As Plain as the Nose on Your Face?

Births, Deaths and Marriages; I’ve often wondered why the later came after death in this coupling, but that’s probably another story. Either way, each usually involves the gathering of the Clans, and more than likely, the partaking of alcoholic refreshment. The tale today hinges on a Funeral, and was brought together by the sight of another sadly abandoned Pub, and the chance purchase of a Bottle of Beer, but don’t they all in my world!

Like may Pubs in the North East, The Benwell Hotel was a ’boozer’, and mainly the haunt of the working man, (if the two words could ever be honestly strung together in relation to the cliental), although I do remember the ’odd’ lady, perched on a stool in the tiny recess just inside the main entrance, which on a Summer’s Evening would be thrown open, revealing a hazy world of stale tobacco and beer sodden lives - not a place any eight-year old would wish to contemplate.

Anyway, on with the story . . . as the unsuspecting mourners filed back to the Pub, the trap had been set and two young lads hid out of sight awaiting their first victim. My Grandfather, not being a Benwell’ regular headed to the side entrance and the ‘Select Bar’, and what a selection he was about to encounter. Placing his hand on the ’sneck’ (latch to those south o’ the border) a soft, warm substance of Canine extraction oozed through his fingers. Yelling at the lads who’d now broke cover, they came sheepishly to his call, heads bowed and expecting the worst. Their punishment; two crisp 10/- notes, for with a wry smile memories of his youth flooded back, and the knowledge that retribution had taken some 60 years to be metered out!

And the beer . . . well, it could be none other than Jennings Sneck Lifter - a nicely balanced, luscious dark, heady brew, with long, complex finish (Waitrose, 22/08/11 - £2.07, 500ml), the bottle label confirming that the northern dialect word ‘sneck’ means latch and that a ‘sneck lifter’ was a man’s last sixpence, which enabled him to lift the latch of the pub, hoping to find friends who would treat him to one or two more! Now, if that’s not as plain as the nose on your face, I don’t know what is!