Good-bye to all that

Bah - the gods of progress are conspiring against me.  Mrs O and I were in Primrose Hill on Sunday evening, and discovered that our former local has been sold.  The new owners are making the usual comforting noises about not changing the place too much, but we've all heard that before.  Besides, they also own a couple of other pubs in the kinds of areas that only merchant bankers and TV presenters can afford to live.  I don't know these particular boozers, but my guess is they're efficient and rather soulless restaurants-cum-pubs.

There's nothing inherently wrongs with pubs of this kind; it's just that the one they've taken over was the last of its kind: a truly independent local hostelry that reflected the diversity of the neighbourhood it was in.  The couple who ran it until recently were an admirable pair.  They were a New Zealand couple d'un certain age, who wanted nothing more from life than a heavily-laden table, a couple of bottles of fine wine and a terrier or two scurrying about their ankles.  They used to eat their supper every night in the pub itself, even though they only lived upstairs.  It was a joy to watch two people dine with such brio.

They'd run the pub for donkey's years, after moving to London in the 1960s.  The pub they built resembled them and their shared outlook on life.  It served fine food (this was years before the fad for gastropubs took hold) and fine wines, not to mention fine ales.  But it did this without losing its unpretentious, convivial and cosy atmosphere.  It was not a place for posing, posturing and/or poncing about.  Primrose Hill has plenty of establishments where you can indulge those particular interests.  My fear now is that it will go the way of the others.  Also, I read on the web this morning that the new owners have already tried to sell off half the beer garden to a property developer, with a view to turning it into a "luxury dwelling".  The rotters.

I always hanker after moving back to PH.  It's a lovely, friendly and well-positioned place.  I love my current home, but The Hill will always have a special place in my heart.  It was some small compensation to Mrs O and myself that although we could not afford to buy so much as a skip there in which to live, we could always go back and revisit the pubs and restaurants that served us so well during our stay.  Now it seems they're being picked off one-by-one by developers.

It's becoming like the other moneyed areas in London: conservative, corporate and dull.  Oh so dull.