A new and very different pub

So tonight we drifted down to the pub, in this case, ‘we’ was not me and my beloved but me and my boy. If you’ve not managed to catch up, our favourite pub, the one and only Dolphin in Uphill, has had a make-over. We have been very anxious, supposing it has changed from our much-loved home from home to something awful and unrecognisable? I’ve often written about our pub, and now, whenever I do. I think about my dear friend, David.

I never met David, I don’t know what he looked like, but I know quite a lot about him. We “met” here on my blog. I know he lived in Canada, that he had been born and spent his young childhood in Manchester, but we never got to know each other in real life. I would write, he would comment, I would reply, he would respond, I would answer back, we would joke, laugh, tease, exchange news and history – I’m not telling an untruth to say we were very close. And then he stopped messaging… and I had to face the sad truth that he, sadly, very sadly, had died. I was so sorry, very sorry, and every time I share something here, I think of him, and miss him. It might sound crazy, but stupid though it is, I mourn him.

So anyway, back to the pub, back to the Dolphin. It has not only been modernised, refurbed, redecorated and updated, it is almost unrecognisable. Its footprint may very well be nearly five hundred years old, but the actual building we were sitting in tonight dates back to the 1860’s and was renowned as a rendezvous for local smugglers. Other myths, which I hope have a tiny element at least of truth – it was where Cornishmen enlisting to fight the Spanish Armada met, and maybe Sir Walter Raleigh smoked the first pipe of tobacco ever in this country. I first visited the Dolphin a horrific half century ago (ssssh! don’t tell anyone!) 

I first properly knew the pub quite a while ago when my parents moved next door to it, then when we moved into their home we became better acquainted We moved again, fortunately only a few hundred more yards away, and since then we have been very regular regulars. There have been changes, many changes, of course – things need renewing, updating, improving, but there hasn’t been such a drastic imagining as there is now, as far as I can remember.

The new Dolphin, to us, seems more like a town cocktail bar cum coffee bar, all the comfy old stools, seats and benches gone, all the tables with the marks of many spills and dribbles, all the mismatched chairs have disappeared. The pictures, the photographs, the tankards hanging from a beam, the trophies and plaques commemorating golf, bowls and cribbage tournaments, replaced now by generic artwork, glitzy mirrors – it seems as if the history of the place has become invisible. Anyone walking in would think what a bright, clean, modern place! Look at the ranks of bottles waiting to dispense their shots, look at the array of wine – and the pumps serving lagers and craft beers!

The service is friendly and immediate and efficient, everything is spotlessly clean, the toilets exemplary, the staff efficient and friendly, all is clean, shiny, generic, anonymous.

I guess if we go down when more people are there, more people we know,, more friendly faces, more of a buzz, we might feel more comfortable, However, our worry is, that this is not the sort of pub for Uphill – its drastic update is a terrific gamble – especially as there is another excellent pub in Uphill which is more traditional. Will people flock in to the Dolphin, become regulars in this new and very different pub, keep it going? Will there be a quiz??!!

Only time will tell.

Are Charles Aznavour’s words an epitaph? ...Shadows of the past that I remember ’til the day I die… – I hope not!