Change. When you get to my age, most change becomes scary. Or terrifying. New stuff keeps appearing. Things like mobile phones and Double IPA. Stuff you never asked for, but arrived on your doorstep anyway.Every generation rejects the taste of its parents. In music, clothes, wallpaper, politics, food and, of course, beer and pubs. Everything has its fashion and every fashion has its day. Who of my generation could ever have imagined the early 70's becoming hip again?
The young, for the most, adore the thrill of the new. It's not really their fault. They don't know any better. That's why I bear with the younger members of the blogging community when they bang on about stylish bars and shiny-new, US-style beers. Or slag off dull, old-men's pubs without music or young lovelies. Give them another 20 years and they'll be wondering why youngsters call their favourite pubs boring, their favourite drinks old-fashioned and their beer festivals unappealing.
Reading a 1972 Daily Mirror article on beer got me thinking about much of this. I remembered the feel, smell and taste of drinking in the 70's. Would I want to go back to it? Probably not. Admitttedly, pubs, in general, were far more pleasant. Apart from the smoking, obviously. The beer, overall, was better, too. As long as you liked ordinary Bitter and Mild. And didn't mind if you could only find two sorts of each in your hometown. You'd also have to forget about ever drinking anything as exotic as a Belgian beer. Apart from Stella.I do miss simple, ordinary pubs. Places with a Public Bar and a Lounge, metered electric pumps and outdoor bogs. But they aren't coming back. They've disappeared along with socialism, tin baths and fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. What have we got instead? The internet and more breweries than at any time since WW II. Swings and roundabouts. I've heard some of the young 'uns also like those.
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