Grumpy Old Man Blog #33
Don’t you just hate Weatherspoons pubs! I ate there last night and I couldn’t believe
the place.
Weatherspoons come to our nice little towns and villages, taking
away valuable business from the old established pubs, restaurants and
cafes that we love. They buy up
beautiful old buildings, usually existing pubs, and then do them up, turning
them into pubs with restaurants attached, packed with people and just
destroying the run-down, slightly dirty, character of the original place.
The Red Lion in Petersfield is just one such. It incorporates the oldest pub in the town and
is itself an important 18th century coaching inn (the old London
– Portsmouth road ran past
here). Then along come Bloody
Weatherspoons. And what do they do? They waltz in, renovate everything, restoring
all the lovely timbers to their original condition, and generally clean up and
prettify the place. It is now a
spectacular example of old inn construction.
And I’ve seen exactly the same sort of wholesale refurbishing in
Haslemere with the old Swan coaching inn – lots of original timbers preserved
and displayed, sympathetic treatment of the old dining room and generally
bringing the place back to its original glory.
They reportedly spent nearly a million quid on doing up the Red Lion. But they don’t fool me!
The carpet! I mean
what’s that all about? It’s thick and
luxurious and a subtle mauvey colour, very much in keeping with this year’s living
room colour schemes, according to the designer catalogues. But why would you go to a designer catalogue
for your furnishings? And who has a fashionable
carpet in their living room?! It makes
all the hundreds of customers lounging around with their wines and beers feel
as though they’re relaxing at home. Who
wants to feel at home in a pub?!!! And
comfortable at that!!!! There are even
corners with easy chairs and bookcases of books that you can read whilst enjoying
a coffee. Lots of people take advantage
of this facility, but who really wants that?
Pubs should be heaving and jolly and noisy and filled with
laughter. The Red Lion is all those
things too, but that’s not the point.
And talking of beers – they have hundreds of different
brands on offer, from all over the world. How are you expected to choose? Even if you manage 6, as I did, you can’t get
through half of the range on offer. And
now I see they’re having a beer festival next month. A beer festival! Anyone would think this was a pub. Well, it is of course, but we don’t need even
more varieties of beer to choose from, do we.
There will not only be all the international bottled beers (one was from
Latvia for
goodness sake!), but now they are offering a dozen different cask-conditioned
ales too. I ask you!!
Coffee, by the way, I shouldn’t let them get off without
telling you about the coffee, costs 99p.
Where else in the whole of Petersfield can you get a coffee for
99p? And that’s cappuccino, latte, mocha,
whatever you want. Any old rubbish in
fact. Even down the Methodist
Church it costs £1. And there you have to promise not to do any
evil for a while in exchange. I bet
Weatherspoons don’t insist on you being good.
Ha!
And, finally, the food.
Do you know, we ordered steak and kidney pudding with chips and peas
(and extra gravy) which I only just managed to polish off, chilli con carne
with rice, sour cream, etc, which was apparently also almost too much to finish,
and 2 glasses of a rather excellent Cabernet Sauvignon, and that little lot cost,
what do you think? Go on, guess. It cost £9.
Yes!!!! How can someone who’s
completely honest charge 2 unsuspecting elderly customers £9 for their
dinner? Isn’t it fabulous? I mean terrible.
I ate at 'the Moon Under Water' - a Weatherspoons Pub - with some friends on Saturday. They had a steak and kidney pie with all you had but they had two for the price of one!
ReplyDeleteI like the food there but the pub in Central Milton Keynes is just sooooo noisy. The guys at the bar were shouting so loud to be heard over each other that we couldn't hear our own conversation.
ıf they keep on growing then people are happy with their prices and etc.
ReplyDeleteSounds like hell. I'll have to go to a Weatherspoons tomorrow and see if it's as bad as you say!
ReplyDelete