Letter in today's Daily Telegraph:

SIR – Lists of user-friendly bars (Letters, July 1) will always lead with Maurice’s Peacock Inn in Nottingham, during the swinging Seventies.

Bells on the wall would bring pints of Shipstone’s in a jiffy, delivered with banter from another era.

I knew the pub well.  It was located on Mansfield Road, just up from the site of Nottingham Victoria station and opposite York House where I worked.  Many a happy lunchtime and after work sessions.  The lounge bar had a bell system.  Activate the bell push and Maurice would appear, tea-towel over his shoulder, take your order and reappear with tray and drinks and non PC banter.  Happy days.

Well worth a visit.

Should you be in Pembury I recommend a visit to the King William 1V, or the King Will as it is known locally.

http://www.thekingwill.co.uk/site/pages.php?fid=0,1

A recommendation

Should you be in the vicinity of Faversham, Kent  I recommend you tarry at the Sun Inn.  Excellent food (I enjoyed particularly the battered Whitstable fish).  The draught Guinness was in tip-top condition.  Wooden floors, no excruciating background music, attentive and efficient staff, good atmosphere and busy.

http://www.sunfaversham.co.uk/

Unacceptable behaviour

Most weekends the centres of our towns and cities are despoiled by hordes of drunken people engaging in fights, vomiting and generally making a complete and costly nuisance of themselves. Some finish up in A & E terrorising hospital staff.  We tut, tut, but little is done about it.

Over the past few days we have seen hordes of people causing damage to property and terrorising people.  Understandably people are angry and upset, but why is drunken behaviour tolerated to the extent it is?   Says something about our priorities.   Both are unacceptable.

Happy days

In the 1960s Dronfield was a small town on the A61. There had been some post-war housing development, but the pace accelerated and now it is a sprawling commuter town and the A61 by-passes it. In those far off days Dronfield had an Urban District Council which both Conservatives and Labour controlled from time to time. Local politics were interesting, full of characters, none more so than George Bailey who sported a handlebar moustache of Gerald Nabarro proportions.



George joined the Liberal Party and one of his first acts was to establish a weekly prize draw which took place every Friday evening at the Green Dragon public house. The landlord, Reuben, watched over the pub with a weary demeanour: but he kept a good pint.

In those days pubs closed at 10.30PM so George organised with Reuben for the use of the back room which could be entered either through the bar or by a door round the back of the pub. Sadly, this civilised arrangement was ended by the local constabulary turning up on Fridays at 10.20PM. Nothing was said, but due notice was taken of potential consequences of any 'afters'. Someone had 'grassed'.