Sticking one's head in Lion's mouth
There's no hiding place for the modern journalist. Have you noticed the growing number of newspapers that have daily columns correcting mistakes in the previous day's editions? Get someone's name, age or profession wrong and your cock-up is revealed to the laughing millions the following day. Mercifully, the Morning Advertiser doesn't yet have a correction corner due to the sobriety and meticulousness of its staff but common decency forces me to admit to a serious error. Last year I said that, much though I liked a pub in St Albans, the Lower Red Lion, I found it difficult to drink there as the atmosphere was too smoky due to low ceilings. I caused great offence to publicans Mary Hamilton and Alan Dean, who claimed I had got my pubs muddled up. Regulars wrote to the MA and shunned me in the street. When I bumped into Mary at the Great British Beer Festival last August I could tell from her body language that she was undecided whether to shake me by the hand or by a more delicate part of my anatomy. When I heard last week that the Lower Red Lion had won a gold award in Greene King's Perfect Pub competition I thought it was time to make amends at a time when there are growing demands for pubs to be smoke-free zones. I arrived at 2pm at pardon the pun the fag-end of a busy Friday lunchtime session. I noticed two things straight away: there was no reek of stale tobacco smoke and the pub, considering its age, has remarkably high ceilings. Clearly, it was going to be downhill all the way. But Mary greeted me with something close to a smile while Alan pulled me a pint and said the money was in the till. The armistice had been declared. The pub is a former coaching inn. It's 450 years old and stands in Fishpool Street at the heart of the St Albans' conservation area. Fishpool Street, packed with artisan cottages that now change hands for sums with lots of noughts in them, once boasted 14 pubs and three breweries. The Lower Red Lion has timber supports and beams, wood-panelled walls, open fires and inglenooks. Its curious name stems from the fact that the city once had four pubs called Red Lion, including the Great Red Lion that stood on higher ground close to the city centre. The Great Red Lion is now a pizza parlour so let us give thanks to the fact that its lower namesake remains a pub and is devoted to real beer in general and micro-breweries in particular. It's Mary and Alan's second stint in the pub. In between they ran the Bear in Biggleswade. When they returned to St Albans they increased the number of handpumps in the pub to nine, installed Oakham's JHB and Fuller's London Pride as regular beers and then, Good Beer Guide in hand, scoured the country for ales from small independent producers. When they're not running the pub, they visit breweries as far away as Yorkshire in order to keep their demanding customers happy and to provide even more beers for the regular festivals held at the pub. They staged nine festivals last year and have eight planned so far for 2004. Mary says the big brewers are pulling wool over people's eyes when they say there is no demand for cask ale. If you know how to cellar beer, keep the pipes clean and the temperature right, drinkers will be queuing to get in. The pub's regulars don't just come from St Albans. They brave the trains to come out from London and Kent, and hardy souls travel from such far-flung places as Birmingham, Poole and Dorset. Neither Mary nor Alan smoke, but they would hate to ask regulars who do partake of the weed to leave. It would be difficult to install ceiling extractors as the pub is Grade II-listed and fans could damage the fabric of the building. I am happy to confirm that the Lower Red Lion is both a delight and decidedly un-smoky. Could I an upright and sober beer writer have got my pubs muddled? Shome mishtake, shurely.
