Time, Gentlemen, Please?

-

 

OK - never mind the economy, the environment, the war in Ukraine or the UK's shoddy bloody government - I jest, but hear me out - there is a potential disaster in the making, lurking in the heart of The Black Country. On the tenth of last month, I wrote about the pub where Jane & I had our first date, over fifty years ago: The Crooked House at Himley, Staffordshire. A unique institution and social gathering place, still beloved of a local crowd of patrons.

It would seem that its current owners, Marston's, are putting it up for sale. It's worth noting that Marston's, once a proud independent brewer of fine ales, is now part of a large conglomerate, initiated by the Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries Company: itself once a good and honest collection of Midlands brewers, long since morphed into a corporatized brewco, and no longer brewing its own beers properly, let alone anyone else's. The upshot is that one of the jewels of our fast dying pub industry, and a building dear to our hearts, distanced even though we are by time and geography, is facing closure and an uncertain fate, after nearly two hundred years as a public house.

This unique and dearly-loved social institution is facing conversion into Christ-knows-what, at the hands of capitalists so out of tune with reality and history, that we can only hope that someone can step in and finance a buyout to save the place as it is. Crowdfunding springs to mind, as does trying to get Joe Bonamassa - who, though American, had (has?) a collaborative band project called Black Country Communion - on side, along with other notable Midlands-born rock musicians - who could help to preserve a tiny slice of Black Country history.

I believe this to be as important as any other cultural artefact, especially as it is part of the fabric of British working class history, so trivialized by the posh, self-entitled arbiters of culture: the history of the people who truly created The Industrial Revolution. Give the Parthenon frieze back to its rightful owners, the Greek people, and look to your own cultural roots: preserve at least something of the source of all our - the world's - wealth. Anyone got contacts that could help? Leave a comment if you have, and by the way, there's another like institution that needs saving, around here: The Douglas Arms in Bethesda...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des...
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [...
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more