retiredmartin

January 2026. St Annes.

Two nights in St Annes, with Friday designated as “Tick Blackpool Day”, so we went local on Thursday.

St. Tanz is the sort of genius pun that BRAPA would be proud of,

in a seaside retirement town that lacks trad pubs but makes it up for it in micros.

Lytham has the Taps, for many years St Annes meant the Fifteen, a pub which sounds like a medieval music choir.

I’d only been in once, years ago, when at 5pm on Saturday it was uncomfortably busy. But now on Thursday there’s chance to admire the stunning conversion of a Lloyds Bank (though you wouldn’t know it).

I’m guessing that Lloyds didn’t have the soft cushions back then.

The Bass pump is turned around (Booo), they don’t agree with permanence, so I have a rare Brass Castle.

One of you will have spotted the ABV of that Black Sheep, all of you will note the prices. Inexplicably, I hand the barman three pound coins, a twenty pence and two ten pences, blaming the low lighting on my confusion.

£3.80, once I swap the 10p for a 50p, a chewy pint (NBSS 3.5) that reminds me I need to get to Malton soon.

Mrs RM messages me from the room. She’s stressed from giving an 86 year old instructions on clearing viruses from his laptop, and from getting a 61 year old tethered to her own internet.

Her resistance broken, I get her that 8.4% Imperial she knows she really wants, and so do I. Who knew Black Sheep made an imperial stout ? It’s a challenging pint, I’ll say that (NBSS 3.5).

A less challenging mid-80s soundtrack; Big Country, Phil Collins, Midnight Oil. Very Blackpool.

“You must see the view from upstairs” I tell her.

Wow.