Yesterday

The observant among my regular readership - all three of them - will have noticed that I failed to post anything yesterday.  Don't worry; I haven't fallen off the cliffs (that's Beachy Head on the left - a favourite suicide spot along the coast from here) or under a bus.  Nor did I simply forget.  The day passed so quickly with other activities that there just wasn't time.  Having said that, I'm not sure just what I might have burbled on about if I had posted something.

I suppose I might have wittered on a bit about the names of pubs, a sort of follow up to Friday's post.  It just so happens that many of my ancestors, and those of the Old Bat, seem to have been involved in the licensed trade.  Their pubs were the Cabman's Rest, the Town Hall (an odd choice of name for a pub!), the Wheatsheaf, the Five Bells, the Vine, the White Horse and others I have forgotten.

One other that I remember is the Plough in the Suffolk village of Blundeston where my great-grandfather was once the publican.  The pub was the place from which Barkis started on his journeys in Charles Dickens' book, David Copperfield.  My g-g-f is supposed to have charged visitors sixpence to sit in what he claimed was the author's chair.  Another story is that he - my g-g-f - drank himself blind, although he did eventually recover his sight.  I have managed to prove neither of these stories!