Oxford: tours and pubs

Although the Visitor Information Centre in Oxford has closed it doors for good (unless the city council comes up with a rescue plan, which seem unlikely), it seems that the guiding side of the business is not quite dead. In fact, I actually had a booking in my diary for a tour on the 23^rd of July.

I dutifully drove to Oxford on that day after carefully studied the rules of guiding in a post lock-down scenario.  However, soon after letting myself into our flat I glanced at my phone only to find that I had two emails a couple of missed calls and a voicemail. All of that made it quite clear that the tour had been cancelled for the simple reason that no one had booked onto it. Oh well.

That afternoon I caught up with some Oxford related business and glanced at my usual source of what’s on in the city. It did not take long. Virtual stuff, which can be viewed from anywhere, anytime aside, the answer was nothing. No live music, no lectures, no concerts – not a thing. No great surprise there. But, I thought to myself, there’s always the pub.

Rather than visit my locals that night I decided to take a look at the pub situation in the centre of Oxford on the assumption that it would be livelier than the Cotswolds. As I cycled towards the centre I passed the famous Eagle and Child – closed. And on the other side of the road one of my favourites, the Lamb and Flag – closed. In Oxford’s busiest street I found that the newest pub to open, the Plough, was closed. My heart began to sink and my wallet flexed its expansive muscle.

But I found an open pub – I usually do. It was the Chequers, another of my favourites lurking in its fifteenth century glory just off the High Street. Now, the last time I had set foot in the Chequers, just before the lock-down, it had been deserted and I immediately blamed the impending Covid restrictions. However, it soon filled up – in fact there had been a power outage.

This time it was almost empty, just one table was occupied by a lively, isolated group and it did not fill up. As I sat alone near the entrance I mused: the beer is good, the price reasonable and there’s a darts match on the TV - so what’s the problem? Quite simply the pub had the atmosphere of a burst balloon. Then one of the key players of the local CAMRA branch came in, ordered a pint of cider and we plunged into a spirited conversation on pubs and their possible demise, on beer, on travel, and on the virus.

Later we visited two more pubs, both closed, then to the pitifully name White Rabbit aka Gloucester Arms, aka Glock. Getting in was a little difficult but once inside I found that it had barely changed from, oh, ten years ago when it was the headquarters of the Oxford rockers, had the loudest, meanest juke box in town, and anyone without a tattoo was looked upon with deep suspicion. On the night that I suggested barmaids in suggestive tatters roamed around but did not approach us; the two old tattoo less males. At the bar itself there were only two cask ales available apparently, but I was given the other one from a pump with no label. A golden beer, very refreshing and the best of the night. My friend who is an infinite source of knowledge on the subject of beer told me that it was Golden Citrus from the Turpin Brewery and the long bearded landlord told me that it was his favourite beer, just as one of the keg beers had been earlier! The pub buzzed, it was alive. There is hope yet that Hilaire Belloc’s prediction “When you lose your inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England" may not come to pass. By the way I was recently asked to choose an object that I could take with me as a castaway on a desert island - can you guess my answer? Click on the pub below to find out.

Next night I went, with a friend, to my main local, the Rose and Crown. It is a small, loveable place and though there were not many there it had, as ever, atmosphere. Its balloon was inflated by the irrepressible landlord, Andrew, who has the essential gift of linking strangers together then stepping back to enjoy the show. And the beer – Golden Citrus again! Long live the Rose and Crown and pubs like it. You know the tune, join with me to sing:

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk into England’s great pub scene
And was the holy grail of ale
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

The pub again – at last

Running around Stow-on-the-Wold on the morning of the important date of Saturday the 4^th of July (lockdown up) I deliberately ran past all of the pubs (there are eight – plus a social club) in preparation for a pub opening adventure that night. The first that I encountered, The Queen’s Head, had a notice proudly stating that they were opening at 12pm that day which threw me into such confusion that I wavered on my way. Did they mean noon or midnight, must be noon yet that follows 11.59 AM. Best to say 12 noon or 12 midnight to avoid confusion. Another pub on the square was opening on the Monday (why wait?) and yet another, The Bell, was waiting until the 20^th. Others did not commit.

So the Queen’s it had to be. But hang on, though I like the pub very much, the beer is not to my taste. It is a local beer from the small but delightful Donnington Brewery with its lake, black swan and water wheel. I should like it, I know I should and I once did but, well, let’s just say it is not my favourite tipple and I wanted a beer that I savoured to celebrate the end of lockdown.

So we went to the nearby village of Oddington where the Horse and Groom serves a good pint from one of my favourite breweries: Wye Valley. This place is more of a restaurant than a pub to my mind, a bit corporate perhaps, but very well run and welcoming.

Looking back to pre-lockdown, the last pub that I visited was the Harcourt Arms in Jericho, Oxford, a regular port of call on a Sunday since it has the ‘best open mike night in Oxford’ and is not in any way corporate. The Oddington place could not be more different to the Harcourt, but it does serve a cracking pint. That night I had two delicious pints of Butty Bach and really enjoyed them.

Covid set the rules of course. My name and telephone number was taken for contact purposes, there were rather attractive ‘one way’ markers on the floor, and it was table service only. The place was not very busy, but peeping around the corner I saw and heard a group of about eight drinkers who all came from the same household judging by their proximity. They were quite rowdy and gave a bit of atmosphere to the place – and the beer was top notch after months of mostly bottled beer.

Then back to Stow, only to find that the Queen’s had closed at nine! What was that all about? Perhaps they had opened at 12 midnight after all and were whacked. Instead we went to the White Hart (recently renamed The Stag, but locals still call it the White Hart) which is hotel and hence a bit corporate, but welcoming. Same Covid arrangements and here we were given a table which a couple had just vacated. The seats were still warm, isn’t that a bit…oh well. I needed to visit the toilet, but was faced with a notice outside stating that only one person was allowed inside. This confused me. I stood at the door not knowing if there was a person inside or not. There was. The door opened and he and I did a little social distancing dance as he left and I entered.

Much of the conversation here centered around how many people had turned up on this first day out of lockdown – lots at lunchtime, fewer tonight - and how many people were still afraid to leave their homes. I felt a little uncomfortable to be out and about myself after all these weeks and the atmosphere generally was a little surreal. Added to which we did not meet anyone that we knew, but that, no doubt, was because I chose good beer over local society.

It’s funny you know, I thought that I would really miss my regular trips to the pub, but I did not, not much. And I also thought that I would suffer withdrawal symptoms owing to lack of real ale, but I did not, much.  But it was great to be back: especially drinking those two pints of Butty Bach.

Thoughts on editing

Though I set up this blog to write about my writing, I rarely do that. The subjects covered are wide ranging and mainly stimulated by happenings in my day-to-day life and often focus on travel. So, back to books for a change and to that great improver of one’s writing – editing.

When I decided to write about this topic, one which is so close to the soul of anyone who writes, I happened to be reading Bill Bryson’s Troublesome Words where he remarks that whenever anyone writes about editing there will always be an elephantine abuse of English somewhere in their text. So look out!

The professional editor’s basic role, as I see it, is to remove grammatical errors and typos, clarify unclear English and impose the house style of the publisher (things like the use of inverted commas, capitalisation, use of numbers such as 100 versus one hundred, use of slang, etc). Even this can cause problems between the editor and the edited.  When I wrote technical books they were mostly published by US-based publishers and it was one of these that changed the verb following a word I used extensively (data) from singular to plural: where I wrote ‘data is’ they substituted ‘data are’. However, general usage had settled on data as both singular and plural and the singular (datum) was little used. The publisher tried to insist on ‘data are’ so I checked out five previous books that they had published – all of them used ‘data is’ extensively. Other battles were not so easily won.

Many years ago, I met my first self-proclaimed lesbian in a bar in Georgetown, USA. The conversation began because she had a broken leg and her plaster cast occupied the stool between us, but that is by-the-by. It occurred around my ‘data is’ period just mentioned and I needed a shoulder to cry on, so I told her about it. She then confessed that she was not only a lesbian, but also an editor. However, her writers called her the ‘stealth editor’ because when they read the edited manuscript they could not detect what had changed, yet proclaimed that the outcome was better. I wished then, and many times since that she could edit my writing.

Before that incident, in fact years before I published my first book, I met an editor in a bar in Ipswich, UK he was, actually a sub-editor of the local newspaper. I was a minor contributor to that rag at the time through the correspondence column and my activities as chairman of the local branch of the Campaign for Real Ale. We were talking about beer and I asked him if he had read my latest article. What he said surprised me: “Oh no. I don't read content when I’m editing, if I did then I would miss the errors”. That’s the sort of editor I like, I thought.

Later, when I started up on my own, I launched a newsletter called VINE which stood for Voice in Europe. I wrote all of the content and felt very exposed since I had no one to check it over before printing. Fortunately, my old boss, Hugh Daglish, had retired just then and was at a loose end and agreed to layout each issue for printing and to check the grammar. His mother had been an English teacher, he had written a book on fonts and he knew little and probably cared little about the content. Perfect qualifications, and it worked well until his sudden death in Israel. I sold the newsletter soon after that.

Nowadays, I have two stalwarts who valiantly read through the books I write before I let anyone else see them. And, though we occasionally disagree about things like capitalization and starting a sentence with ‘and’, the process is amicable and enjoyable. And I am entirely grateful to them for spotting typos, grammatical errors, and so on. They also make useful suggestions about content which I often act upon. You know who you are, so thank you.

What has really spurred me into writing this blog is this: the editing of my latest book has been hell. The first phase went reasonably OK, though there were minor problems about English usage and so on – all exacerbated by the fact that the publishers were based in India. That done there was then an unexpected and very long second phase where a committee was formed to overview content. Now, admittedly, I was writing on sensitive subjects including potted histories of various famous figures from the Indian sub-continent, but my sources were all identified and I had no axe to bear in recounting their lives. The committee had axes! Whole swathes of the book were rewritten in a florid style completely unlike my own and including opinions, in my name, that I did not hold and could not justify. I was horrified and indicated that, despite my own considerable time and money expended on the book, I could not agree to its publication.

In the end, of course, compromises were found, tempers cooled and the book was completed (as I write it is yet to be published). But it will never be mine, not in the way that my others are. And I still dream of that stealth editor with the broken leg.