It’s all about the pub

My kid is a regular at his local pub.

It’s only taken about two months, but the offspring has become part of the culture at The Blue Pig, a loud, traditional kind of place tucked up a side street in Maggie Thatcher’s home town. Other than also spawning Sir Isaac Newton, who has graciously lend his name to shopping centers and restaurants throughout town, there’s not much of renown in Grantham — it’s always been a market town for the surrounding farms — but The Pig serves up fish and chips, potato leek soup and other pub grub that is justly famous in its own right.

More to the point, it is a place full of conversation and characters, proprietors who live above the establishment, pig-o-bilia of every size, shape and description, and a jukebox that played nothing but ’80s American hits all night. (We were not responsible for that, I swear.) It’s not the kind of place that caters to any kind of clientele, but accepts everyone, including small dogs, warmly and serves up friendly chat with a pint, and for the offspring, a surprise birthday cake. Warms a mum’s heart, it does, to see the kid falling in with the right sort.

Pubs are also incredibly smoky places, especially for someone coming from smoke-free Colorado. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to wash my hair just because I’d been to dinner. But that’s about to change, when the nationwide smoking ban in pubs goes into effect July 1.

It might not be the end of pub culture as it has been since Sir Walter Raliegh’s day, as some have predicted, but it will change. And it will take decades for the tobacco to seep out of the woodwork anyway, so it could seem like a gradual tapering off to the regulars.

Off to tour stately homes and gardens.

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