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BB2432
: Pints All Round
Wednesday
30th October 2024
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I remember, back in 1969 or thereabouts,
sitting in the Skyrack, a pub in Leeds popular then, as now, with
students. It was budget day. The bad news was that the Chancellor had just
announced an increase in the duty on beer which would lift the price of a pint
from one shilling and ten pence to two shillings.
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The pound in your pocket might not have been devalued but the florin in
your hand certainly had. Crying into my
beer, I vowed I would never vote Labour again.
Not that I had ever voted for anyone at that age.
Today, before we set out over
Whitbarrow Scar in the anticyclonic gloom, we vowed that any discussion of this
year’s Autumn Statement from the Chancellor would be banned. Consequently we, i.e. Martin,
Ian, Stan and I, talked of all sort of other things, some meaningful, some
utter rubbish and some about the deer that we spotted.
En-route we were pleased to
meet Mike B, whom we haven’t seen for quite some time. He accompanied us as far as Lord’s Seat then
departed.
Soon afterwards we stopped for
lunch and a new plan was hatched.
The
gloom was lifting so we headed on down to Rawsons. Our target, surprise, surprise, was the Hare
& Hounds at Levens, a further two miles across the Mosses.
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At Raven’s Lodge there is
usually something for sale, payment via an honesty box.
This time there were freebies.
A magazine I hadn’t seen before called “Keer
to Kent”.
It’s the Journal of the Landscape
Trust and is normally priced at £1.70.
But this one was free. Maybe being
six years old had something to do with it.
However it contained an article that resonated with me.
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I
remember from my youth that at Far Arnside the
turf seemed to go out for a long, long way out into the estuary before it
reached the sort of windy beach where Bob Dylan could dance beneath the diamond sky
with one arm waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
etc. I loved it. Sadly, in the 1980s the channel moved and the
turf was washed away. Now (or at least 6
years ago), according to Ann Kitchen, it was making a comeback. Good on it.
Expand
your screen if you want to read it.
Waiting for us at the pub was
Mike with Stephen and Terry. They had
been listening to the Chancellor and greeted us with the good news. In today’s budget, contrary to 1967, the duty
on a pint of beer was being reduced by a whole new penny.
Yes, you read that right. Reduced! All the
way from £4.50 to £4.49.
Great celebrations. Pints all round!
Don Wednesday 30th
October 2024
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