Outside a Wilson's pub somewhere in Manchester, date unknown

Now there will be someone who recognises this pub exterior.

It is another of those pictures from Andy Robertson’s collection and neither of us can place the pub or even suggest a date.

Many of our pubs went in for that tiled exterior during the middle decades of the 20th century.

I think we are in the 1960s or very early 70s but it is just a guess.

And I am also unsure as to where we are.

I can think of a couple off Liverpool Road and one on the corner of Grey Mare Lane and the Old Road but they also are just guesses.

Still it is another of those images which capture perfectly s style of drinking which is vanishing.

The old pub where you could go pretty much however you dressed and drink beer from straight glasses is almost a thing of the past.

Today many have dress codes with a bouncer on the door to enforce the rules, the beer is expensive and exotic and those tiny rooms beloved of young couples out on a date have been knocked through leaving nowhere to have quiet little meetings unobserved and free from the noise of the pub.

Of course in the 1960s and early 70s such “new pubs” were what I yearned for, away from the bare wooden floor boards, the slightly warm beer and the feeling that you were in granddad’s place.

Now I am not so sure, the growth of the wine bar is fine, the presence of good food on the menu is to be welcomed but we have lost something.

But perhaps that is just because I am growing old and with age comes that ridiculous temptation to wallow in nostalgia.

So I shall just finish with Andy’s picture, somewhere on a sunny day in Manchester, date unknown.

Picture; from the collection of Andy Robertson