Chris Maclean: Each to their own

It is the night of my wife's birthday. And for almost twenty years is has been the same. The Boyden Gate Mummers visit our pub and perform the St George & The Dragon play.

Mumming, and hoodening in East Kent, is a Christmas tradition in pubs which has gone on for centuries.

You might dismiss this whole scene as seven drunken men performing an alcohol fuelled display to the complete disregard of all assembled. It is probably a fair assessment.

The cast comprise of a fool, Father Christmas, a dragon, a Saracen. a lady, a doctor and St George. Seven men. Seven performances. Its messy, traditional and............stupid.

It has gone on for years. (For those familiar with Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, the Mechanicals doing Pirymus & Thisbe are simply Mummers) It is a very old tradition.

And yet it seems an anachronism. Few pubs permit it, understand it or encourage it. It is out of place in modern times.

So, on Melanie's birthday, the Boyden Gate Mummers do their play.As they have for two decades.

It is a hoot.

The Railway is packed with an anticipating audience. The performance is due at 9.00pm but Marshside (the village they come from, doesn't appear to own a clock) time is different.

I counted sixty or seventy people in the pub. It is difficult to move. The play is in full swing. There are sword fights, dramatic scenes and classic drama.

Amongst it all is a darts match. I hadn't got it in my diary. But the licensee of our visiting side's pub, a very nice guy, has cornered me and is extolling the virtues of a juke-box.

This man runs one of my favorite pubs in town, a pub which struggles to survive, and he is telling me that what I need to do in a pub, so filled with customers that one can scarcely move, is that I need a juke-box.

Its difficult not to appear smug. We're doing OK. A juke-box isn't out of the question. It is just that, given what is going on around us, a juke-box is the last thing I can see us introducing...

Pubs need to be distinctive. Particularly in these times we need to be different. So we won't be getting a juke-box. But thanks for the advice.