English Pubs
For company and conversation the English
go to the pub. The cafes in England sell only coffee, tea and soft drinks. You
can go to teashops or coffee-houses for a meal and a quick cuppa but not to sit
and watch the world go by.
When
you want to relax after a day's work, you go to the local public house.
Everybody goes there except children, who are not allowed in. If you go up to
the bar, you may find every kind of person: doctors, schoolmasters, workmen.
They all go there to talk and to have their usual pint. Nearly everyone drinks
beer. Most pubs, in fact, have a piano and on Saturday night the customers may
well gather round it and sing. The songs they sing are the same all over England, from the 1914 war, sentimental and sad, like "If you were the only girl in
the world" which are easy to learn. The people who want to sing ask
someone to play the tunes on the old piano. They group themselves round it and
they buy drinks for the pianist. That is the custom: the one who plays has free
drinks as long as he plays.
Good
humour and good spirit create special atmosphere in pubs. If you go there
regularly the landlord will try to get to know you. He will remember what you
usually drink and may well become a personal friend. The pub is the place where
you meet people. You get to know other regulars, you buy drinks in turn, which
is called " to stand a round" and you talk about the weather or how
the English cricket and football teams are doing in different matches. The pub
is often the only place where men may meet each other after work. It is very
surprising, but even in large cities each pub has its own visitors who go there
every night to drink one or two pints slowly and to have a game of dominoes or
to play darts. And although they see each other almost every night fop years,
the regulars who meet there will never go into each other's homes. Pubs have
been part of the British way of life for years and years. When the Romans came
to England in 55 ВС they noted that the Britons often met in
their taverns to drink ale and discuss problems. Nothing much has changed since
then. They still go to the pub to meet friends and have a chat. You can also
buy food in some pubs: they serve the hot sausages, scotch eggs, pork pies,
sandwiches or a ploughman's lunch. That's bread, cheese, pickles and apples.
The pub is now a social centre for the local community. All kinds of meetings
take place in pubs. Pubs have always advertised by putting a sign in front of a
building.
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