Grauniad: Ian Jack on Wharfedale & growing old +wise

[Cyril Haearn]

Ian Jack has a very interesting article in the Guardian today, it starts with the first non-smoking pub (in Yorkshire, where else? Good for a pub-quiz question) and discusses how personality changes with age, or does not change. Very interesting: how can the info from the 1950s be compared with info from today? Change and "progress" are so interesting3

[661-Pete]

I could have answered the pub-quiz question straight off: I remember the New Inn at Appletreewick (pronounced "Attrick" according to some authorities), back from my student days in Yorkshire. TBH it wasn't one of my watering-holes - its beer wasn't anything special and there was better real ale at another pub a bit further down the road (whose name I forget). Unfortunately the latter wasn't a non-smoker, and the landlord there wasn't too friendly towards walkers - or cyclists.

A friend of mine, a heavy smoker himself, did pay a visit to the New Inn once: for his pains after he got chatting to Mr Showers. he was presented with a bottle of linctus of some sort. Apparently, you were supposed to take one mouthful of this stuff, and you'd be off the fags for the next 24 hours or so. He said he tried it and it worked. He said that smoking a fag after, was like having a cat p*** in his mouth.

Alas! He didn't give up smoking there and then; he gave up the linctus instead.....

Perhaps someone on here can suggest what might have been in this 'linctus'. And whether it's available today.

[blackbike]

Smoke free pubs are a an improvement on the olden days.

What a pity child free pubs are becoming rarer.

[TYKE]

The Craven Arms is the other pub in the village

The New Inn is crap and the owners have applied to turn it into holiday lets with a one room bar

[Cyril Haearn]

Smoke free pubs are a an improvement on the olden days.

What a pity child free pubs are becoming rarer.

I love children. I drink no alcohol. Where may I find a pub without beer?

[meic]

Saudi Arabia?

[661-Pete]

When stopping in a pub for lunch, while driving (and sometimes when cycling), the first thing I ask is "any alcohol-free beer?" I've gone off the idea of fruit juice or soft drinks in pubs - too sugary (never mind the price!). If the pub can't oblige, I'm prepared to take 1% beer - one bottle only. I reckon 0.25 units of alcohol won't impair me. I'm not particularly keen on alcohol-free beer as a stand-alone drink, but with a meal it's ok for me.

But if the "1%" request still draws a blank, well - it's off to the next pub.

I wonder what sort of reaction I would have got, if I'd made this request 40 years ago? When did low/zero alcohol beers first appear on the scene?

[thirdcrank]

We (that's Mrs TC and I ) like pubs without background music. The buzz of conversation when people are relaxed and enjoying themselves is best, and it's surprising how few places there are that seem to recognise this. (Sam Smith's houses don't count because AFAIK, that's because Humphrey isn't prepared to stump up for the PRS permit.)

Two traditional village pubs without music in Yorkshire are the Chequers at Ledsham and the Blue Lion at East Witton. Good grub at both. I'm not one for going into a pub and telling them how to run it by asking for the music to be turned down.

It must be a rare pub these days where you can't get non-alcoholic drinks although we did once get some strange looks and backchat in Welsh when we went in a pub in Bala with a sign outside advertising morning coffee + scones and we ordered that.

When I was a child, on my dear old dad's rare visits to a boozer we sat outside while he fetched us some pop. We didn't take our own children to pubs much either, but IMO it's different now. A lot of pubs depend on the food trade and a lot of family diners include children. Some kids - like some adults - don't know how to behave but IME the majority are used to eating out which helps them relax.

[Mike Sales]

Smoke free pubs are a an improvement on the olden days.

What a pity child free pubs are becoming rarer.

I love children. I drink no alcohol. Where may I find a pub without beer?

SlimDusty sang about one.

"But there's nothing so lonesome so morbid or drear than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer. "

In the Outback.

[TYKE]

Smoke free pubs are a an improvement on the olden days.

What a pity child free pubs are becoming rarer.

I love children. I drink no alcohol. Where may I find a pub without beer?

A cafe or a little chef ??

[Cyril Haearn]

The second part interests me more, personality change. For me there are some constants (cycling, books, railways, Cymru, Grauniad) but I have become more relaxed, curious, open since I passed 40, 50. With the passage of time alone one becomes wiser, without being especially smart or going to college

[Cugel]

The second part interests me more, personality change. For me there are some constants (cycling, books, railways, Cymru, Grauniad) but I have become more relaxed, curious, open since I passed 40, 50. With the passage of time alone one becomes wiser, without being especially smart or going to college

Some find, as they age, that they know less than they thought they did, every day that passes. But this is a relativity matter, since one can know more in terms of volume whilst realising just how great is the amount of stuff one still doesn't know, an amount that increases everyday as the mists of youth clear and you realise that the knowledge scape disappears around the curve of the memetic planet on which all we humans abide.

Moreover, it often turns out that what you knew was "made-up-stuff" nowhere to be found in reality, should you step outside your culture-box into that dangerous place.

On the other hand, some are born (or so it seems) with fixed ideas that only become more ossified as they age. Others are "born free" but are soon clasped into mental chains by their parents, school and culture at large. Brainwashing programs are multitudinous, as are the various brain washing machines. One can find them free all over the interweb. Even today, the schools are still stuffed with them. And need we mention so-called newspapers, which all have a suspiciously identical set of story subject-matter, even if they colour it more or less red or blue as part of their role to promote "the red-blue clown show".

Some folk are greatly frightened by new ideas, especially if they undermine the fearful-one's craving for certainty, so that they invent chimerical "certainties" to cling to, no matter how useless they are at actually keeping one's mind afloat in an ever-more-choppy sea of meme froth & spume. Many still reject all that new-fangled modern stuff such as logic or the scientific method in favour of tried and trusted delusions of certainty, honed over centuries - the memeplexes know as religions and, their secular form, ideologies. After all, science keeps changing its truths for slightly better ones, which implies there is no Truth! Aieee!

Others go down the mad-conspiracy path and become certain of some very queer things.

But I do enjoy those fellows who stand on a small box to bellow their Truth at we sceptics standing about in the audience with a gleeful grin of anticipation at hearing the latest mad stuff. It's that vaguely superior feeling that we cyclists often get as we ride past a queue of emotional motorist snaking down miles of road that is open to us but closed to them. Why don' they realise that they too could just get a bike? Naughty, I know.

Cugel

[Cyril Haearn]

Hey Cugel

Why did you decide at last to emigrate to Wales? What about the woodworking machines?

.. wondering about starting a thread about decisions, got me thinking

[Cugel]

Hey Cugel

Why did you decide at last to emigrate to Wales? What about the woodworking machines?

.. wondering about starting a thread about decisions, got me thinking

Elsewhere in this forum is my potted "reasons for going to Wales" - in that thread about protecting child minds from the frightful opinions of ole pharts, I think. Basically, running away from the madding crowd here towards a smaller crowd of still-real folk there.

The woodworking machines are being winnowed, as is other stuff - particularly loft-stuff - down to the essentials. Ebay is quite good at this and one accumulates a wodge which might well go on a shiny bike. It might even be an electric bike, so that the ladywife can keep up with me on them Welsh mynydds. Would you like to buy a lovely pair of old wheels in perfect condition for your Eroica bike, by the way?

****
I'm not sure I believe that we humans make decisions in the fashion we pretend (via conscious rational choices). We aren't rational, for a start. Also, something deep in the Id makes the decisions - we conscious bits just invent "rationalisations after the fact" as explanations to the other "decision makers", who are judging us via comparison with their own "decisions"; but mostly to our conscious egos, who wish to be thought of as somehow in charge. Ha!

Then there's those memes which, along with Susan Blackmore, I believe to be distinct entities with their own evolutionary thrusts and wanders, parasitic or symbiotic on us but not necessarily operating for our welfare but rather their own responses to the need to survive. Many religions and ideologies survive and prosper precisely via the sacrifice of their human hosts, in various kinds of wars and genocides.

But I digress.

How do you make decisions yourself? I have learnt to veto all my initial drives in that direction in favour of a drift, which sometimes goes towards the rocky shore but occasionally goes into the Bay of Shangri-La. If "I" make a decision, it often turns out badly since I seem to be infested with various memetic devils with agendas of their own. The go-to-Wales decision meshes with the desires of my Id but the actual choice was made by t'ladywife ... which makes it all her fault if things go awry, see?

Cugel, going for a ride in a minute (maybe).

[Ben@Forest]

I love children. I drink no alcohol. Where may I find a pub without beer?

There are a few temperance pubs about. The Cross Keys at Cautley nr Sedbergh is good. It's known for it's ham and eggs.