You know, this area is teeming with OKish Pubs, where families go for Sunday carveries (is that the plural of carvery?) and most pubs have far more eating room than drinking space these days.
Until a year or two ago there was one place, just off the beaten-track, (Burton, Nr Christchurch) that had missed this metamorphosis, missed the decking, the blue LEDs, and most definitely missed the stainless steel and glass apologies for atmosphere we label as refurbishment.
To be truthful it felt a bit run-down, you just knew it couldn't go on - too much land, too few customers, staff a bit, well . . . . elsewhere.
AND - you had to walk through an enormous unlit pot-holed carpark to enter the mansion-like doorways, breathe the staleness - and listen to some of the roughest, dirtiest rock music this side of, em .... a thing with sides on. Smokers barely remained outside, and the music went on until they finished.
SUPERB!
I LOVED the OLD Manor Arms, it suited a mood, because, I know some of us are still Midnight Cowboys under the meetings, the policies, the politics, the sheer bloody correctness of our lives.
So when we close the door on the retreating leg of a partner, and walk back around the silver-grey identikit thing we use, open the door, to slide in front of the steering-wheel - we're really, in our hearts, swinging a leather and studded leg across some hell-fire hog, to tool-off into the night amid the spitting fury of our stacked chrome tailpipes.
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