When I was young, I fell head over heels 

In love with that fair place, the British Pub. 

I gave up buying supermarket deals 

And joined instead the public drinking club. 

I watched the bar staff pull on wooden levers 

To summon lifeblood to the bar of zinc; 

From cellar cool to sell to us believers, 

We decent folk who’d gathered for a drink; 

And so began a lifelong admiration; 

On every street I sought the swaying sign 

Of Britain’s greatest social innovation 

From Hastings to the Humber and the Tyne, 

And found within the hostelry’s embrace  

My unquiet, wand’ring soul’s true resting place. 

 

The optics glowing in the bar’s soft lights, 

The crackling fires, the glint of polished brass; 

Warm conversation flowing through the nights, 

The thud of darts on boards, the clink of glass; 

The etiquette of queueing at the bar, 

The pint pots borne on brewery-branded trays, 

A local singer strumming his guitar, 

The click of cues on bright-lit emerald baize 

Old-timers in the corner playing cards 

I fell for all these customs and arrangements. 

In hops-and-barley-scented smoking yards, 

Through late-night lock-ins and some dark engagements 

I have stayed faithful to my greatest love 

The welcoming and warming British pub. 

 

But friends, beware! Of killjoy rulers up there 

Who’d have our pubs closed down without regret. 

They tax us and dictate precisely where 

A citizen may smoke a cigarette. 

They state the times pubs can and cannot serve, 

They try to drive a wedge ‘twixt drinks and folks 

With warnings dire to sap us of our verve, 

And limits on the subjects of our jokes. 

In lockdown days they dreamed up regulations – 

Remember outdoor-only? Rule of Six? – 

And all the other petty obligations 

Imposed by those abstemious, puritan pricks. 

But when we die and go to licensed heaven, 

No law will make the pubs shut at eleven.