The Last Days of the Roman Empire
By Dominic Horton
So
finally the game is up. The Pirate's more than quarter century
ownership of the Flagon & Gorses is at an end. The real ale
public house specialists Black Country Ales now own the iconic
drinking den and it currently stands shut and in the middle of a
substantial renovation. The end of the Pirate's reign was protracted
and drinking in the place became almost like sitting at the bedside
of an ailing, elderly relative waiting for the Reaper to drop in to
complete the formalities. Except in the Flagon it was the drinkers
taking the medicine.
 |
| The Flagon & Gorses prior to the start of the refurb. |
There
were numerous false alarms prior to the sale and “this Sunday will
probably be the last” were words often uttered by Chilli Willy and
the other bar staff only to find the place still going the following
Sabbath. Sunday was used as a benchmark purposefully as it was the
quintessential Flagon & Gorses day, free of Friday and Saturday's
day trippers and full of the usual inmates, both in the bustling and
boozy afternoon and in the more sedate and civilised evening.
For
years Sunday was my main day, the day when I simply had to go to the
Flagon come hell or high water. As long as I could get to the Flagon
on a Sunday then the rest of the week was tolerable, regardless of
what slings and arrows were thrown at me and of what lay in wait in
the days that followed. The obligations and duties of the week at an
end, on a Sunday evening I could sit, pint in hand, and let the
drink, the conversation and the camaraderie work its magic.
The atmosphere somehow seemed heightened on a Sunday, more
highly charged but also more relaxing at the same time. Spirits
were always high, regardless of the various football results. Even
the beer seemed to taste better, though it was always in pretty good
nick regardless.
There
had been rumours and counter rumours about the pub's sale for many,
many months and during this time panicking punters had taken their
personalised glasses home with them for fear of never seeing them
again. Eventually the sale to Black Country Ales became an open
secret (or a badly kept one) and ultimately everyone accepted the
inevitability that there would be an end to the Pirate's era. But as
Jolly Dave said at the time, “I'm fed up of this sale dragging on
now, we need closure.”
 |
Jolly Dave sitting in Tom Corneronly's seat in
The Flagon & Gorses
|
Another
supposedly “final Sunday” came round but this time things seemed
to have taken on a more serious, concrete edge. The whisper was that
the Pirate had to move out the following day and on my arrival Carla
Von Trow-Hell delivered this news over the bar together with my pint
of stout. The Pirate was upstairs in his quarters sleeping off the
afternoon's excesses. “As it is his last night he wants to pop down
to have a drink,” Trow-Hell informed me, “and we decided that you
should go upstairs to wake him up.” The Pirate's rooms in the pub
were, to put it mildly, like a scene from a disaster movie where a
70's charity shop and The Great British Beer Festival had exploded
leaving the combined miscellany strewn everywhere. So I was
less than keen to disturb him from his slumber.
Fortunately
the Pirate managed to wake and descend the stairs to the bar all of
his own volition. The atmosphere was dark, odd at best. He shook a
few hands, without really saying much, which wasn't like him.
Instead of taking up his customary seat he stood at the end of the
bar, on his own, facing the rest of us. I was sat in the corner at
the other end of the bar, where Joe Attwood's boxing gloves used to
be, and I was laughing at a funny comment that someone had made but
the laughter seemed to be at complete odds with the somberness of
the situation. The air seemed heavy. The Pirate made no speeches and
there were no grand gestures. He was unusually subdued, withdrawn
even. And after half an hour or so he went back upstairs, without a
fan fare. I seem to remember he briefly, silently waved and that was
it, he was gone.
In
the weeks running up to the sale nobody really knew what the Pirate's
plans were as he had been keeping a low profile. Would he return to
his roots in Hampshire? Or move to Burton, where his youngest
daughter is? Or start a new business, a micropub maybe? In the end it
transpired that no one knew his plans as he didn't seem to have any.
The Pirate didn't even have any accommodation lined up on
the day he left the Flagon and it was only the kindheartedness of Pat
De Bilder that saved him from a night in his motor by fixing him up
with a rented safe house in the Lye.
The
following evening, the Monday, was interesting. Contrary to the
pessimistic doom-mongering of many inmates in the time leading up to
the sale the pub had not crumbled into dust. It was still standing
and thriving on that night under the stewardship of a bewildered
Nick, a temporary
manager that Black Country Ales had installed. Nick seemed nervous
and I think he had thought that he was walking into a powder keg
situation where the regulars would be disgruntled to the point of
driving them to stage a coup d'état to get the Pirate back in.
But that was not the case exactly – everyone just wanted a pint.
All quickly warmed to Nick and his good humour and easy manner but
like Edward VIII his reign was short and after a few
weeks he was soon packed off to Leicester to skipper a new Black
Country Ales house there called The Salmon.
 |
| Weston's Old Rosie, by request of Tony In-Tents |
A
few weeks ago Mick, who will be new gaffer of the Flagon moving
forward, left the Court House pub in Dudley to take over from Nick.
And then the place shut. Inevitably most of the punters have migrated
the short distance up the road to The Edward, which has taken on the
look of a refugee centre for displaced drinkers from the Flagon. I
have flirted briefly with the Edward but good a public house as it is
it's not the Flagon and I haven't bothered going out for a pint much
since the pub shut.
I
popped into the Loyal Lodge pub by my Codger Mansions home last week
to have a look as it has just re-opened after a facelift. Although
they have done a decent job with the décor and fittings the real ale
situation is sadly pretty dire. They only had two beers on and one of
them was the dreaded Doom Bar, a drink so named as it gives you a
sense of doom when you go to the bar. So I had to drink Weston's Old
Rosie, the one real cider they had on, but it did me no favours as it
weighs in at a heavy weight 7.3% ABV. I think Old Rosie was the
first scrumpy that I drank as they used to serve it in the Flagon and
it was attractive to me as a youth trying to reach a state of
Beervana on a tight budget.
Like
Steve Austin they can rebuild the Flagon, though I suspect it won't
cost $6,000,000. And it won't be, it can't be, the same as it was
under the dynasty of the Pirate. Inevitably things will change, some
for the worse, some for the better. The organised chaos, the modus
operandi of the pub, will disappear to be replaced by a new
sanitised, businesslike approach. The toilets will be in tip top
condition and the electrics will no longer be a funeral waiting to
happen. But the ongoing soap opera of the place, where something
entertaining or ludicrous was always happening, is at an end.
 |
| The Pirate & the author, not in The Flagon & Gorses. |
The
silver lining is that unlike so many pubs The Flagon has not been
turned into a Tesco Express, Dixie Chicken or a block of flats and it
will remain as a traditional real ale pub. But the great fear that I
have is that I will walk into the place once it is re-opened and
instead of it feeling like my front room, as it did before, it will
feel like someone else's front room, with an unfamiliar smell
and aura. I know I will be treated well as a guest but it is not
the same as sitting in your own comfy chair with your slippers and
t*rd catchers on.
The
one thing I will miss is having the comfort of knowing that I could
pop in The Flagon pretty much any afternoon to find the Pirate in his
seat, wearing his Flagon sweatshirt and preposterous salmon
pink trousers ready to share a drink and do the crossword. It
was not something I did very often, I have to work after all, but
when I did it was a magical feeling having a becalming pint while the
world went busily about its business outside.
But
life goes on, onward and downward, as ever.
©
Dominic Horton, March 2016.
*
Lowlife is dedicated to the memory of the late Jonathan Rendall
