I spent
last weekend at Llangrannog, Cardiganshire, with my niece, her husband, three
dogs, two cats, three horses and a donkey.
We were celebrating the birthday of my
late brother, who would have been 89 this year and who might even have been
there with us if he had taken a little more exercise and a little less Famous
Grouse. The tight sod also failed to make provision for these gatherings
when he ordered his affairs, so we spent the weekend in the Ship Inn and the
Pentre Arms, entirely at our own expense.
The Pentre and the Ship are both extremely civilised
hostelries with sensibly flexible opening hours and one can while away a whole
day there if one has a mind. Both offer excellent real ales and the Ship, as I
remember, once served wine in three glass sizes, the largest being ‘Oh Go On Then’.
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| The Ship Inn. Llangrannog |
All day pub
drinking is all very well, but best not indulged in if one has already downed a
half bottle of red over lunch and follows it up with another half bottle over
dinner as I did. Later, my attempt to access the bathroom, two steps before I
got to the top of the stairs, resulted in unplanned contact with the landing
carpet and persuaded me that my days of
serious carousing were over, so it was with some sadness that I later announced
my permanent retirement from all day drinking.
This life-changing decision forced me to reflect on my long past bacchanalian adventures;
adventures that, if undertaken by anyone
else, would have been regarded as a shameful catalogue of drunken degeneracy, rather
than the youthful exuberance and (mostly) jolly good fun that they really were. It was a difficult choice, but one really has to know when to quit
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| The Pentre Arms, Llangrannog. |
I am of course, left with a whole lifetimes memories. All night parties, some of which carried on to include a whole Bank Holiday weekend; people paddling in my fishpond on Christmas Eve, much to the distress of the neighbours: prowling Malvern YHA in the early hours of a winters morning in the vain search for a loo, and perhaps, most nostalgic of all, after a dreadful session in the Cabaret Andalus mislaying myself, along with three comrades, on a Baghdad traffic island to be eventually rescued and escorted back to the YMCA by a kindly local.
I could write a book, but no bugger would publish it, anymore than they publish anything else I write.
