The local village bar where, finally and rightly, the name Combo is treated with the respect and veneration it patently merits is I think a still life of lower Piedmont history. Completely retro, it has long-forgotten bottles of obscure drinks behind the bar and long-forgotten customers gently snoring and dribbling in the corner. It not only keeps the local, ancient populace in a Marsala-induced vegetative state but it also sells newspapers and magazines, Sellotape, pastries, lottery tickets, plastic identity card holders, cigarettes, stamps and sweets that, pleasingly, are still kept in big glass jars on old shelves backed by mirrors that lost much of their silvering sometime in the 19th century.
And being in hunting country it is also stuffed with dead beasts and birds of every species.
I have a concern that if I do not give the owner's daughter a decent mark this year, I may be joining Matey here.
The local village bar where, finally and rightly, the name Combo is treated with the respect and veneration it patently merits is I think a still life of lower Piedmont history. Completely retro, it has long-forgotten bottles of obscure drinks behind the bar and long-forgotten customers gently snoring and dribbling in the corner. It not only keeps the local, ancient populace in a Marsala-induced vegetative state but it also sells newspapers and magazines, Sellotape, pastries, lottery tickets, plastic identity card holders, cigarettes, stamps and sweets that, pleasingly, are still kept in big glass jars on old shelves backed by mirrors that lost much of their silvering sometime in the 19th century.
And being in hunting country it is also stuffed with dead beasts and birds of every species.
I have a concern that if I do not give the owner's daughter a decent mark this year, I may be joining Matey here.
7 comments:
As the proud owner of Liverpools oldest pub...ye hole in ye wall (yes terrible name I know) I can truthfuly state that those dead animals look healthier than most of our regulars.
Shall I knock you up a nice mount Ron, just in case?
Table football still popular on the continent then Ron?
Was the beast shot or just "boared" to death of the locals?
It all reminds me of the zookeeper who took two dead gorillas to the local taxidermist who asked "Would you like them mounted" and the zookeeper replied "No, just holding hands".
...or, from Naked Gun
[Jane climbs a ladder]
Frank: Nice beaver!
Jane: [producing a stuffed beaver] Thank you. I just had it stuffed.
This looks a sensible sort of bar. May I recommend a nice pint in similarly 'interesting' surroundings at The Central Club Peacehaven where you can throw a dart in the Western hemisphere and retrieve it from the board in the East...without leaving the clubroom.
Ah, the East / West divide. I looked at a house in Greenwich once that had the front room in the west and the dining room in the east. I was not tempted by the estate agents price that was so obviously inflated by this unique aspect.
And talking of stuffed heads on walls, try and see The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp, one of Powell & Pressburgers finest.
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