Crich. You’re right but I wasn’t paying much attention to the signs, she were a right rum’un.

AFS - This thread is beginning to reek of stale beer, slops, curling cheese and onion sandwiches, overripe Scotch eggs and Barbara Windsor-type barmaids

I wish pubs still sold those things. These days its more likely to be something artisanal with Chorizo, I’m amazed at the things you can put Chorizo in.

(deftly changes subject)

Inexpensive cheese and onion rolls, ploughman’s lunchs or ham, egg and chips have more or less disappeared from pubs.

The £5 artisan Scotch egg etc has replaced them. Masons Arms in Teddington is about the only place I know that still offers a cheese and onion roll on a plate for about £1.50.

We lived in one of the three-storey cottages built by Sir Richard Arkwright for his workforce.  Students of architecture and Japanese tourists would occasionally come and take a shufti.  The garden was on five levels, with a small orchard, terminated by a limestone cliff which (being far younger) I soon learned how to climb.  There was an enormous nature reserve at the back, complete with orchids and adders.  A neighbour was bitten on the hand by a young adder.  He soon got the shakes. 
We sold to a young couple from Leigh-On-Sea who wanted it as a holiday cottage.  Sadly, the wife died there, at just thirty nine. 
Crpmford has a famous, 'Guardian'-approved secondhand bookshop, Scarthin Books.  All very arty-farty, trendy lefty with its veggie cafe etc.  The people who run it are very pleasant, however. 
Belper has the same status.  A sign telling you so is two minutes walk away from my front door.
The Strutt family, associates of Arkwright, ran Belper, but in a very different way.  Very down on the working classes enjoying themselves, so no pubs.

Belper, BTW, is a far more interesting place than it appears at first glance, full of narrow 'ginnels', some of which are thought to date back to the mid-14th century.  I walk up one of them (fairly steep) each morning as part of my daily exercise. 
The main conservation area, around Long Row, close to the mills, where the cottages are pricey but quickly snapped up, is always smothered in dogshit.

It was a hugely important area for the Romans: rich in lead, which they mined for its silver content. 
There are three pubs for the thirsty traveller:  The Greyhound in the market place, The Boat, just around the corner, and The Bell, halfway up the hill.  My old address was 106 The Hill.  People who live up there talk about 'goin' down Cromford' as if it were miles away.  Very, very parochial.

Lots of folk out and about in parks in central London yesterday - Coram Fields, Red Lion Square etc. Outside dining in full swing too. Not sure if that is an advantage though if you are under a canopy at this time of year.

I thought Wetherspoon had permanently closed their Gatwick bar. Maybe it was only while the South Terminal was shut down.

Being from the majestic city of Birmingham I have only travelled from Gatwick a few times.

It's like the mad off spring of a marriage between a cheap and nasty shopping mall and an airport. (At least at Heathrow it's a bit more refined)

Pounding house music at 8 in the morning doesn't lift the spirits.

It seams that drinking at airports first thing in the morning has become a thing. I really don't understand that attraction of getting fucked-up and then sitting in a pressurised tin can for hours dehydrated. Air travel is increasingly horrible so why make the effects even worse.

On Saturday, I will take a drink, my first in a month, in my favourite Turkish restaurant.  It will be an ice-cold glass of Tuborg lager, accompanying their delicious bread, grilled chicken and salad.  Just the one drink.  Turkish coffee, served with water, will follow.  Sometimes Turks will serve no alcohol at all, so pineapple juice suffices.
The 'Brits' (not just the English by a long country mile) disgust me more and more.  On the other hand, I've seen men and women reeling round the streets of Breton towns (not to mention in Paris) well before the sun has sailed over the yardarm.  It's my beloved Italians who seem to know how to handle their intake.

Times have changed.  When I started work, on a construction site, in the spring of 1976, we would have five or six pints of lager on a Friday lunchtime.  No hard hats, boots not compulsory.  Almost everyone smoked, including dope. 
But, in those days, a tattoo parlour was up a dirty back alley, not on the high street next to Costa coffee.

I hitched to London with an older mate, a brickie, when I was sixteen.  I was amazed to be able to get a drink around six in the morning.  He was a Southern lad and knew the ropes.  I was probably keener on tracking down a bacon sandwich with HP sauce in those days.

Dislike of topography?  No.  You misunderstand me.

Am I supposed to prefer a whelk stall at Blackpool to lobster in a French seaport?  Come off it.  Come right off it. 
And that's a misinterpretation of what Blake was getting at, isn't it?