There are some places in your life that are frozen in time and for that brief moment seem as vivid now as they were when you experienced them. Such was the Trevor Arms on Beech Road in late 1970s, and early ‘80s.
Now I do still occasionally go in, usually for early doors but once upon a time it was every night mostly for the last hour. I was sharing a house with friends who had established the pattern of attendance before I arrived and I just slipped in behind them.
I say the last hour but Stan and Mona who ran the place were generous in the time they allowed for drinking up and we rarely staggered in through the front door much before a quarter to twelve.
Friday and Saturday night the place heaved and if you were unfortunate enough not to have found a seat, you swayed and moved with the crowd.
During the week it was a quieter place but one where you could still count on there being a few people you could talk to. There was the architect and his pals, Steve and the Judo crowd, plus Scotch Ken, Ken and Barbara and of course Jack and Ann.
Jack and Ann lived on Wilton Road. They had married in the ‘50s, got divorced, going their separate ways and starting new relationships before coming across each other in the Robin Hood in Stretford in their early ‘60s and starting all over again.
They had the table between the bar and the door to the lavatories and claimed their position early on every evening. From this vantage point Jack would hold audience and his conversations would stretch the length of the place as would his knowledge of most of the clientele. And those he did not know still became an object of comment. No that anything he said was ever harsh, rude or cruel, just gently funny and the nick names he gave people lasted and were shared by the pub.
Stan had to hold down a full time job leaving his wife and daughter to run things during the day and only appearing in the evening. So it was mostly Mona and her daughter who pulled the pints joked with the customers and made you feel at home. Unlike many places they had a strict policy of working along the bar and then back which insured that everyone whether regular or not was served without favour to anyone.
So for a brief period from 1976 till about ’84 this was my pub and if those I drank and laughed with have dispersed it will always be special to me and a source of endless stories which I hope will appear during the year.
But even as a historian I do not over dwell in the past and on those occasions I have fallen into the Trevor I have been made to feel at home. So places go on which is as it should be. Peter’s painting of the Trevor on festival day is a great way of asserting the present. He is a local artist who paints Chorlton today, I just persuaded him to include my stories of the past alongside his images.
His works hang in a number of venues across Chorlton and can also be seen on his facebook site Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures
Picture © Peter Topping 2011 www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Now I do still occasionally go in, usually for early doors but once upon a time it was every night mostly for the last hour. I was sharing a house with friends who had established the pattern of attendance before I arrived and I just slipped in behind them.
I say the last hour but Stan and Mona who ran the place were generous in the time they allowed for drinking up and we rarely staggered in through the front door much before a quarter to twelve.
Friday and Saturday night the place heaved and if you were unfortunate enough not to have found a seat, you swayed and moved with the crowd.
During the week it was a quieter place but one where you could still count on there being a few people you could talk to. There was the architect and his pals, Steve and the Judo crowd, plus Scotch Ken, Ken and Barbara and of course Jack and Ann.
Jack and Ann lived on Wilton Road. They had married in the ‘50s, got divorced, going their separate ways and starting new relationships before coming across each other in the Robin Hood in Stretford in their early ‘60s and starting all over again.
They had the table between the bar and the door to the lavatories and claimed their position early on every evening. From this vantage point Jack would hold audience and his conversations would stretch the length of the place as would his knowledge of most of the clientele. And those he did not know still became an object of comment. No that anything he said was ever harsh, rude or cruel, just gently funny and the nick names he gave people lasted and were shared by the pub.
Stan had to hold down a full time job leaving his wife and daughter to run things during the day and only appearing in the evening. So it was mostly Mona and her daughter who pulled the pints joked with the customers and made you feel at home. Unlike many places they had a strict policy of working along the bar and then back which insured that everyone whether regular or not was served without favour to anyone.
So for a brief period from 1976 till about ’84 this was my pub and if those I drank and laughed with have dispersed it will always be special to me and a source of endless stories which I hope will appear during the year.
But even as a historian I do not over dwell in the past and on those occasions I have fallen into the Trevor I have been made to feel at home. So places go on which is as it should be. Peter’s painting of the Trevor on festival day is a great way of asserting the present. He is a local artist who paints Chorlton today, I just persuaded him to include my stories of the past alongside his images.
His works hang in a number of venues across Chorlton and can also be seen on his facebook site Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures
Picture © Peter Topping 2011 www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment