The Moon Under Water Essay
My favourite public-house, the
Moon Under Water
, is only two minutes from a bus stop, but it is on a
side-street, and drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday nights.
Its clientele, though fairly large, consists mostly of ‘regulars’ who occupy the same chair every evening
and go there for conversation as much as for the beer.
If you are asked why you favour a particular public-house, it would seem natural to put the beer first, but
the thing that most appeals to me about the
Moon Under Water
is what people call its ‘atmosphere’.
To begin with, its whole architecture and fittings are uncompromisingly Victorian. It has no glass-topped
tables or other modern miseries, and, on the other hand, no sham roof-beams, ingle-nooks or plastic
panels masquerading as oak. The grained woodwork, the ornamental mirrors behind the bar, the
cast-iron fireplaces, the florid ceiling stained dark yellow by tobacco-smoke, the stuffed bull’s head over
the mantelpiece — everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century.
In winter there is generally a good fire burning in at least two of the bars, and the Victorian lay-out of the
place gives one plenty of elbow-room. There are a public bar, a saloon bar, a ladies’ bar, a bottle-and-jug
for those who are too bashful to buy their supper beer publicly, and, upstairs, a dining-room.
Games are only played in the public, so that in the other bars you can walk about without constantly
ducking to avoid flying darts.
In the
Moon Under Water
it is always quiet enough to talk. The house possesses neither a radio nor a
piano, and even on Christmas Eve and such occasions the singing that happens is of a decorous kind.
The barmaids know most of their customers by name, and take a personal interest in everyone. They are
all middle-aged women—two of them have their hair dyed in quite surprising shades—and they call
everyone ‘dear,’ irrespective of age or sex. (‘Dear,’ not ‘Ducky’: pubs where the barmaid calls you ‘ducky’
always have a disagreeable raffish atmosphere.)
Unlike most pubs, the
Moon Under Water
sells tobacco as well as cigarettes, and it also sells aspirins and
stamps, and is obliging about letting you use the telephone.
You cannot get dinner at the
Moon Under Water
, but there is always the snack counter where you can
get liver-sausage sandwiches, mussels (a speciality of the house), cheese, pickles and those large biscuits
with caraway seeds in them which only seem to exist in public-houses.
Upstairs, six days a week, you can get a good, solid lunch—for example, a cut off the joint, two
vegetables and boiled jam roll—for about three shillings.
