Every Sunday

On a Sunday, the New Inn is a comfortable place. The anxious pre-weekend drinking of Friday is gone, the busy Saturday night rush has long evaporated. Step into the pub at 4pm and it’ll be quiet except perhaps for the local Irish and Folk band playing in the back room—everyone else is at home cooking, eating, or digesting a roast dinner. Visit at 6pm and it’s a little busier. By 8.30pm, Sunday night really gets going.

I’m privileged to call myself a local here. I’m not really, I never will be. I moved to Clitheroe in 2012. Even so, I’ve been bestowed with the unspoken right to sit in the Front Room, the one on the left as you walk in, with its own side of the bar and the fire that’s most likely to be lit. I love walking into this room on a Sunday evening. Everyone I know from the pub is here, people I never normally see. Whether I’m sat with Tom for a quiet pint, or I’m with friends playing the limerick game (go round the table clockwise, everyone has to make up a line of the poem—try it, it gets super competitive and fucking hilarious) there will be folk popping up everywhere to say hello to.

My two favourite pub friends are always in on a Sunday. These days I don’t tend to go as late, so I’ve missed them. I’ve decided to make the effort to go in so we can catch up. I asked them if they’d like me to use pseudonyms for them. “Those blokes off the Muppets,” they said. So that’s what we’ll call them. Statler and Waldorf.

Statler and Waldorf, contrary to their opinions of themselves, are two of the friendliest blokes in the whole pub. They join in with our stupid debates. They shared genuine compassion and sympathy when our bar closed down, and they always ask after what we’re doing and how we are. The other week they saw me with a friend’s baby and got the shock of their lives—it was as though they were grandparents again for a moment. Their huge smiles and classic pub humour (sarcasm, dry comments) are exactly my cup of tea. I love to see them, and I’m going to make more of an effort to drink, not with them, but amicably across the room from them. Just how they like it.

Other Stuff

• Really enjoyed this story on Narragansett by David Nilsen for Pellicle, a brewery I’m somewhat ashamed to say I knew very little about!

• A stunning album of electronic music fused with poetry by Lord of the Isles and Ellen Renton

• An house is for sale in Castletown on the Isle of Man. It’s an elliptical mansion with a Neolithic stone circle on its land, designed by the horologist inventor of the safety switch inside your kettle. The listing is incredibly interesting. His personal website is an even more interesting read. I particularly like his facts and quotes on each page.

• Feeding The Worms by Danusha Laméris

My Stuff

• Join myself, Matthew Curtis and many other beer folks to celebrate the Pellicle 5th Birthday Party in Manchester on Saturday 11 May. It’s taking place between Sureshot, Cloudwater, Track and Balance breweries. FOUR VENUES! Who the bloody hell do we think we are?