SOULLESS pubs feigning a long rustic history always pull the same interior design crap based around the same few bollocks items:
Cartoons of foxes in waistcoats
What could be more English than the fox, nature’s murderous bastard, dressed up like an estate agent on a shooting weekend? Fun the first time you saw it, when you were five, but the joke wears thin when it’s repeated in every gold-painted plastic frame on the way to the loo, from frogs in tweeds to sheep in cravats.
An enormous bookcase
Ceiling-high platforms filled with dusty books are like something from a film and look just as unreal in a gastropub because they literally are. These bought-by-the-yard encyclopaedias are nothing but thick wallpaper. And it would be odd to read them in a busy pub while customers queue at the carvery, even if you’ve forgotten your phone.
Vintage adverts
It’s easy to forget what a wartime sign for Colman’s Mustard looks like until entering one of these establishments, at which point you’re bombarded with them like 1920s pop-ups. Two pints in you’ve already concluded the Guinness toucan can go f**k itself, then the sleazy fifties pin-up cigarettes ads at the urinals send you out for a smoke and you never return.
Old maps of the area
You should already know exactly where you are, blowing £40 on stale IPAs and a burger one notch up from a Rustler’s, but there’s nothing like a 200-year-old map. Learning the original site was a turnpike next to a pig farm gives so much more character to binge-drinking your way through a Sunday roast with your parents.
Fake taxidermy
This country’s wildlife can’t provide the grandeur of a moose head, so there’s a shabby stuffed stoat ogling you while you munch a ‘Best of British’ croquette. Even more generic is a bronze stag head to remind patrons a pub used to be worthy breaks after a hunt, rather than somewhere kids are given a placemat to colour and overpriced Tyrrell’s.
Year-round bunting
No need for a coronation, World Cup or swimming gala for this pub to celebrate because the bunting never comes down. Whether it’s a wake or a standard nationwide-run quiz, they’ll include the same neutral coloured flags half-draped over a mirror, giving the impression that a singular moment of fun died long ago and you’re drinking in its grave.
