me to walk past. It’s her fault I don’t get dry days.
Opening at 4pm, and with food (paninis and burgers) from Thursdays, it wasn’t getting much family trade, or Chardonnay trade,
just a few bikers on the benches and Old Boys at the bar enjoying “Something Stupid” (the Nancy version).
So my choice of the lone cask (Theakston XB) was braver than Mrs RM’s Moretti.
“It’s the first pint of cask I’ve pulled !” said the charming barmaid. She meant ever. I watched, nervously.
It was a fine pint, in the sense it was OK. A palpable 3. I have no idea what that means.
“Shall we head home ?” I ask Mrs RM.
If only. We end up in Hillsborough Spoons drinking Jaipur, enjoying the company of an 9 year old (actually probably 37) who told us he was going to play for The Wednesday and England and buy his dad a Ferrari. And we believed him.
And then Mrs RM is chatting to a chap our age called Stephen who’s come back from France to organise his dad’s funeral, and it gets a bit emotional and out of control.
But sometimes, just sometimes, you just have to stay in a pub and talk to someone who needs to.
*Oh yes, when we got home we realised Dave had fallen out of Mrs RM’s bag and I had to run back to the Spoons to try and find him. He was hiding under the sheets.
retiredmartin 