Episode 153- In which we do some editing and consider what happened to the Great British Pub

I am of the opinion that moving countries and downsizing both your life and your house is not so much stressful as Profoundly Mentally Taxing.

I have this button here that allows me to preview changes before I post.

Now wouldn’t that be a useful life tool?

Change is, of course, the key to moving forward. Consider this place. No, this is not a trendy bistro that has just discovered pseudo French shabby chic style twenty years after everybody else. No. It was once a typical British pub with  dark wooden ceilings, horse brasses, china tankards, cast iron pub table legs and very old horsehair stuffed bench seating; the backs of these still  sporting the little bells with which one could summon the barmaid fifty years ago. Don’t try that now. Only a few months ago I was saying that this was the last proper pub around here.

It has had a make-over. Some of which, like the herringbone tweed upholstery  bottom right and donkey brown wall above is rather interesting. Some of it is not. This used to be a favourite spot in the early days of our romance. The Black Country Boy is not convinced by pub-lite. Neither am I.

The food is still generous ( yes peas and salad are natural plate buddies here) but a fashionable upgrade to sweet potato fries was a little unexpected.  It’s all still cooked fresh and served, with a real smile and inpenetrable local dialect, on plates 12 inches across. That tradition has not changed. Manual labour needs fuelling and you don’t get many execs in here. It’s none the worse for that.

I require fuelling as I edit and reduce what we are taking to absolute must-haves, aesthetically (natch!) and practically. Whilst sorting through a box of mostly antique bed linen I found a stone carving of a rose and a pair of brass escutcheon plates with stylised eagles.

I have NO memory of purchasing either.

I bounced off downstairs to gleefully inform Trev that we have four more full boxes for taping up and that I had found the eagle escutcheons.

Gill ” I’ve just found these wonderful door plates, but I’ve no idea why I bought them or where I’m going to put them in France”

Trev ” Well, that’s never stopped you before…”

Whatever does he mean?