How lovely to be living in a village with a pub again! I was brought up in a small village and stayed there until my mid-thirties. We had two village pubs, one at the side of a stream and as children Mum and Dad would take us there on a Saturday for a glass of lemonade or orange juice in the garden. Later, I pulled a few pints there and knew so much of what was happening in the village.
My husband and I moved to Kinoulton, home to the Neville Arms, in February after years of moving about for work. Great, we thought – a village pub! – we’ll get to meet the locals, so I went online and booked us in for a meal. We duly turned up only to find the pub closed – I’d only gone and booked us into the Neville Arms at Redditch!
Plan B was to pop over for a Saturday lunchtime drink, but again, the pub was shut, and that was when we found out that it was no longer open for business. But thankfully a few weeks later, on Facebook, we saw that it had been taken on by someone – great news!
For our first visit we just walked down for a drink. Turns out the destination isn’t the only place to meet people, but the journey too – we passed several folk as we made our way along, all of whom stopped briefly to chat. At the pub the bar was bright, and quite large, with plenty of room for people to get together. The staff and locals soon greeted us and made us feel welcome – it’s so nice to have a friendly chat face to face rather than via a social media platform!
When our daughter and her children visited us we wandered down to the ‘local’ again, knowing we would be greeted like old friends. This time we sat in the garden, and what a super afternoon we had. Just sitting, having a very refreshing drink, and relaxing. When a wasp decided it liked my granddaughter’s glass of coke, the fuss it caused made the people on the next table laugh, and started a lively conversation between us on how good, or otherwise, wasps are and whether the pesky one currently interrupting our afternoon should be killed. In the end we let it live and it flew off to enjoy someone else’s drink. Such a little thing you may think, but it helped us meet new people, now hopefully friends.
Kinoulton doesn’t have a shop but I found out that one morning a week the church opens its doors to become a Post Office where coffee and cake are also served. A very yummy way to meet people.
After Covid I began to think the art of conversation might die out, so it’s great to see people communicating face to face. Thank goodness for a pub, church, and the village.