Four times a year several of us in our CAMRA Branch distribute our quarterly CAMRA Magazine. This time I set off in the car to Houghton le Spring & Penshaw. Being a Friday I was expecting it to be busy --- it was Black Friday after all - a term that has passed me by. I understand this term, like craft beer, has been imported from the States. Sigh
Anyhow, I delivered to 8 pubs that Friday and they were all dead ! One of them was a Wetherspoons and I witnessed the unusual occurrence of their being more staff behind the bar than customers waiting to be served ie a ratio of 2:0 ; its usually a 1 : 10 ratio.
One of the pubs had just opened at 3 and the barmaid was getting the fire lit. So I had a chat about how quiet it was for a Friday and so it all came out. She said that a lot of their customers were old men ( er, excuse me !) who were all dying off and not being replaced by younger drinkers. Being a village local most living around there used their bus passes and headed into Sunderland ( guilty as charged) for the day. I can sense a trend here. I said I was thinking about writing an article about the pub for the next issue of the magazine " Do you think it will do any good ?" came the fatalistic reply.
In my opinion, no matter what CAMRA do to encourage real ale drinking in pubs, its going to be the larger city centre pubs that are going to benefit, at the expense of the small ones.
Typing this on , drum roll, Cyber Monday I set off on the bus down to Chester Le St to give out so more magazine.1 pub and 1 club ; dead !, There was only the local Spoons that was ticking over.
I pulled out a handful of angles and said " where do you want them?"
"Put some over there and some over there, but not over there as the older men tear them up"
"What do you mean, tear them up ?" Envisaging some form of origami or model making club.
" Yes, they tear them into strips to roll their tobacco in!"
On the way home I thought about the hours spent putting the magazine together, the effort put in to distribution, and these old gadgies are setting fire to them !!
