Farewell to the English pub

An article in the Daily Mail, which (I hope overstating the case) bids farewell to the traditional English public house:

The same gang of old boys gathers for darts tournaments every week, to throw some "arrows", smoke too much and cackle at private jokes. The walls are hung with badly stuffed fish. There are armchairs and an open fire.

But not any more. This time we got there to find all that gone, stuffed fish, open fire, regulars as well. New tenants had come in and chucked out everything, including the darts board and the bar billiards table.

Now, bar billiards is a weird and wonderful old pub game that's found in a few southern English counties. It's the essence of local distinctiveness.

They've replaced it with a pool table, the kind you'd see in a roadhouse in America or a bar in Bangkok.

And I am suddenly weary. Before my eyes, another tiny bit of the real England I love has been killed off.

But at least the pub is still there, which is more than can be said about far too many of them.

A stunning 56 close every month — usually demolished or converted into housing.

Country pubs are disappearing the fastest. More than half the villages of England are now "dry" for the first time since the Norman Conquest.

At that rate, they'll need to start preserving the pubs in the same way they preserve castles and stately homes!