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Low Life

Jeremy Clarke

Wednesday, 13th August 2008

Last orders

Under a low oak-beamed ceiling, three middle-aged men were perched on stools around the bar. One of these greeted me, walked around to the other side of the bar and asked me what I was having. He wasn’t the landlord, he said. The landlord was busy out at the back for a moment. There was a small selection of real ales. I chose the Badger’s Todger. He poured me a pint and returned to his stool and rejoined his muted three-cornered conversation.

The bar was cosy enough but the quietness was oppressive. A big mistake coming to this place, I thought, as I took a sip. Nice pint, though. Then the landlord materialised behind the bar. He was a large man, well manicured, conservatively dressed. You could tell how he voted in the last general election just by looking at him. He greeted me warmly — or was it just loudly? — and there was something Fawlty-esque — that peculiar mixture of fear, anger and resignation — in his stare as he sized me up.

I had on a suit and tie, so that went down well with him, I imagined. But my regional accent, when he heard it, made him visibly blanche. And yet I didn’t appear to be intimidated in the slightest by a man of his size, style, social class and private education. I was a conundrum. To solve it, he went the direct route. ‘What do you do for a living?’ he demanded. I told him I was a journalist. ‘Who do you write for?’ I told him the Devon Association of Smallholders quarterly magazine and The Spectator — had he heard of either? My goodness he’d heard of The Spectator, all right. I thought he was going to throw himself on me weeping for joy. And then the usual excited questions about Boris. Had I met him? He’d make an excellent prime minister, wouldn’t he? Surely the idiocy was just a façade, wasn’t it?

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ColinG

August 14th, 2008 11:09am

Expat, not ex-pat.

Bradley Silberman

August 14th, 2008 3:40pm

A local pub landlord in New Cross has applied for a pole dancing and strip joint license blaming the smoking ban amongst other things for the drop in trade. The fact that it's a bit of a dive and not overly inviting seems to have escaped him. Even though the local area has received pot loads of regeneration money, the council cannot object to the license and there's a good chance that by granting one it will undo all the regeneration work.

There is an article in the South London Press about it http://www.southlondonpress.co.uk/tn/news.cfm?id=11775 - there's a hearing tonight

Great how our money is spent!

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