Sitting bull

If bar stools at your local are comfy, count yourself lucky. Adam Edwards recently found himself in a much worse position

The stools at my local, the Seven Tuns, are silly. I say this not because it is the silly season or because they look like John Cleese, but because two of the drinking perches are exceptionally tall and two particularly small.

The high stools are so lofty that it is possible when sitting upon them to pick up a pint from the bar with one's knees, while their squat

siblings are so vertically challenged that customers appear to the barman as bodiless talking heads.

Last month, after what seemed a lifetime of complaints about the seating arrangements, my landlord Alex invested in a quadruped of new four-legged furnishing. They looked like high chairs for grown-ups - faux Scandinavian jobs with cushion seats in tasteful material and short, square backs to stop imbibers tumbling floorward. They were remarkably similar to the bit of kit on which my chum, the former Rome correspondent for the Daily Mirror, sat - the same chap who, after locking his own legs around the stool's legs and consuming several strong sherbets, tipped back, hit the floor and broke both ankles.

The new Ulrikas, as they were amusingly christened by the lads in the saloon bar, were hopeless. I have sat on more comfortable railings. They were no good for perching or squatting - and after the stretchers that secured the legs broke, they wobbled like drunkards.

I accept that the bar stool may not be a subject of consuming interest to all. In the great scheme of pub life when drinks need to be drunk, horses played, football discussed, cars analysed and women admired, there is little time to worry about the niceties of the placing of one's bottom. And yet the unsung stool and its situation is in many ways the essence of pub life. A decent stool allows one to nurse a pint, pick at a peanut, read a newspaper, talk to the barman while looking him in the eye, converse with new upright arrivals and keep an eye on most other goings-on - and all without excessive twisting of the head or stretching of the neck.

Furthermore, if and when one does have the odd large one too many, one can slump safely across the bar (unless you work for the Daily Mirror). That's why the corner stool in the bar is usually the first spot to be bagged.

And yet, despite the high profile of this classic piece of furniture, it is frequently in bad taste and condition (helped no doubt by a measure of meanness). A flick through the back pages of the Morning Advertiser shows seats that look like farm kitchen chairs on trivets, others that appear to belong to bastardised Edwardian sewing-machines, while still others look as if they have escaped from a 1970s airport lounge.

The bar stool should be as simple and strong as John Wayne, yet as understated

as Clint Eastwood. It should make one feel

as if one is in the final iconic scene of the movie Ice Cold in Alex. It is an accessory as important as a pair of Ray-Bans and a shot glass of bourbon.

Frank Sinatra could not have got away with singing My Way if he had been squatting on a stubby 12-inch stool that looked as if it had been annexed from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Dean Martin's legendary drinking status was not gained by sitting

on a piece of Scandinavian soft furnishing on stilts.

I pointed this out to my landlord last week. He was surprisingly sympathetic to my views: without further ado, he nuked all of the Nordic jobs.

Unfortunately Little and Large are back.

Global cooling

An unforeseen consequence of global warming has been the fashioning of cider.

The West Country hooch, traditionally drunk by backwoodsmen and Bristol City supporters, became cool last year. Irish cider producer Magners quadrupled the price of its shares after it cleverly marketed the jumping juice as a sophisticated beverage to be drunk with ice.

This year, Bulmers and the rest of the cider producers jumped on the apple cart with huge advertising campaigns designed to capitalise on the boom for the drink that was once known as diesel. And then it rained... and rained... and rained...

Next summer I confidently predict a retro campaign fronted by The Wurzels, extolling the delights of snakebite.

We're getting whiffs of fear and resignation

A small paragraph in a national paper last week claimed that nine out of 10 restaurant-goers were scared of wine waiters and would rather drink a disgusting bottle of wine than send it back.

This is old news to most licensees. In the latter half of the last century the average glass of alcoholic grape juice sold by most pubs was so poor that it did much to recommend the consumption of battery acid. The dreadful plonk was dispensed from warm bottles housed in a back-lit, faux-wood, glass-fronted case. Ordering the stuff, particularly if one tried to be clever and request, for example, a glass of Chardonnay or Claret, was met with a dull stare. You were given unknown New World red or white. The act of drinking it was taken as a sign that you were a big girl's blouse, while just thinking about sending it back was the deranged thought of a suicidal madman.

It is no wonder the British public is still frightened of those who serve the grape.