On a low brick wall, drained pint pots hide behind plant pots & railings, lacing lines patternating their sides. Flagstones, flaked with wear and weakened by the dinks of a brewer’s barrel, show their many floors; millennia revealed in the journey to the door. A boot scraper, scissor-snicked Box and a heavy-hinged wooden door, smoked glass, the paint around the finger plate caressed away roughly by the pull and push of years of hands. Inside, tables made from butchers’ blocks, thick metal strapped, not true; beer mats and upturned scallop shells of ripped-open snack packets, their crown. Painted floorboards, black knots pushing back, point the path to the thick planked bar, the top stained, smooth as the handle of an old wooden shovel or yardbrush; care-worn, hand-me-down. Six beers nowadays; misshapen badges promising a kiss of hops, a play on words, or union with a local bee keeper. The menu, scratchily scraped onto a blackboard, sits below a dusty bine of once-green hops. The fire, made up, is even happier when lit. And the dog, a black lab, keen-eyed but languid-limbed, soft with endless caressing, warms your feet before moving on.
morningmistermagpie.com 