retiredmartin

June 2026. Sheffield.

An actual day at home in Sheffield last Saturday. It was torture. I was so sleepy I needed a cool drink, so why I ended up drinking cider at the New Barrack is a mystery.

This was of the the famous ale houses a couple of decades ago, helped by being the closest GBG pub to Hillsborough. Edged out the Guide lately, but firmly Sheffield’s premier cider house.

My last three visits have been a) pre-match, b) when the Morris dancers came and c) on “Bring Your Own vinyl night. You need to entertain to bring in custom these days.

Today is a bit quieter, with the trade expected later for the England game.

Rather than sit on my own, I sit up at the bar and chat.

I couldn’t imagine doing that 40 years ago as a shy trainee accountant, but pubs are great places to improve your social skills, talking uncontentious subjects like football,

politics and which bits of Rotherham are posh. I’m at the stage of my transition to a Northerner where I can identify a Rotherham accent, you know.

The longstanding, chatty landlady can tell I’m an incomer, but there’s so many southerners in Sheffield these days no-one seems to care.

I have a couple of pints of still cider, Yorkshire’s Ampleforth and Dorset’s Purbeck, and realise how much I am enjoying just sitting at the bar listening to a legendary landlady talking about nucleation and Bitburger glasses, and how I really, really need to call it quits after two, even though someone has just told me how good the cask Black Shuck is.

Before I fall asleep, I somehow make it back up the hill, swinging that crispy beef and Sinagpore rice.