ENCROACHING

Imagine you live in a town with a large university.  I'm guessing you're thinking that everything will be youthful, vibrant, progressive, and all of those assorted adjectives which are universally reckoned to be "good".

But what if you just want a quiet pint? Sorry, you're likely out of luck.

The thing is, with University Arts students, they see the world as an extension of their personal space.  They want to perform. It's their right. So if they get to a pub and see it's quiet, then they'll see an opportunity.  As all classic narcissists, they see the world as an extension of themselves rather than vice versa. They think whenever they perform, everyone will love them,

Sadly for them, and everyone else, it's not true. Most of these performers are not as talented as they imagine themselves to be. And, outside of advertised music nights, pubgoers are only after a few pints and a quiet chat. Mutual dissatisfaction all around.

So, if you're sat there with a beer on a weekday afternoon and someone starts banging the pub piano or singing spontaneously, it's best to leave. Before either they or you get irritated.

Appropriate behavior is dead. Pushing is alive and rampant.

EMBER, GOING DOWN THE

Photo : Simon Everitt 

One of the great joys of pubs in the UK is the sheer number of varied locales and experiences available.  Whatever your own personal desires and comfort levels are, there is usually a pub nearby that will suit you.  People even write blogs about this stuff,  I hear.

Of course, many people aren't really seeking varied experiences. No. They just want a drink. They want everything bog standard, and maybe even identical everywhere they go.  These are people for whom even Wetherspoons are too risky. After all, they may not like the carpet.

Where there is a market, there will be someone there to provide the desired service or product.  And for seekers of the identikit pub, there is Ember Inns.   Everything, and I mean everything is the same no matter which one you have unfortunately found yourself in. Big pillar outside. Standard menu. Line up of beers from large regional breweries (they even now have their own 'Ember Ale' so as to provide an option for those who are disconcerted by having to choose between Thwaites and Moorhouses). Massive and probably fake fireplace. Blackboards proclaiming about something called "Chip Tank". You get the idea.

For example, I was once reading a Twitter post from one unhappy blogger who had found himself in one of these places. He posted a photo of it and I thought "What's he doing in the Black Bull?" (my local Ember). It turned out he was in Exeter.

There is a rumour, totally unsubstantiated of course, that there is a factory in China churning out Embers for the export market to the UK.

Still, gives pub tickers a chance to play "Ember Bingo" (see above), and for that we should be grateful.

DUDE, AWESOMING LIKE A

If you ever want to bear witness to the encroaching homogeneity of beer culture, simply log on to Twitter and follow a few beer-type people.  One thing you will notice is that many of them are always drinking.  Pictures.  Pictures of cans.  Pictures of cans at a barbecue.  Pictures of cans at a barbecue with mountains of burnt meat.  Often with cats in the background. But this is just their regular life.  What do they do for enjoyment?

To discover such things, you have to wait (if you can) until the weekend.  This is playtime for Beer People.  The whole world is out there to be experienced. It has many wonders and joys to be embraced. And, as you will often notice, it usually has a Craft Bar with numerous taps and a fridgeful of AWESOME beer.

Found rarities will be proclaimed; all their beery mates will be @d (for information purposes, of course, not to provoke envy); love, laughs and fun in the sun.  All that cliched nonsense.  But most of all there will be a selfie of some bearded member of the "beer cognoscenti" smiling, while holding a glass of something both ridiculously strong and hideously expensive.

They all do it.  Whereas some people hang around theatre doors waiting for celebrities to grab a mutual photo with, beer people like nothing better than to be seen with the latest fashionable limited edition.  That they could have grabbed an empty can from the next table for this purpose is a situation not usually imagined.

People once had fun with other people when they went out. Now they have to be seen to be consuming the right things and making a permanent record of the fact.

And as long as they're seen, that's the whole point.  Dude.

HANDPUMPS, SMILING BEHIND THE

"Please come to our pub.  Look, we put this photo on Twitter!  Look how happy we are!  Look at all these pumpclips!  We've even mentioned all the breweries' accounts by name!  And CAMRA! But for information!  Not attention! Not for retweets and likes or anything!  Please come to our pub and drink our beer.  It's really quiet and our over-ambitious cask ale line up is going off.  Please, we beg you.  We'll take the Marillion off the jukebox!  We'll clean the toilets!  We'll even put Titanic Plum Porter on! Please!  We're desperate!"

REGULARS, THE

It happens rarely these days,  but occasionally some us go to pubs we've never been to before. Imagine the scene - it's Friday evening, and you're tired of the places you frequent regularly. But there's THAT pub you always pass but have never entered.  Oh well. Why not?

So you go in. It's empty. Empty, but for several people parked right in front of the bar. Of course, you cannot see the drinks offer because they'really blocking the view. You shuffle up slowly and, after a minute, one person sees you and moves to the left. Great. At least now you can order something.

So, you have your drink. What now? You could sit in the unpopulated, cavernous wasteland that is the rest of the pub. But no. That would seem, well, standoffish. You park yourself at the end of the bar, hoping to look neither over-friendly nor snobbily distant.

You try to pick up the banter. It's mainly about some guy called Mike, who is presumably one of the regulars who for some reason is absent tonight.  You can't quite pick up the nuances of the tales of what he was caught doing this week, but it sounds decidely unsavoury. Everyone else laughs anyway.  Then the politics talk starts. All suitably ill-informed,  but this is their pub so you keep quiet. Then someone remembers the football game is on and beseeches the barman to put it on the big screen. He does. Loudly. Soon the volume is matched by the customers shouting at the TV.

By now, you've nearly finished your drink. "Same again?" you're asked. You politely decline, explaining your bus is due in five minutes. And you leave, feeling a wave of relief as you walk out onto the pavement. Thank god,  you say to yourself,  that's over.

Then you go to your usual haunt, which somehow no longer seems quite as tedious as before. You order a drink, block the bar and talk complete bollocks that nobody but your fellow regular bar blockers will completely understand.

Because, after all, life is nothing if not the constant expression of hypocrisy.