The Flowerpots Inn, Cheriton

No offence taken, Borninbred.

But I'm intrigued to learn that, thanks to your twenty years' experience in the trade, you are unquestionably right.

Whereas, the rest of us (the locals - of over twenty years service, the family who have run the pub for 38 years, the many who praise the 'Pots on this site, the cricket clubs who use it in the summer, the Morris dancers, the Ramblers, the vintage car clubs,the clubs and commitees, the Am Dram Society, the Good Pub Guide, the Good Beer Guide, a hundred other books and magazines who have rated this pub one the best in the county, the thousands who flock there once a year or a hundred times a year, not forgeting those who - shock horror - live 13 miles away and consider it their local) are utterly and irredeemably wrong.

Do you take this supreme self-confidence to every bar you visit? I wonder if this might possibly have something to do with how the staff treat you.

My apologies, as they say, if this offends.

21 Apr 2006 17:58

The Flowerpots Inn, Cheriton

We sat in the Flowerpots the other day, and Borninbred's 'review' was passed round. He seems to have been slightly confused - perhaps he'd had one half too many.
He suggests we, the clientelle, should 'stop playing at rural living' - bit difficult when most of my drinking companions are farmers, and all within a mile of the 'Pots.

"All in all a plastic version of a country inn produced by the village inhabitants who have 'bought' a pub." This seems even odder; I've been drinking here for twenty years, some of my companions for thirty years or longer - and in that time the 'Pots has stayed astonishingly unchanged. I can't believe that a pub that has stayed so untouched from all those years ago can be called a 'plastic country inn'!

He's right about "village inhabitants who have 'bought' the pub" - that's exacly what happened. But I can't believe he means it as a criticism. Does he really prefer remote big-business-owned theme pubs?

Mind you, Borninbred seems fairly grumpy about every pub he visits, so we in the 'Pots shouldn't take it too seriously. I suspect the time to worry is when he approves of us!

Stay as you are, Flowerpots, stay exactly as you are.

21 Apr 2006 10:56