August 2026. Frome.
I can’t remember why we started our Proper Pub Crawl/Curated Survey of Licensed Premises* at the Blue Boar.
Oh yes, it opened at 10am.
We live in a world where many pubs don’t open till 4pm (if at all) during the week, noon if you’re lucky, so the value operators like Wetherspoons and (as here) Craft Union are the third spaces where Old Boys and shoppers can pop in somewhere warm/cool to chat, or dream, or consult a map of pubs.
Not everyone wants to go to an artisanal cafe and spend a fiver on a matcha, whatever that is. Mind, the Blue Boar prices were a bit eyebrow raising for anyone who’s been in a Craft Union in, say, Stafford.
Let those prices be a warning to any town that doesn’t have a Spoons, and I suspect Tim Martin would be setting up in Frome with near on 30,000 potential customers if there was a suitable site.
I was feeling the need for a sensible start after that afternoon on the Bass in the Star, but I’m afraid the Heinken 0.0 in a bottle (I had to ask for a glass) was no match for the draught.
Talking of Stafford, Paul from that parish was half-way down his pint of the lone cask, and seemed oddly reticent about proclaiming that “the Pride’s drinking well“.
It’s a well-kept pub, bustling and jolly, and a soundtrack stuck in 1980 kept us entertained as Paul astonished us with his pop music knowledge,
identifying Dexy’s and three (3) straight Blondie Number Ones.
If you can name all three you win, well, nothing.
*Delete as appropriate
retiredmartin 
The violin player from Dexy’s was a regular at pubs round here for a long time, but not seen for quite a few months now.
Robin Williamson from the Incredible String Band is still a local landmark however. Well, I think it’s him…
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For 1980 it would have to beCall Me Atomic and Tide is High?
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Dexys? Debbie? Get me down there asap. Despite there being no Spoonies (yet).
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Yes Lana, you’d have loved it, and the other pubs.
10am is a proper opening time and one beer is plenty. Craft Union gets it right yet again.
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Music in Craft Union pubs reminds me that in Rugeley’s Crown two or three times recently I’ve heard Jimmie F. Rodgers’s version of English Country Garden. That being of my era suggests that I’m eighteen years older than Lana.
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Atomic and Geno are two of the greatest singles ever released. The beer’s steep in there, mind.
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Those beer prices are somewhat steep. Having said that, some bloke in a Facebook group I’m in swore blind he’d paid £8.20 for a pint of Rattler in the Spoons in Hayle.
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