Sister BRAPA (not a nun), lovely as she is, used to forbid me to go to the football on her birthday, and that has filtered through into BRAPA, I've sort of forbidden myself from pub ticking on this day for fear of reprisals, until 2023 in Hastings.
It's not that she scares me (she really does), but she STILL reminds me of 1999, her 15th birthday, when I snuck off to the Vetch Field down in Swansea to watch Hull City lose 2-0 in a meaningless end of season dead rubber. After several pints of Guinness in an unknown backstreet boozer (I didn't know real ale or pub names mattered then), the game was delayed due to a late deluge causing some waterlogging, fear of postponement ensues (in May I tell ya, our players had their post-season holiday flight booked the following morning so a P-P was out of the question), so after much pitch forking, it went ahead, David Brown missed a few chances, we lost 2-0, didn't really try, John Hollins said some nice things about us on the radio, and we STILL made it back to York for 11:59pm, racing upstairs to wish my sister a 'Happy Birthday' but no, she was too cross! I'd RUINED her day. And she mentions it EVERY YEAR. So Hastings made me nervous.
No, not him
Trying to be clever, I said to Daddy BRAPA 'let's jump off a stop early at a place called Ore. Oh my gawd. What a shit tip! And then a perilous walk downhill into Hastings Old Town, it really hadn't been worth it.
Thankfully, it was immediately apparent that Hastings was a far prettier beast. Remind me, if I ever adopt a small male kitten or even an elderly cat to call him 'Admiral of the Fleet Sir Cloudesley Shovell'. We passed his gaff.
I'd never have clocked our first pub if it wasn't for the giant Crown hanging outside, it looked so unlike a pub in every other way, though I guess (cos I once read Pete Brown) that this is how those illiterate idiots in the middle ages used to identify their pub ticks.
Not illiterate, or a middle ager
11am opener, I'll give it that, but Crown, Hastings (2472 / 4366) was our weakest pub today by some distance. It was fine. But the other pubs were a strong bunch. A gastro airy disjointed sort of place, 'Observer Food Pub of the Year 2019' someone told me on Twitter, 'course it is, those buggers wouldn't review north of the M25' said Daddy B or words to that effect, before launching into a fascinating anecdote about a breakfast café in Headingley. At 3.5%, Burning Sky Plateau was the 'sensible' starting point, a beer southerners always rave about to me but I've never enjoyed, until now! Lovely stuff, and when I look back, every other pint of it has been in Central London which explains a lot. So pale though, I find it distracting! Talking of pale and distracting, the most interesting aspect of today's visit here was a posho group of women at the far end of the pub speaking in hushed tones about what sounded like some brutal 2023 topics. I think it might've been a therapy group or self-help clinic the way everyone went around the table and 'was heard' and told 'their truths' and were 'their best selves'. One lady has a top on with "I HATE EVERYONE!" printed in massive letters on the back. I put Colin in her eyeline in case she wanted a cuddle. Therapy Cauli? The future.
Yes, you can save the planet and get wasted all in one go in Hastings, there's even a list of participating pubs which appealed to someone with my brain, but the GBG was enough today. Five more to do.
And onto our next, shortly before 12, but it closes at 3pm the meanies so best to get it done, and don't you just know when you've got this many GBG stickers on the window, it is gonna be a class act?
We should've been first in, if not last out, at the First In Last Out, Hastings (2473 / 4367) but it is now 12:03pm, and an old regular sticks his nose on the glass, and despite me trying to exchange a few pleasantries with him and a member of staff who brings out a blackboard, all I get is grunts, and that continues into the pub as we order beers from their own brewery whilst an army of staff blokes who look like overripe pork chops stare silently at us! But what a beautiful pub, and the FILO brew is surprisingly good stuff. Carpet, smoky, booths, amazing bar lighting, coat hooks, an occasional shriek from the cellar, beautifully old school, I got a few Laurieston Glasgow vibes. And the place is full of locals within minutes. And between long swigs of ale, they are obsessed with fish. Which fish you used to be able to catch and eat in the 60's, versus now. Twitter starlet J R Dickenson had told me how Hastings is known for being 'a drinking town with a fishing problem' and so it would seem! And a nice cheery farewell off the staff which I hadn't been expecting after our entrance!
Onto pub three, and I think this one might have been my absolute favourite of a strong set.
"It'll never work and it never does!" I'd grumbled back in Wiltshire recently at Salisbury's Winchester Gate. I'm talking pubs which double as music venues, probably great at night, but in the day, sort of tatty, grotty, and a bit depressing to be inside. But step forward Jenny Lind, Hastings (2474 / 4368) to shatter my preconceived notions of rubbish real ale music pubs. A corker! Vibrant bold mustard colour scheme, bare boarded simplicity, top wood panelling, curving bar, not all pubs need a carpet to be amazing #NotAllPubs And the barmaid, oh the barmaid, loved her, felt like we formed a connection in the short time it took her to serve us, nearly proposed, looking into those watery, alive blue eyes like mad whirlpools. I'd probably have gotten away with it had this been a P G Wodehouse novel. Loved her. Oh, and the beer, the beer! Best pump clip ever. A bit like a fag packet. Everything that is forbidden. Big Brother is watching, you get it don't you? Daddy BRAPA is a clever man but it took him 20 minutes to realise what it meant. 5.5% tasted 10.5%, my head is swimming and this was about a third of the way down pint 3. Uh oh! Then our barmaiderly hero takes advantage of the lack of customers to get up on a stool and clean the blackboard, which of course she did with incredible poise, grace and prowess.
Phew, well that was part one! Still three more Hastings area pubs to go, a pub closure, and a bonus late one in London. How could I cope? Find out in Part Two tomorrow.
You picked three good ones there, Simon. Ore isn't worth bothering with though, as you found out!