It’s a not-very-well-kept secret that SomersetClive Editor, Clive Saint, likes a beer and is willing to offer free advertising to any establishment in exchange for a pint or six of liquid refreshment.
Mr Saint has been visiting the pubs of Smalltown and has prepared ‘The Smalltown Good Pub Guide‘ to help his fellow patrons.
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For many years the pubs of Smalltown were legendary, but with so many of them now closed because people stopped going to them and not because rapacious Pubcos bled them white and then flogged off the properties for development, while the government taxed them into oblivion and the breweries kept putting their prices up, we thought we’d have a look at what’s left for the seeker of liquid refreshment. We’ve left out Dullbridge because there are only three pubs, and if you know, you know.
The Tramway
A cosy pubco-owned hovel in the heart of Smalltown. The Tramway has been run (down) over the years by a succession of overworked managers, many of them a little keen on their own products.
The Tramway has an extensive menu featuring the same microwaveable beige food and poorly kept beer as every other pub in the chain The staff are as bored, uninterested and unsmiling as you’ll find in every other pub in Smalltown.
The Tramway also serves as an occasional venue for terrible live cover bands, which usually have to stop playing if the football is on.
Traces of a white powder (presumably the cleaning product ‘Vim’) can often be found in the toilet facilities which have been in need of extensive refurbishment since 1987, but don’t let that put you off because the entire premises is sluiced out every morning.
On Sundays a visiting tobacco merchant can be found in a corner of the recently upgraded well-manicured garden and exterior seating area, offering knock-off supplies from a carrier bag at knock-down prices.