Sailors Arms, Llareggub

Sailors Arms

A few years back I was busy compiling the Good Beer Guide entries together and decided to do a spoof entry. As a Regional Director of CAMRA, the branch entries come to you to sort into the areas in the guide, I would also check the postcodes, OS references etc. Occasionally I would have to add to the description if not enough words were included in the original form, very occasionally I would rewrite the entire description if the original did not make any grammatical sense and cut any negative comments about the pub. Basically the Regional Director acts as a sub-editor of the guide, before the entries are sent on to CAMRA HQ for compiling into the print-ready edition.

A few months earlier to the Good Beer Guide forms coming in I had gone through an edition of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas and had highlighted every word and phrase to do with drinking or the Sailors Arms pub. I then wrote all these down and assembled them into a description suitable for the Good Beer Guide. Unfortunately the entry was removed by the editor Roger Protz on the grounds of 'literary decency', whatever that means?

The entry never made it into print and a copy stayed as a bookmark in my edition of Under Milk Wood until I rediscovered it by accident recently. Having shown it to a few people who thought it amusing I have decided to reprint here. Remember the words are taken straight from the book and just placed in ordered sentences as they would be in a pub description. The postcode is actually that of the Dylan Thomas Boathouse in Laugharne and the telephone number was of the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea.

GOOD BEER GUIDE SURVEY FORM

COUNTY: West Wales, Carmarthenshire

TOWN: Llareggub

NAME OF PUB: Sailors Arms

FULL ADDRESS: Coronation Street, Llareggub, Nr Laugharne

POST CODE: SA33 4SD

DIRECTIONS TO PUB: Uphill, along the cobbles and up three steps

ORDINANCE SURVEY REF: OS308111

PUB OPENING HOURS: 11.30-11.30, SUNDAY 11.30-11.30

DRAUGHT BEERS: Welsh Bitter [H]

DESCRIPTION:

The Sailors is a village pub immortalised in literature, where the customers are all characters. Set amidst the humble two-storey pinkwash houses of the backwater of life, Llareggub, the Sailors offers no frills but several curious customs including stout with an egg in it and the belief that stout and ale is good for a baby in a pail. It is comforting to sit in the bar, supping flat, warm, thin, Welsh bitter beer whilst watching village life go by through the smoked herring-brown windows of the unwashed Sailors Arms. Occasional dancing. Mr Benyon's owlmeat sausages are recommended. There is no accommodation at the pub but Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard runs a nearby B & B.

Real Fire

Traditional Pub Games

Not that bad I thought and a lot more inviting than some of the entries in the Good Beer Guide.