beer at home

Manchester played Marseille tonight, Champions League. I thought I'd watch the game and went to my local pub. The Goose is just across the street, a true neighborhood pub without pretensions or frivolous aspirations. It sells pints for about two quid and big meals for a fiver. Most food is reheated, but some of the specials are tasty and everything is incredibly good value. The game wasn't any good, though, and I had all the time in the world to contemplate the pub in the context of contemporary British society.

The Goose is the kind of place where, if you enter with a weary look on your face and two Tesco bags full of unknown items in your hands and take a seat near the fire to warm up from a longish walk through the biting cold, people will approach you with genuine concern in the eyes, asking whether you're all right and could they buy you a drink. Maybe they assume you carry all your possessions in these two bags and want to do their share to help you through tough times. Maybe they do this to all strangers because it's that kind of place. In any case, you sit down and feel at home already, the desire to make it to your planned destination and get on with cooking, dinner and a movie dissipating with every breath you take of the stale air. It doesn't smell all that bad, considering the pub is carpeted throughout.

The carpet is an indicator that you've entered a traditional pub of the authentic kind. This is not the kind that has been painstakingly refurbished to look like it did in 1757 when King George came by to have a pint, where the floorboards have been cut from railroad ties reclaimed from branch lines gone out of business in the early eighties, floorboards that are glossed every morning before the pub opens to give it that rustic feeling of a living past.

The Goose doesn't have a past to be proud of. It just is. But it is in the way it has always been. Nothing has been refurbished or dolled up. The fittings show their age and there's a patina of dried sweat and alcoholic vapor on the dark wood panels. The mirrors on the wall are dull in the corners not because some interior designer decided this little details would add quite a bit of atmosphere but because no one can be bothered to polish them. The Goose is old-school, in other words, and as such it is a rarity of the rarest kind.

Pubs are struggling in the UK. They're still at nearly every corner in every city and there's at least one in every village, but they're dying at an alarming rate. The Economist wrote an obituary in last year's Christmas issue, but that seems a bit premature to me. There are still more pubs than your liver and pancreas could ever want you to visit, but they feel the stiff wind of economic challenge. Most have responded by specializing, and pubs these days can be broadly divided in three categories.

Rather common is the historic pub, often with a blue English Heritage plaque outside and some claim to fame. There are a dozen oldest pubs in London, some where Shakespeare drank and others patronized by Cromwell. Often long on appearance and short on substance, especially in areas popular with tourists, they are wildly popular with tourists. They play to the hazy notions of Good Old England that feature in every guidebook to the country. I wouldn't go into a historic pub in central London but in smaller towns or in the countryside, they can be lovely.

A rather different kind of establishment are gastro-pubs. They arose in the 90s from the realization that beer alone doesn't balance the accounts. People who come for a pint and watch two hours of football aren't good business. So managers started to think about good food and created a refined dining experience that was unlike a restaurant's because the essence of the pub was retained. Gastro-pubs are expensive and don't have TVs. They are popular with yuppies and self-styled urbanists. I love the Havelock Tavern in Olympia and the Cumberland Arms up the road.

The rest of the pubs doesn't fit into either category. They're a place to meet friends and have a beer. Some are great at this and often heaving – standing room only near universities and office buildings – while others are drab: nondescript sports bars with more screens than patrons, wanna-be gastro-pubs with rotten food, and locals that don't succeed at their most important function of being a community hub.

Pubs have always been important for socializing. When industrialization and urbanization washed streams of impoverished peasants into anonymous cities, pubs became retreats from the crowding of tiny, squalid flats. To this day, people are vastly more likely to celebrate birthdays in a pub than invite friends into their homes, but they don't feel the need to go every night. Homes are bigger now and nicer and equipped with big-screen TVs and premium cable subscriptions. The off-license down the road supplies cheap beer, and all of a sudden, the pub loses appeal.

The Goose manages to hang on and stand out. The landlord has drawn ales all his life and knows the regulars by name. He was probably chosen to run the pub by local residents convinced of his upright character, as was tradition. The menu has been expanded over the years to go beyond steak-and-ale pie and fish and chips but has remained simple and affordable. The wall-to-wall carpet in bordeaux and beige makes it clear that this is a living-room. A clientèle of middle-aged locals knows that and comes back, night after night.

The game's over; there hasn't been a goal. I finish my drink, get up, nod a tentative good-bye and get out. Time to go to the bedroom.