28th March 2005
Hi all,
About eleven years ago I was out with a few friends. I can't remember who exactly, whether I was at home around Portsmouth or at University in North London, or exactly where in either of those places I was. I had just got a drink and yet the group I was with were tiring of our location and wanted to leave.
"But I've just got this." I pointed out, a near-full glass in my raised right-hand.
"Well," pointed out a friend, "Just bring it with you." And sure enough I did.
I do remember two things from this incident. Firstly, I was sober (not lying). Secondly that was the first pint glass I ever owned.
If you ask me there is nothing better to drink out of. The classic shape, the volume of liquid it holds, I love pint glasses.
After my initial acquisition I made a few other similar procurements. The most notable of these occurred in a Southsea pub called the Fifth Hants Volunteers. It had two lounges, and one evening I was in there with two friends. Thinking the lounge we were in wasn't to our taste we tried the other lounge, which wasn't our kind of place either. We discussed where to go in a small hallway between the two lounges, where there was also a door to leave the pub altogether. So we left, enjoying our drinks while walking through Southsea on a beautiful summer's night.
As I got older I felt that I should really make legal purchases of such glasses, so to go along with my other three I added a Guinness pint glass (straight) and a Sports Cafe pint glass to my collection. I also bought some standard non-branded ones for 30p a time from a store in East Kilbride called Spoils, which I thought was a superb store. I still shake my head when I wonder why it shut down.
Of course over time glasses have a habit of breaking, and pint glasses are no exception. From my first pint glass (which I wasn't an especially big fan of, given the huge "bump" in the middle of it - I tend to prefer more streamlined models) to the Guinness pint glass (always a reminder of a purchase on a particularly bad day in 1996). When my Sports Cafe pint glass recently bit the dust (in several pieces, naturally) it brought my collection down to one. One last pint glass, sitting on the shelf. What would I do if it accidentally fell?
(By the way, in the song what happened after the last green bottle fell off the wall? Was their point in counting the bottles falling off the wall? I'm sure there must have been a student involved in that song's creation somewhere.)
Needless to say I was going to have to start adding to my collection again. Small problem, where do you find them these days? A pub seems like an obvious answer, but it brings problems.
1) I don't drink lager any more.
2) Call me a wuss, but a lot of pubs up here don't look especially welcoming when they have metal caging around windows, or indeed no windows at all.
So I would have to buy them from a shop, like you're meant to. The question would be which one?
If in doubt, grab an Argos catalogue. Look up glassware, search for the page, forget what you're looking for and instead look at widescreen TVs. Then remember what you were looking for, and try and find glassware. Then be startled to see that in a catalogue covering thousands of items you can't get pint glasses individually or in a set by themselves. Index are a bit better (six for ?5.99), but they didn't compare with the Spoils prices of a few years ago (why did they have to shut, honestly?).
It was all looking pretty hopeless. I was starting to accept the fact that I would have to make do with more generic long slim glasses which you have to grip more tightly and only hold half the amount of cold fluid. Not a good situation.
Then Lorraine came up with an answer (as she normally does). Why not try Woolworths? Brilliant idea. Wrong end of Glasgow from where I work, but it would be worth a vigorous lunchtime walk. Four for ?1.99, close to perfect in a Spoils-free world. Needless to say I was pretty careful with them on the walk back to the office, back in the office and then on the train home. Mission accomplished, a breakage after the wait would be heart-breaking (exaggerate, moi?).
Now if you don't mind I have a pint glass waiting to be filled with something cold and wet. And then it will need emptying again, down my throat.
Have a good week!
Tony
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