The Moon Under Water

This is the name given by George Orwell to his imagined perfect pub. Ironically, the local Wetherspoon's pub has appropriated the name, though none of the qualities Orwell listed. As the sun's shining and I'm about to head off to a drinking emporium, I thought I'd share his thoughts with you:


Orwell's after a pub on a quiet side street, frequented by a large cast of regulars all keen on conversation. He wants the 'solid, comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century': not fake beams, but not minimalism either. Fires burn in each of the different rooms - though Orwell rather quaintly insists on a ladies' room and a saloon. No music plays, 'neither a radio nor a piano' (I'd quite like a well-played joanna in the pub, or a crowd gathered round The Archers, though my favourite places tend not to have TVs). 


Orwell's barmaids are matronly types who call you 'dear', though he draws the line at 'ducky', much the same as I hate being called 'buddy' or 'mate' by strangers in shops. Food is simple, hearty and cheap. 

The special pleasure of this lunch is that you can have draught stout with it. I doubt whether as many as 10 per cent of London pubs serve draught stout, but the Moon Under Water is one of them. It is a soft, creamy sort of stout, and it goes better in a pewter pot.

That's one thing that's improved: we're living in a golden age of real ale, though sadly for Orwell, china mugs and glasses with handles are rarely available. 


Orwell insists on a garden, secluded and tree-shadowed.

And if anyone knows of a pub that has draught stout, open fires, cheap meals, a garden, motherly barmaids and no radio, I should be glad to hear of it, even though its name were something as prosaic as the Red Lion or the Railway Arms.

Easy. Tonight's choice is the Newhampton Arms, a classic Black Country Victorian beer palace, complete with bowling green, fine ales and apple trees.  

In praise of the dive

I missed my train back from Shrewsbury last night, by thirty seconds.

Faced with the prospect of 70 minutes on a freezing platform, I headed off to the station pub.

If you take trains regularly, and like beer, you'll know what station pubs are like. They're awful. They don't have regular drinkers. No quiz nights, no groups of friends catching up, no row of real ale pumps.

No, station pubs are horrible dens of misery designed to trap, for a brief period, the desperate and alone. They don't need to entice you with warm fires and cheery banter. They've got you already. Where else are you going to go?

Last night's was a prime example, and it gave me a huge rush of nostalgia. The grime, the threadbare banquettes and sticky floors screamed honesty, a 'take it or leave it' atmosphere. There was no attempt to pretend that drinking alone was somehow sophisticated. Your loneliness and desperation was magnified by the two televisions showing different programs at loud volume (Crimewatch and some police fly-on-the-wall 'documentary'), by the surly slowness of the landlord, by the stained glass and bottom of the league pork scratchings (though 2.90 for a pint of mild and said scratchings was a bargain).

The place had all the charm of the station pub in which Arthur Dent eats someone else's crisps in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide sequels. The lights were low. The place was held together with wooden beams - which might have been charming - but they were painted black, and extra planks of plywood had been painted and nailed randomly to the walls to make it look somehow more beamy. Worst of all, the smell was overpoweringly awful. Thanks to the smoking ban, the true stench of desperate humanity (despite their absence) reinforced the owner's contempt. Sweat and urine mixed with the cheapest of industrial bleaches and wet rot. Every gulp of beer involved taking in a mouthful of this foetid atmosphere.

I loved it. Every day, I sit in my fake university tapping away at a computer that promises Californian new media sophistication, before heading back to my warehouse-conversion pseudo-home, perhaps detouring to a fake pub that models itself on a real pub minus the organic social life which distinguishes the real from the fake. Shrewsbury's Albion Vaults is a place where no-one Twitters. It's a horrible reminder of what we're all like, a metaphor for the human condition.

I couldn't wait to leave.