26 Things You Don't See in the Pub Anymore
The list is as follows:
1. Mammoth-like Alsatians barking on the roof
2. Foil ashtrays
3. Punched-in toilet doors
4. Toilet chains without a handle
5. Public bars charging less per pint than in the saloon bar
6. Sawdust on the floor
7. Formica-topped tables
8. Bar billiards
9. Missing locks on toilet cubicle doors
10. Light and bitter
11. ‘Character’ landlords
12. Cribbage
13. Men in gravy-stained suits nursing a pint, a whisky chaser and the Racing Post
14. Seafood salesmen
15. Solitary crusty liver sausage roll on the bar under a plastic lid
16. ‘Saucy’ toilet doors — a nut on the ladies’ loos and a screw on the gents
17. Gambling, normally three-card brag
18. People who resemble either pirates or those old illustrations of Guido Fawkes
19. Celebrity lookalikes — one local had Fred Astaire (as he looked in the disaster movies) John Wayne and Malcolm Allison
20. Off-licences attached to pubs
21. Banned customers arguing with the landlord, presumably with a view to being reinstated
22. ‘Pavement pizza’ in the pub ‘garden’
23. Being asked, ‘straight glass or a jug?’
24. Hearing somebody else ask the barman: “B&M, 20 Dilly and a box of logs” (or, in English, brown and mild, 20 Piccadilly and a box
of matches).
25. Beer mats and people ‘flicking’ them off the table and catching them
26. A building brick on the bar with a pile of Swan Vestas on top.
