TIME, GENTLEMEN

by Hattie Ellis (Salisbury)

The smell of flowers and fresh-dug earth in odd corners of the Haunch of Venison and the many phantom tunnels that always go from snugs to the catherdral close.

Memories of pints haunt his face with joy. He remembers a dining club of 17th-century fare that lasted for 10 years, and the 80th birthday coat of arms with heraldic symbols of pipe, pint, sausage sandwich and a cross of hard-boiled eggs.

Below the plaque is a bench nicknamed 'death row'; the older you got, the closer to the fire and to the end. What happened to the old crew? There are tables now instead of shoulder-to-shoulder drinking on a Saturday afternoon.

'This pub is all about the art of conversation,' he says, and we talk of the skeletal hand and playing cards in the room upstairs. At the pewter bar, the next pints are poured and new jokes and stories are replenished.

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What Hattie Ellis says about TIME, GENTLEMEN:

I bumped into Les beside the bar in the Rai d’Or on Brown Street. He took me around the Haunch of Venison and a pub crawl through time.