Apparently pubs are working class and grubby. So say the patrician snobs at the Daily Telegraph as you can see below. How I wish this was the case. It seems to me that almost every boozer around here is now a twee gastro-pub serving overpriced food with folks sitting at socially distanced tables sipping just a glass of wine and texting away like dervishes. And yes I do live in the Grim North. Heaven only knows what it is like in the soft South.
I rather long for the days when boozers reeked of nicotine, when men, for it was largely men, drank pints sitting either at tables or at the bar and actually talked to each other. For the days when a pub was, as a Greek taverna still is, an affordable place where folks outside the middle classes could afford to go to be genuinely social animals. Those days are gone now, except, of course, in the minds of out of touch members of the deadwood press.
