Smell of pub

The Manchester Grauniad has a story about the smell of pub which makes the point that now smoking is banned in UK pubs, the true pub smell, once masked by tobacco fug, has become apparent. The article lists a bunch of publy guffs: barmaid's armpit, jogger, and disinfectant, and then wanders off into the usual smug chattering.

I went to the pub (this one) at lunch with Grauniad in hand, and that's where I read the article.

I'm a smoker, and I was sitting outside, trying to hold the newspaper down on the table as the unseasonable rain-spittled wind wrestled with it, a nasty roll-up clamped in thinned lips, left eyelash singed from overzealous disposable lighter (on napalm setting), rehearsing an internal dialogue, where I was really cleverly putting down the smart-alec who'd just taken the piss out of my drinking lime and soda (and lime and soda with no piss in it is completely flavourless).

At the end of that long sentence I was still outside the pub, with paper, cigarette, wind and so on, and having read said bar-stink article I decided to get another weak lime cordial based drink (because you can't have too much, it does fuck all).

And the article was right, the pub did smell of disinfectant and sweat. Also lager, bitter, musty old guys and existential despair.

Not much point to this post, must be hypergraphia.