Twenty-five years ago

Twenty-five years ago yesterday I went out on a first date, and there is a bit of a story attached to it. I was a teacher, at, I guess, the top of middle management, and lived in on my own in a house I’d had from new. I was doing an MA in writing studies. it was April 18th, the Easter holidays, and I was working at the kitchen table on my trusty Amstrad computer (remember those?) doing an assignment. I was deep into the complexities of linguistics when the phone rang.

I guess I wasn’t really concentrating, thinking more about my studies which I was doing in my own time without any funding, so it was important I worked hard and did well! I picked up the phone without really thinking about it and it was a teacher from school. Bari worked in the art department, and although I ‘knew’ him as a colleague, I didn’t actually know him at all, but I knew he liked jazz which I hate, and cricket which I didn’t like much either, and he was very shouty, and didn’t seem my type at all. He asked if I would like to go out for a beer and caught on the hop I said ‘yes’. I put the phone down and was really cross with myself. Why on earth had I agreed to go out with this bloke? It would be a really boring evening, we had nothing in common, and he definitely wasn’t a bloke I could fancy… but at least it would be going out, at least I wouldn’t be stuck in on my own, and at least he did like beer – so the chance of a decent pint wherever we went!

He arrived punctually to pick me up and then we drove out of town, up onto and over the moors to a little pub he knew where the landlord brewed his own beer,which was quite unusual twenty-five years ago. I was surprised that as we drove along we chatted easily, but then I thought, we have been colleagues for twelve years, we have sat next to each other in staff meetings and gone on the same courses as each other. Because we had taught in the same school for twelve years we pretty much knew each other’s personal history, superficially at least.

We arrived at the pub, The Old Sair Inn in Linthwaite in Yorkshire. A sair is a sow, and Linthwaite is pronounced Linfit. It was on top of a very steep hill with a broken road, it was small,, stone flagged, with beams, an old fireplace, a window seat with mullioned windows and a splendid array of beers such as Enoch’s Hammer, Old Eli,  Lead Boiler and English Guineas, all brewed by the landlord, Ron Crabtree, who is still there apparently!

We stood at the bar and Bari asked me what I wanted to drink; for some reason he thought I was a campari drinker… and was somewhat surprised when I asked for half a pint of Old Eli, I believe. Then I suddenly thought, hey, I’m not driving, I’ll have a pint! Bari was astounded, and I think I won his heart there and then!

The short end of the story is that twenty-five years later, one marriage, two kids, new jobs, retirement and a whole new life of freedom from employment, we are still blissfully together, and still supping good beer. Last night it was Otter from the brewery in Devon, and enjoyed in the Dolphin.

One last little part to the story of our first date… after a Bari had dropped me back at home and driven off into the night without us even exchanging a kiss, I went to bed and after reading for a while, lay in the darkness grinning to myself at what a splendid night we’d had. I woke the next morning having had such a vivid dream – I dreamt that I was in bed and Bari was standing at the foot of it with a little dark-haired baby in his arms… when our son was born two years later, Bari was the first to hold him and as I looked at my husband and new baby I remembered my dream, the night after our first date at the Old Sair Inn.

http://www.hereforthebeer.co.uk/marsden–slaithwaite.html

http://www.realalehunter.co.uk/pubs/sair-inn-nr-huddersfield