The imprint of the energy of generations of people in the pub

Pubs have their memories, sometimes indistinct and ghostly, the echoes of the voices of long dead regulars perhaps only heard if you listen carefully enough. Hark, there is the tale of how Uncle Ior’s dinner was once placed on his lap by an  exasperated Auntie Kate when he had spent too long playing cards in Y Dderwen. Or the laughter that accompanies the remembrance of that old skinflint Owen Jones who once made a pint of mild last all night and then left his young family for Birmingham the next day.

There are other memories, more solid and apparent, as I discovered one day in the early autumn of 2010 when I went to Lowestoft to see the Green Jack Brewery as well as the pub it owned, the Triangle Tavern. This was my first visit to Lowestoft, a place at the end of the line where the train reached its natural terminus as did everyone else in life. Maybe I was being unfair, but at the time I felt that it was a slightly drab, seen-better-times coastal town and, as I wandered to my destination, I thought the area had the feel of a furious, sea-washed, closed-eyes, broken idol of a small town as charity shops shuffled about the high street in metaphorical carpet slippers and the local Wetherspoons acted as a kind of give-us-our-daily-bread destination. 

Before anyone thinks I am being too hard on Lowestoft, I do have a get-out-of-jail-free card. I am fascinated by end-of-the-line towns, after all I come from one: the North Wales resort of Llandudno. This is where I lived until I was 18 before heading off with a nervous but still noticeable glee to college. During the summer, the train station was a burst vessel of trippers arriving from northern towns to either spend their time on the beach (I used to serve them deckchairs), patrol the well-trod wooden boards of the Victorian pier and let beehives of patriarchal pink candy floss rot their teeth or allow the fish and chip shops to spray their distinctive scent of fried food and vinegar like a perfume of abandonment.

End-of-the-line towns often seem to me to have a feeling that they are places you would want to leave as soon as possible (as I did with Llandudno). Growing up in Llandudno it felt like it was at the end of the world, which if you were thinking about the railways I suppose it was. I cannot talk too much about Lowestoft as it was a brief lunchtime visit, but a ‘now what?’ feeling perched on the shoulder of my soul within minutes of emerging from its railway station. After visiting Green Jack Brewery, I went to the brewery’s pub, the Triangle Tavern. With a minute all my dismal thoughts about end-of-the-line towns had vanished, as the Tavern revealed itself to be an honest-to-goodness public house with splendid beer, the hum of conversation and a sense of community. As I looked around the front bar, which apparently used to be called The Oddfellows and had a history of offering beer and comfort going back 300 years, I noticed three single battered shoes making a curious still-life in the waist-high row of windows facing out into the street. My initial thoughts went along the line of whether this was an odd art installation or lost property? 

I had to ask. 

‘The shoes all belong to deceased regulars,’ said the barman as he served me a pint of Lurcher Stout, a magnificent example of its style that offered chocolate, smoke and burnt currant notes on the palate alongside a creamy mouthfeel. I drained it with the urgency of Cornelius Vermuyden getting to work on the Fens in the 17th century. ‘Their families donated them. The one that’s all splodged with paint belonged to a painter and decorator who used to drink here.’  

Dead men’s shoes indeed. 

Yet there was nothing morbid about this poignant memorial. At the time (and writing 13 years later and I’m not sure the shoes remain) I believe that these remnants of a local’s life is (and was) a recognition of how important a good pub can be in someone’s life. If you think deeply about pubs as I do, then you might understand my belief that a pub which has lasted through the years bears the imprint of the energy of generations of people who have come through its doors and relaxed, laughed, told stories, made friends, met future partners (and sometimes lost them), argued with rivals in work, art and love, made plans for travels, returned from traipsing around the world in war and peace and occasionally fallen asleep in. The perfect pub is a kind of metaphysical palimpsest, which we should try to imagine as a constantly evolving space, whether it’d be a one room bar like the Triangle, or several rooms as my first ever local in Llandudno used to be before it was opened up in the late 1970s. What I am trying to think of with this imagined space is that it has the personalities of its locals etched upon its invisible surface, almost like a blackboard with people’s names chalked up and then dusted off when the next generation comes along. That is another venerable aspect of a good pub, people are remembered after they are gone in the best melancholic way.

This idea returned to me recently as I sat on a solitary wooden bench in the beer garden of the Bridge Inn, Topsham, and looked out over the River Clyst, shimmering, rippling, circles within circles, colour a brown-green, fringed by rushes and tall grasses swaying in the gentle breeze. Beyond, the view looked out onto lush green fields, cows the colour of dark caramel moving ever so slowly as if in a bovine trance, while behind me voices chorused from tables, and a noisy cock blackbird dashed across my nearer vision and fixed itself on a branch in a luxuriantly leafed tree. I wondered if this is a view that Dave ‘Woody’ Woodward saw when he sat he, for obviously this was a favourite spot of his for on the wooden bench his name and 1943-2006 was engraved alongside the words ‘He loved to sit on this bench’. As I swigged my pint of a pale ale from a local brewery I wondered what his story was, for authentic pubs, those that have regulars and foster a sense of community, whatever the beers sold, have stories attached to those who have passed through their doors and spent time there and told their own stories.

Then there was Hen Emlyn who couldn’t walk past a pub without going in. He now sleeps quietly on the green slopes of a churchyard overlooking the Irish Sea.