retiredmartin

February 2025. Mansfield.

Right, culture ticked, time for a pint coffee.

I was going to have one in the GBG Spoons, but the impressive looking Stag & Pheasant wanted £1.71 and Spoons coffee isn’t that good,

so I paid a bargain £2.80 for a proper American in the gorgeous “Toffee Hut”, where a lady sticks a paper towel under the wobbly leg of my table and tells me “It’s Mansfield; it’s wobbly“.

Toffee Hut has a soundtrack of Funky Town and Loco in Acapulco; it’s always the ’80s in central Mansfield, but just over the ring road lies the Brown Cow,

which is firmly in 1991, though in truth that’s only 3 years after the “Buster” OST, isn’t it ?

Back in 2015 this was new in the GBG, a smart looking Project William place refurbished by those lovely Everards folk so Raw (R.I.P.) could sell their microbrews.

ChatGPT couldn’t tell me anything about Project William, but the Brown Cow still seems to operate the classic “Tiger plus indies” model,

and I was just too soon for some proper weirdness.

Inexplicably, I had my first Tiger in over a year,

a unexpectedly bitter affair (NBSS 3+) which suggests there’s life in Everard’s yet.

Primal Scream gives way to the Fratellis and back to Simple minds as the bar fills up (it was busy when I walked past a couple of hours later).

“Don’t you…forget about meh” sings the Old Boy at the bar. Old Boys singing along to 80s hits is why we go to the pub.

That, and being called m’duck. Not here, though. “Cheers buddy“. It’ll do.