A new hope at a beloved pub prompts poetic memories

Maurice Spillane: Of Poetry Swindon

I’ve been to every pub in North Wiltshire as my running group starts and ends in a pub.

We’re drinkers with a running problem.

I like good conversation, whispers of scandal, who’s sleeping with whom, fodder for poems.

I care less for TV, loud music and horror of horrors, a bishop’s collar on a pint of Guinness.

The previous landlords cut off heating last winter. I live by the adage “a bird never flew on one wing” and thus enjoy a second pint. There were few second pints last year.

And into this misery came our new landlord, Adam Clay, who knows a thing or two.

People are smiling again in the village, especially the regulars in the pub corner: Dave, Chris and Nobby. The heart is back in the village.

To Adam, I dedicate three verses of “A Working Man’s Friend” written by Brian O’Nolan, whom I knew in my youth:

When things go wrong and will not come right,