Landlord: How was everything?
Customer: Absolutely awful.
Landlord: Good. I hate it when customers enjoy their food, because they keep coming back.
Now, have you spent much time in English pubs? If the answer is no, then this verbatim exchange (I was pretending to do the crossword, but was sneakily taking notes) might need explaining. The customer, a portly, well-mannered gentleman, was actually very happy with his meal, and had spent the previous 20 minutes stood at the bar, talking to the barman about oil prices.
We were in the Never Turn Back, a family run pub, that was once part of Lacons, the major local brewery. It was quiet in Caister, as I was visiting during Lent (beer was not given up) and it was one of those sunny but chilly days; so the caravans at the site next door were underoccupied and there was little trade passing by on the beach a few yards away.
The name, which is unique, refers to the the Caister Lifeboat disaster of 1901, when 9 crew were killed, as their boat was flipped over by violent waves during the ‘Great Storm’. During the inquest into this tragedy, a veteran lifeboat man said: ‘Caister Men Never Turn Back’ and that phrase is still the motto of the local lifeboat service.
There is a memorial to those men in the lobby area, where you have the choice between the public and saloon bar. Many pubs went in for knocking the two rooms into one and I can’t think of any modern pubs that include this blatantly undemocratic demarcation. Which is shame for snobs like me, who don’t want to have to consort with the riff-raff during their leisure time. In fairness, many pubs do have a room with a pool table, which is a great siphon for the proletariat.
There were only three customers, including me, so the saloon was closed. Fortunately the other two were slightly up the social hierarchy from me; if the tone had to be lowered, at least it was me responsible for the lowering.
I was offered a glimpse of the saloon, just over the wooden bar. The public and saloon were divided by a wide serving area, almost in a u-shape with a pleasing old-school hatch. If you attended with more well-heeled friends, you could wave across at each other whenever the fancy took you.
The pub went up in the 1950s, accounting for its slightly odd design, a bit like one of those scientist/architect’s view of life in the future from the Festival of Britain. It appears to have been left alone. Today’s brand new can look rubbish and dated quite quickly, but if you are willing to leave it be, it will eventually look charming. We haven’t quite reached the charming stage yet, but it is genuinely interesting in a way that more contrived olde worlde pubs are not.
I’d been warned not to expect too much from the beer, it would be the generic mega-brewery stuff, so it was a pleasant surprise to find Woodford’s Wherry for sale, and it was much fresher and nicer than a pint I’d been served at a pub with a better reputation, earlier that day.
Sat near the bar at a big round table, my newspaper spread out in front of me, a clear sign that I was not here to chat about oil prices or anything, I could do the sudoku etcetera whilst enjoying the pub-tat; I’m a big fan of pub-tat. I’d expected it to be all pictures and models of boats with some nets thrown across the ceiling. There was a bit of the salty old sea-dog about it, but there was also a guitar, a banjo, an impressive clock and plenty of flowers, both dried and fresh. Good, but not the best bit.
The best bit, just behind me on the north facing wall, was a ‘VIP lounge’-and there was me worried about the saloon being shut. The VIP lounge, appeared fairly similar to the rest of the bar, but the thick blue curtains, currently held back by ropes could be, presumably, drawn at the request of the VIP. In the middle was a table set out for dinner at 7pm for Val.
This set my imagination ablaze-which famous Val had booked it? Val Doonican is dead I’m sure, as is Valery Giscard d’ Estaing. That only leaves Val Mcdermid. I would have loved to have stayed to see if it was the Scottish Queen of crime writing, but it was 3.30, and I needed to catch the 4pm bus.
Never Turn Back, Caister, Norfolk