DERBY - CITY OF PUBS

This is a city of pubs and the surest way to become an honorary Derby citizen is to go on a pub crawl. We love our beer, but are a moderate people, and don't like to spend every evening in one pub having drink after drink. So, some evenings, we do something different. We spend an evening having one drink in pub after pub. In a few hours, you share details of your life with strangers, who become close friends. You're accepted into a social circle. You just hope that they were so drunk, they can't remember what you said the next day. Because we are moderate, pubs must stop serving at 11pm and you must drink up by 11.20pm. This is to stop people drinking all night, like in France. We drink the same amount as the French, we just drink it all before 11.20pm.

Pub crawls are rarely planned. They just happen. Nobody says 'How about a pub crawl tonight?'. When work finishes, someone might glance at the clock and say, 'Fancy a quick drink?'. This is an invitation to a pub crawl. They say it as if the idea just came, but in fact they've been planning it since the morning. The correct response is for everyone to look doubtful, and to study their watches. 'Well - yes, just a quick one,' you say, as if you have important things to do later on. It's important to know your pub types:

Old people's pubs:
Names such as 'Red Lion', 'Rose and Crown', 'Railway Inn'. Ancient decor. Cold, smell of damp walls and stale beer. No music. Outside toilets. Silent local men inside. Beer is sometimes very good. Food is out of a freezer, microwaved and awful.

Young people's pubs:
Stupid names like 'Ferret and Firkin', 'Kebab and Calculator' which are constantly changing and completely redecorated each year. Very hot, smell of teenage perfume and aftershave. Very loud music. Toilets always full. Shouting young locals inside. Beer usually mediocre. Food is out of a freezer, microwaved and awful.

Middle-aged people's pubs:
Artificial names such as 'The Jolly Ploughman'. Look like traditional old farmhouses inside, but all done this year. Air-conditioned. Full of men in suits and quiet easy-listening music. Beer variable. Food is out of a freezer, microwaved and awful.

For a pub crawl, the first type is the best, visits are interesting, but a little sinister. When you try to sit down, the landlord says, 'You can't sit there, that's Old Tom's chair.' When you ask which one is Tom so you can apologise, he says, 'Oh, Tom's not here. He moved to Australia in 1984.' It's considered bad manners to buy only your own beer. When a group of people enter a pub, one person buys drinks for everyone - a round. In Derby, we like to be fair. So in order to be fair, everyone else in the group then has to buy a round as well, one by one. This is what turns the 'quick drink' into a pub crawl.

For the first round of a pub crawl, there's a ritual. Everyone will say, 'Just a half for me'. The person buying the round insists, 'Are you sure, can't I get you a pint?' Everyone reluctantly agrees to a pint. For the rest of the evening everyone drinks pints. Though Britain's 'Big Six' breweries produce the majority of beer, there are also hundreds of smaller independent breweries, some local, some national. Some are 'bitter' (dark beer), some lager, some 'stout' (black, like Guinness) some 'Pale Ale' etc. Some are 'keg beer' (carbonated and stored in metal casks, clean tasting but characterless) some 'real ale' (not carbonated and stored in wooden casks, less reliable but more interesting tastes). Some are bottled, some are draught, pulled from the pumps displayed on the bar.

This makes it very confusing which beer to buy in a strange pub. The easy answer is to buy the first round and have whatever someone else is having. Or to ask the person behind the bar for a recommendation. Or just to have the one with the most ridiculous name, usually the more bizarre its name, the stronger it is. When you get home, or when you tell friends about it the next day, you never say, 'I went on a pub crawl to ten pubs'. Instead, you should say casually, 'Oh, we had a few'. We are a very moderate people.

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