September 2024. Woodhouse. Sheffield.
We arrived home last Monday lunchtime to a package on the door mat.
“It’s your Beer Guide !” shouts Mrs RM, bemused at my lack of interest after 25 years when the bid drop was the highlight of the year.
Nowadays, the GBG completed, the excitement comes from reading the embargo note.
So you mustn’t read anything (anything) into the pubs that might (or might not) appear in the blogs this week. The Oxbow in Woodhouse just seemed a nice day out to a micro that’s been heavily recommended by Sheffield CAMRA this year.
£2 your one-way half hour trip east through some solid but uneventful suburbs,
where we’re deposited in Woodhouse village,
and find it a good mile short of our pub.
Still, I’m rewarded near the Oxbow with the beauty of the Woodhouse Mill Regulator, which regulates (checks Google) something. Press PLAY to hear something as dramatic as Hardraw Force.
The Oxbow is 10 minutes from Woodhous Station, but seemingly miles from any community, so the late afternoon custom (possibly all from Waverley new town) is impressive.
I admire these smart little craft/gin/lager bars popping up in suburbs all over the north to replace dying roadhouses, but I struggle to love them.
But the barmaid is an absolute gem, lets Mrs RM have a pint, and sells us a pint of Marble under £4.
That’s under FOUR QUID, southerners. The cask (3.5) and keg from Kernel are cool and chewy,
the soundtrack is Lou Reed deep cuts,
and I realise that beer range would actually be impressive almost anywhere in London, never m.ind in a South Yorkshire suburb famous only for Orgreave
It is astonishingly easy to take Sheffield for granted.
retiredmartin 
Martin, CAMRA need to update their IT systems, as despite being a lapsed member for the past five years (almost), I’m still on their mailing lists, and have received various guideline notes advising that the GBG is under a strict embargo, until its official launch.
Now if I wanted to cause a spot of mischief, I could quite easily do so, but of course, I’ve no wish to so such a thing, despite feeling that the GBG is on borrowed time, and in spite of continued buoyant sales.
Why do I feel that? Lack of boots on the ground, and an over-reliance on the goodwill of those members who carry out all the hard work – surveying, form filling, data input, proof-reading – the list goes on, and as these activists grow older, lose interest, or just fall by the wayside, the accuracy of the Guide becomes compromised.
It’s not going to happen straight way, but let’s wait and see.
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I should re-check your bank accounts to make sure they haven’t been taking subs these last 5 years, Paul ;-0
Anyway, that micro on top of Tonbridge castle is in the new GBG, to save you £15.
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I don’t think CAMRA are that bright, Martin, so no unaccounted debits have been made to my account!
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Paul,
I doubt “in spite of continued buoyant sales” as I think it’s less than one third of what it used to be. As branch treasurer I’d order 120 or 200 each year but, until 10 this time, none have been ordered for a dozen or so years.
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It would be interesting to know what the sales are Paul, but CAMRA seem a little cagey when it comes to figures, claiming that the membership is around 143,00.
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Paul,
14300 was in about 1980.
It’s 147,000 now, down 46,000 in nearly five years.
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So it’s Paul who started the exodus ?
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He’s always led the way.
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Guilty, as charged!!
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You made the right call !
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Not of course knowing what might otherwise have transpired, I think that COVID and the suspension of beer festivals was a key factor in sending the numbers back down again. I signed up as a Life Member soon after that scheme started (LM16) but I think that for what I paid CAMRA has got a reasonable return in terms of books and other products bought, and attendance at the odd beer festival, where I do tend to exceed the regulation 4 pints a session. Pressure of work made me give up branch work years ago but ‘our’ main source of new members was festivals.
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Excellent summary, Ian (not anonymous).
In Cambridge alone the annual beer festival must have provided many hundreds of new members attracted by an offer of quick and free entry to the social event of the month as well as those Spoons vouchers.
I’ve wanted nothing from CAMRA in 30 years of joint life membership except the structure that produces an annual Beer Guide and more recently the online What Pub site.
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Had someone had ‘an accident’ on that upholstered stool two tables short of the ‘WC’ door ?
Rather like derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/people/chesterfield-mum-slams-town-centre-wetherspoon-pub-after-being-humiliated-and-covered-in-urine-while-waiting-for-food-3913051 ten miles away ?
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