The Co-Op is the New Country Pub. Discuss.

Oh stop it, you. It will probably be fine once you’re in there. It will be better than this lashing January sideways rain of misery and despair and the next train is not for another hour. To walk slowly around the Co-Op one more time just in case the white chocolate cookies have been reduced by another 10p is not ‘cool’ either.

Oh. ok then, me. But a Co-op in the rain in a small provincial Northern town is somehow strangely soothing.

Five Minutes Later

Oh carpet. Generic pub carpet from decades ago. One day you will rise again due to a hipster from Bristol with a twinkle in his eye, an ironic retro vision in his head and a trust-fund.

Now I sink my feet into your red, pink and orange overlapping flowers and smell Dog. No, Dogs. Dead Dogs. Dead Dogs on an eternal slobbery march through the aforementioned carpet. They also had a jolly Dead Zombie Dog Romp in a stagnant mire beforehand and made sure they never achieved dryness. It’s a good life for Undead Zombie Dogs here.

Last week, I walked into a nice looking country pub and then left in disgust at its ‘locally sourced’ smugness, size six staff wearing smart black, bespoke ‘ olde’ floorboards and ‘LOOK AT ME- DEFINITELY FUCKING FARROW AND BALL’ muted undertones. Other people might say I left because there was not a table. They are of course wrong. I yearned for a generic pub in the countryside unbesmirched by menus with a ‘to begin’ option.

There is no other female here. There may never have been. Around eight men sit around a table and stop swearing briefly to stare at me before reinvigorating their candid talking with extra vigour. The racing is on. I suspect the racing is always on. An elderly man on his own picks up a tiny leather dog toy in the shape of a shoe and comes up to me with it as he thinks it might belong to me then retreats to his lonely table to listen to the vigorous swearing.

There are pinstripes on the walls and a corniced ceiling. Dry pot plants point crispily towards the floor. The rain slaps against the stained glass of the windows.

Last week, I was the hoi-polloi, thrown out on the flagstone pavement, sneering bitterly at the Barbour clad over loud and over confident ‘country’ people shrieking to each other over professionally battered old oak tables.

Today I slink out, after retrieving my sleeve from the sticky Melamine surface. No-one says goodbye but I’m sure I hear a burst of laughter when I leave.