Friday, December 2, 2011

No. 117 The Plumber's Arms

Visited on 1/12/11. Tucked away behind the Grosvenor shopping precinct on Newgate Street, the ‘Plumbers’ has carved out a bit of a niche in recent years as a late night retreat for bar workers from other pubs who gravitate there after their shifts have finished. It stays open until 4 am and does most of it’s trade after midnight, so it came as no surprise to find the place completely empty when we turned up early in the evening. However, the complete lack of customers might be connected to the fact that there was a complete lack of ale also – unless you count Fosters. That and industrial cider was all they had on. No cask ale (despite the presence of four hand pumps), no keg ale, no Guinness, no poncey lager. Nowt. Just Foster’s and cider. Pathetic. It was with a heavy heart then and with much scowling and begrudgery, that we ordered up a round of ‘the amber nectar’ and prepared to reacquaint ourselves with it’s cold fizzy tastlessness.Then as soon as we’d paid for the drinks, the bar staff (all three of them) went outside for a fag. It’s a hard life. We were left on our own to chat to ‘disco boy’ who was setting up the sound system for the night’s entertainment. “It normally gets busy around nine”, he informed us. At that point it was about five to. A tumbleweed rolled past the door. We finished our drinks and followed it.

5 comments:

  1. I've already put my bet on at the bookies that you were the only people in there.

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  2. Well that me put it this way. If there had have been someone there, i would now be a billionaire.

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  3. btw The finale of your post where you said "A tumbleweed rolled past the door. We finished our drinks and followed it." is not just LOL worthy but poetically quite beautiful.
    I might use that at some point. All credits given, of course.

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  4. I've been here when it was a manky backstreet boozer a couple of years ago and in it's new guise as a tarted up manky backstreet boozer. And that's it's problem - what's it's market ? Maybe, as you say, late night supping.

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