Heartland

Ah, The Shakespeare. First pub in Durham to turf me out for being underage. Happy days.

I think I was in the Half Moon on Christmas Eve, though it may have been the Irish place that used to be the City. Or, by the end of Christmas Eve it may have been anywhere north of the Tees

I think it's time I pretended to visit my parents and sat in the Victoria for an afternoon drinking real ale, reading papers and growling at strangers who come too close. Used to love doing that in Neville's Cross before it went poncy.

Neville's Cross has gone poncey?

Who let that happen?

What's the Angel like these days?

Pretty much the same as it always was only a no drugs of any shape form or description to be passed around or imbibed or sold rule.
It made me feel like an OAP when I was last in, everyone looked half my age
A few of the EBG's still drink there occasionally.
It still remains about the only pub in Durham if you're not an avarage Joe to go to without being stared/verbally abused etc etc
I have to' fess up, I see more of Newcastle these days pubwise than Durham.

Have you missed anything? Hmm.

Well I bought a cat 4 weeks ago

Carrie wrote:Neville's Cross has gone poncey?

Who let that happen?

What's the Angel like these days?

Last time I was in it, it was called the Millennium Champagne Bar or something horrid. They'd knocked through the front and back rooms and created a fairly cheap attempt at goth-chic which felt a bit like a methodist chapel. The old pool room was more minimalist (and still had a pool table), but the feel was gone forever.

Also, the obscure locally brewed real ale at £1.30/pint and the collection of grumpy old men who gathered on a Friday to play pool, gamble and take the p*ss out of each other were gone. I spent almost a year playing against them ... and despite being reasonably friendly never shared a first name with anyone.

Long ago, and happy days. The really sad thing is a good friend of mine had a job managing the revamped bar for a while. Her brother helped introduce me to the joys of drinking during school cross-country back in the old days. I felt betrayed.

Almost never drank in Newcastle, though I used to enjoy the Trent House when another old school friend was at uni there. Now he's in Reading it seems like a long way for a pint. I always found Newcastle a bit too desperate to be seen to have a good time ... and I'm a bit too instinctively middle-aged for that

The Angel (& very occasionally Neville's Cross) used to be about the only places I ever went boozing in Durham - but then in fairness I was only there for a year (doing teacher training, '99 - '00). Lovely city, but NOT exactly Rock Central, unless I missed something...when my year was up I had to move back to West Yorkshire before I forgot what a live gig sounded like...

& of course the other problem with The Angel - apart from the baby nu-metallers, bless 'em - was always that it seemed to lead inexorably to the sort of drunkenness whereby going on to Klute's started to look like a good idea...

Carrie wrote:The Angel (& very occasionally Neville's Cross) used to be about the only places I ever went boozing in Durham - but then in fairness I was only there for a year (doing teacher training, '99 - '00). Lovely city, but NOT exactly Rock Central, unless I missed something...when my year was up I had to move back to West Yorkshire before I forgot what a live gig sounded like...

& of course the other problem with The Angel - apart from the baby nu-metallers, bless 'em - was always that it seemed to lead inexorably to the sort of drunkenness whereby going on to Klute's started to look like a good idea...

No-one can humanly drink enough to make Klute seem like a good idea, surely?

Last time I was in was with a gang of lads from Spennymoor - and I'm sure I saw someone there in his school uniform. Very, very strange ... and not in a good way.

But have to agree that Durham is a great town to live in if you're under 10 or over 60. My parents love it. Nuff said.

I'll grow into it again one day, I guess.

Carrie wrote:Lovely city, but NOT exactly Rock Central, unless I missed something...when my year was up I had to move back to West Yorkshire before I forgot what a live gig sounded like...

I went to visit a friend of mine who was at University there in the early eighties and we went to see...















Judie Tzuke.