The Slope

 
It’s all about the pubs. It was only ever all about the pubs. The vibrant living hubs that connect people and provide the special elixir of sparkled cask condition bitter from which the spoken and written word emerged and civilisation born. It was all about the pubs then. It is all about the pubs now. The constant call of every man born to be a Pub Man.

 

A cold January Sunday afternoon. The dull greyness of a northern sky screaming into the existential angst of anyone before that 1^st pint of the day, threatening to reveal a nihilistic truth that will soon be once more vanquished. Should you dare to look up and stare into it. It will stare back into you. Is this why the people going about their business look down?

 

A pint of Vocation American Pale. £3.70. The Hope Inn, Stockport. Umm tastes of microbrew. A quiet pub soon to close. Formerly a brew pub that produced some of the best examples of microbrew / brewpub type beer you were likely to find. The pub, for me, always lacked something in the atmosphere and this afternoon, no exception. The risky blonde the finest beer of that style I drank. The brewing had stopped and beer available bought in. A couple of tables occupied with a couple and group of friends. Elderly, retired types. Pleasant middle class folk. Not to denigrate them or the pub but the clientele long seemed a tad more prosperous than the occupants of the nearby housing. A pub that never in my view attained its potential but maybe that in and of itself is my own misreading. Maybe everyone and everything achieves its potential. It opened, it brewed and sold really great beer, but only ever seemed to tick along whenever I encountered it, lockdown hit it hard, the gaffer cut his losses for better things. I wonder what the pub will become? Time will answer.

I skip the Railway for reasons I do not immediately fathom and only later rationalise. Never been my kind of place. Nothing wrong with it but I don’t fancy it. A fear of folk music perhaps? I heard a rumour such things occur there from time to time. Dark practices. Folk music on a Sunday afternoon is a danger in these parts if you are not very careful. It can spring up on you. If you walk in and find it you can spin on your heal, 180, and scoot. But those times when it just occurs around you and you wonder whether the gods have cast you prematurely into Niflheim, and you ponder, is this the last of the nine worlds? Will there, for me, be no Valhalla? I shall not step foot today into the land beyond the void. I will not be folk music’d.

 

The Magnet. The best pub in Stockport if you believe those that pontificate on such matters. A smart tidy pub. A little busier. Beer details on a flat screen telly high on the wall by the smaller bar. Every punter reads it. Price, colour, abv and whether it’s “hoppy” or “roasty” or some such flavour descriptor. An odd layout. A long bar without much seating and a small bar by all the seating. An everyday IPA £3.50 Umm tastes of microbrew. It is easy to see what boxes this pub ticks and why it garners the acclaim it does. It is clean and smart. A freehouse with a wide range of beers, domestic and foreign, cask and keg. At an adjoining table two older gentleman discus their investment in the student flats of Manchester. They hope the kids go back to university properly for the sake of their own economy at least. At another a younger well-spoken mixed group discuss their experiences teaching English abroad. The bitter slips down and brings clarity to my mind and focus into my endeavour. Whilst this may be the often-declared best pub in this forlorn grey town, it isn’t the only pub. You could spend an afternoon here, if you were inclined.

I walk past a pub called the Midland. It appears shut. A sign on the door and window inform me it isn’t. I would have to knock if I wished to gain entry. In addition, I would have to meet their strict entry criteria of not being riff raff. Do I want entry? Am I riff raff? I consider myself a respectable gentleman of the parish. A gentleman whose business dealings, my accountant assures me, are all legal and above board. A former master of his lodge, a gentleman that possesses more than one suit and none bought for the purposes of a court appearance. A regular taker of the Daily Telegraph. Solvent. Nice to my mother. I consider myself a respectable and law-abiding gentleman. Though would I be, in the eyes of others, riff raff? Would I need to extol all these virtues to the chap on the door to gain entry? What would I find inside? A rarefied collection of the towns great and good all quietly taking tea, reading their daily telegraphs? Would I be welcomed with, “I’m glad you’ve found us, Sir, we are the league of gentleman, care to join us?” Though I recall that entertaining caper, whilst a fine film and excellent performance by Jack Hawkins, they were in fact criminals. A chap inside the establishment stares at me looking through the window. He doesn’t look like a gentleman. I think better of it and continue my walk.

 

And to the Crown. Formerly a crown jewel of the towns pubs and former home of the towns beererati. Recently re opened after being run into the ground by the former proprietor. I can attest that prior to closing the place was what us pub experts refer to as “a shit hole” During one of the breaks in lock down I checked the place out to find a pub of yapping dogs and a smell that indicated they were likely allowed to piss where they liked. But now it was under new management. A brighter, cleaner, redecorated pub. A nice smell, too. Quite the contrast to the later days of its previous incarnation. A range of mainstream cask beers from regional & family brewers. Nothing to excite those that give out pub awards but maybe to those that drink in pubs? A friendly welcome. Not busy as such but a few other customers. A pint of Ghost Ship £3.80. Well kept. Umm. Tastes of bitter. A took a walk around the pub as I had not seen the refurbishment. A small stage for a band stood in the previously weed strewn beer garden where on a previous visit I saw a dog urinate. It all looked nice. I contemplated staying for another, for here was proper bitter. None of that railway arch micro brewed shed muck that murky because it’s meant to be like that and that's what gets a pub into the pub tickers bible.

 

But a Pub Man must do what a pub man must do. I walked up a big hill. Not something I like doing but us pub men often do disagreeable things in the cause of visiting pubs. The Olde Vic. Notice the E. Not Old, but Olde. Like in Shakespeare or summat. A smallish pub noted for being a freehouse, community owned type of place. Nicely furnished but full of retro tat. Piled up in a way that doesn’t really encourage you to take one of the games out of the pile lest the whole pile of tat collapse. A Pint of Sabo £3.70. Umm tastes of microbrew. A Local pontificating in a loud voice at the bar and being indulged by polite bar staff prompted me to an area to the right to swerve what sounded like a pub bore. The barman gets paid to listen to him and be polite, I don’t. I like the pub. Much nicer than I remember. Many years ago, I recall a cliquey pub, a snotty landlord and these weird elderly hobbit-like customers in heavy metal t shirts that looked like they ought to have grown out of that by now. All of that had gone. The proprietor seemed a friendly sort of chap running a pub designed to appeal to the type of people the nearby housing didn’t contain.

It had become time to eat, and a Pub Man knows a fundamental truth of the Wetherspoons empire is “includes a drink” Leffe. £3.49 if bought separately or included with most meals, even the lighter, smaller cheaper £5.29 ones. A pub man can drink keg on occasion. On the occasion of fancying this, the finest of Belgian Ale from Belgium. Or is it Belgium Ale from Belgian? Who really knows? We can debate these things, but English is a living language, and it is what the kids say it is. Wetherspoons have been selling Leffe for a few weeks now. Long enough for the branded glasses to go walk about. Word on the street was that a local micropub favoured by the beererati had been looking to replenish their branded glassware and taken advantage of Tim Martins trusting nature. Who is to say where they went? A Peerless Full Whack had to be tried for £1.99. Delish. Wetherspoons keep their ale well and priced for turnover and sit as possibly the only chain pub I’d implicitly trust cask beer in. They pull in enough price sensitive retired gentlemen to shift the beer in a place many cask warriors sneer at. This evening someone had even been round wiping the tables and clearing the detritus. Is Wetherspoons gentrifying?

 

One last pint. As we began in a pub not long to be with us, we end in a pub that as you read this will now have closed for good. At the time of drinking, the pub had one more week of life. But as the man that killed Captain Kirk said, “Time is the fire in which we burn”, and now that fire is ashes. The Railway, Portwood, Neo Kosmo £2.50. Umm tastes of microbrew. The pub is busier than it has been for a while. News of its impending demise has brought out people to experience it one last time and remember a place they were fond of. Development, rather than a lack of custom, has brough this pub to its end. A building under threat of demolition for years and left to rot by its freeholders made life difficult for the long-standing leaseholders. Lockdown had provided time to redecorate and cover up the moulding walls that had confined the pubs to dump status rather than desirable venue for the beererati and made it nicer that it had been for a while. The wide choice of beers domestic and foreign had narrowed whilst remaining a selection of great beers at a price more in line with a beery bottle shop than pub. A pub with a set of regulars who all seemed part of the furniture. I wonder where many of them will go? But it is a final death granted this pub and not the death of a hollowing out and the taxidermy that is pub gentrification. A pub that entered Valhalla and not the ignominy of a living death sitting below the roots of Yggdrasill. In that there is comfort.