Real England

John Emburey, right-arm spinner, one of the main cricketers behind the two apartheid-breaking tours (only one to go on both?), and Wendy Richard, Are You Being Served and v long-running Eastenders actress.

It was partly for the people, and partly for the look and feel of the people and the pub. Not that I have any particular love for any of them, but it's a photo saturated with childhood nostalgia for me.

WR also famously featured on "Come Outside" (1962). I didn't realise (or had forgotten) that she was such a big Tory supporter. I also wasn't aware that she had died.

The photo looks like a Lord's Taverners fundraising for children's charities kind of thing. Taken in the early 1980s by the look of it.

Bit later, I'd say. And it's from The Windsor Castle, which I think must have been WR's local by the looks of the other photos on the walls, and is nearish Lord's. It's an excellent pub, rammed with curious memorabilia, but not self-satisfied about it - it's clearly been a well-run, well-liked local for a long time, and so has a sort of atmospheric patina or provenance, that can carry off any amount of eccentricity. If it had been newly-designed that way it would be insufferable. The bar staff also have an excellent inclusive reticence about them.

It's a bit difficult to describe exactly what I mean about that patina. It's something perhaps you get more on the continent. I remember a very clean well-ordered, not expensive but smart restaurant I went to in Rome. It had an unchanging history of being well run, being kept clean and smart, with a professionalism that is not professionalism, but a quiet undefensive pride in knowing that a thing (in this case feeding and briefly housing customers) is being well done. And it's as if the good habits that come with that have worn grooves in the place - there are things there that have stood the test of time and do not need changing. When you find pubs like that, or bookshops, or restaurants in this country, it is a rare and precious thing, and redeems even the most indifferent of pubs. We seem bad at it in England - maybe that's just London, with the pressures of rents, and high-density transient population making it hard or meaningless to maintain it. I think a national indifference to food, which isn't entirely unpleasing, is possibly to blame for the restaurant side of things.

I understand exactly what you mean, including what you say about things that have stood the test of time and don't need changing. I don't know about restaurants but there are still pubs that have the quality you're talking about, but there are far fewer of them (especially in London, as you say) due to so many being part of chains. When I go out for a walk in the country, I like, if possible, to end up at a village pub. I reckon about 20 to 30% of the time the pub (if there is one) will still have that feel about it. But the outlook is not good, obviously, with so many pubs shutting down due to dramatically falling business.

Here are a few pubs that I've liked, for similar kinds of reasons to those you mention:

The Red Cow, Harpenden, Herts
The Red Cow Inn, Pontsticill (S. Wales)
The Royal Oak, Paull, Yorks
The Tudor Rose, Upnor, Kent
The Three Horseshoes, Cheddington, Bucks
The Fox and Goose, Hebden Bridge, Yorks
The Half Moon Inn, Balcombe, Sussex

That list is making me thirsty to go to those places and walk around then drink in the pubs in those places. Yes, and agree I think with your figure of about 20-30% and the outlook not being good.

yeah i dunno you can wander any city and find shitty restaurants in great locations, and be surprised by the odd hidden gem, i don't see it as an englande thinge

it was more wendy richard photo > in nice pub > this is why i like it > why isn't there MORE dammit?

i still think there are some specifics beyond there are more shitty things than nice things, which agree is unlikely to be a national characteristic of anywhere (tho the proportion of the two may be significant - feel vaguely gesturing to the 'high street' thread here). i do think there's an indifference to food, which may be to do with the entire archipelago than being strictly English, but is more than a n. of viticulture cultural difference shared by all countries north of that Danube/Rhine boundary. restaurants are a special occasion, not a place to congregate - or rather 'we' tend not to congregate around eating, but drinking.

I always feel sorry for tourists clustering round the menu outside my lunchtime local, clearly not recognising it is English Chain Pub and that tells you everything you need to know.

There is significant otm deposits in each of those posts, but then tbf fascism

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-21753748

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li2XRVt9Clo

http://i.imgur.com/CpvTSdJ.jpg

just want this itt for posterity

Will these hands ne'er be clean?

http://i.imgur.com/T79alD6.jpg

the edl photos from this weekend are redolent of realness but they are far too contrived to be really real, their mourning for salman rushdie and their banners misspelled so ludicrously that they suggest some cheap internet parody of themselves

they even have an lgbt sub-faction, no lumpen street thug can submit to this communitarianism in good faith

in terms of realness

gary bushell's england nationalism party or whatever the fuck it's called >>>>>> ukip >>>>>>>>>> bnp >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> edl

The white working classes are so alienated from society that they should attend citizenship ceremonies with immigrants, according to David Cameron’s poverty tsar.

Frank Field said some working class people were increasingly unsure of their identities.
He suggested that going to the ‘wonderful’ citizenship ceremonies could help them feel like they were part of British society again.

Tuesday 27 June 2006 16:16

Children’s charities and campaign groups have welcomed the appointment of a child poverty tsar following the government’s failure to meet its own poverty targets.

Lisa Harker, who previously worked for Save the Children and the Child Poverty Action Group, has been recruited by the Department of Work and Pensions as an independent adviser on child poverty.

Chris Huhne has asked the Labour Lord Whitty to take up the position of fuel poverty tsar, the Financial Times reports. Malcolm Wicks, former Labour energy minister, and Lord Adonis have both turned down the job.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael-wincott/sets/72157609644291183/with/3081002958/

big thing on Twitter of ostensible lefties and centrists picking on any and all antifascist protesters for being middle-class posers, one is only Real if one at least dabbles in fascism, even just a wee bit.

http://i.imgur.com/E0G6NSA.png

Didn't know there was an lgbt EDL! They always claim to have members from minority communities but every single one I saw yesterday was white and male. One guy was wearing a Liam Fontaine shirt which I guess you might not get with the BNP.

It looks to me like they are, to a man, displaced football hooligans - nostalgics largely too young to have fought on the terraces or fucked up small French cities but want to feel like they're part of a firm. They are the antithesis of realness.

yeah not many girls for Saturday's big do; this was their own photo too.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BLRzR6lCUAEYe5r.jpg

Wanderers this afternoon confirmed a two-year deal with the pay-day loan company.

QuickQuid - replacing online bookmakers 118BET, whose deal with the Trotters expires this summer - will have its logo on Bolton's matchday and training kit and will also be involved in club-run initiatives across the community.

QuickQuid ‏@QuickQuid 14 May

Not a fan of Caribbean Chicken? Check out recipes from our customers here to find one you fancy more: http://bit.ly/Z6QcnC

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael-wincott/3080167369/in/set-72157609644291183/lightbox/

thought this one was a Steve Coogan character for a second

http://i.imgur.com/R6GpzNK.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_izjAoetZY

Greene King striking a blow for Real England:

http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2013-06-07/suffolk-brewery-accused-of-cultural-vandalism-after-scrapping-more-than-200-traditional-pub-signs/

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Feckenham_High_Street.jpg

Feckenham in the 21st century is a rural community with a traditional English village green, and is a starting point for several bridle ways, established country walks, and rambling routes based on Ordnance Survey maps, including the long-distance public footpath, The Monarch's Way, that passes nearby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dnHU3g4geQ

(A Black Man's Leviathan)

It is with great sadness that we received news of the recent death of Robin Smith.

A staunch royalist, Robin delivered a humorous and most informative presentation at the AGM held at Wolverhampton in 2010. His selection was titled 'A Pint at the Kings Head' which featured most of the kings of England through the ages. Robin frequently contributed articles to the Society's journal and was busy on another when he became too ill to write.

Robin lived in a delightful farmhouse at Wookey, near Wells in Somerset. The Inn Sign Society extends its deepest sympathy to Robin's family.

http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1059/5117782956_f020f50aa3_z.jpg

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2068/2381927589_4d3da62f88_z.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkyDzpwIVI8

nice

ReceivD 1 year ago

UPLOAD MORE

MOCK THE WEEK IS A BEAST OF A COMEDY

AND HUGH DENIS IS JSUT TO FUNNY

god yeah reading the new argos catalogue is the crushing realness

i adore this thread

just checking through some old pics from *family gatherings* and 'real ireland' kept going through my head tbrr

"real ireland" = everything outside of Dub amirite?

Ya but even moreso with the maternals, so real shane meadows didnt fancy it

Workers in the UK currently work the longest hours in Europe, take the shortest lunch breaks and enjoy the fewest public holidays. Childcare is expensive and difficult to find, care for older people is of inconsistent quality and financial
support during family-related leave is lower than in some other parts of Europe. The quest for higher productivity and the long hours' culture limit the effects of improved rights and can undermine equal opportunities policies.

The TUC estimates that if all the unpaid overtime worked by the average employee were put together at the start of the year, it would be until mid-February before they started to be paid. This is marked by Work Your Proper Hours Day which takes place on that date around mid-February.

we call that the american dream

Str8 justice for ur plundering ways imo

my people was the serfs not the plunderers

xp yeah i know compared to the US we are feckless workshy fops

David Cameron was today challenged by rising star Tory MPs to tackle “lazy” Britain — and bring in tough new work reforms.

The “young guns” from the new Right of the party called for a culture of “graft, risk and effort” to propel Britain into the “superleague” of nations.

They branded Britons among “the worst idlers” in the world and said the country should emulate the hard work ethic of Asia.

“Too many people in Britain, we argue, prefer a lie-in to hard work,” they said. The call for action is being made by five Tories from the “class of 2010” — Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss.

Their vision, laid out in a new book, Britannia Unchained — Global Growth and Prosperity, will pile pressure on the Prime Minister to step up reforms to boost Britain’s economy.

Ah yes, if only the british could be more like johnny foreign the country would be great again.

NV denying his privs btw, record shown

no, i accept that i am fortunate to belong to the master race, even in a minor capacity