Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)

Press play while you read, it will lend a heroic and noble quality to the words

When I was a young man the world seemed a strange and alien place.  To my teenage eyes everywhere I looked were confident, clever and beautiful people.  They were not like me because they didn't always wear trousers that were just a bit too short in the leg or sport glasses so huge that even Deirdre Barlow/Rashid/Barlow would have said,"blimey that kid's glasses are ridiculous".  

It was during this time that I turned to the great poets to help make sense of such a cruel world.  Whereas others would turn to Blake and Shelly and Wilde for stimulation, I found solace in the words of Steven Tyler, William Gibbons and Edward Van Halen.  I mean, when you think about it, there is rarely a situation where 80s American rock standards don’t help out.  Try it out. 

“An I’m gonna hold on for the rest of my days, ‘cos I know what it means, to walk along the lonely street of dreams”

Thank you David Coverdale.

I found myself drinking from the Rock Goblet of Wisdom (RGW) a couple of weeks ago whilst passing a pub I used to love that no longer exists.  The song that I quaffed until the juice ran down my face was You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone by Cinderella (see above).  

If I ever got on to Desert Island Discs, my local pub would be my luxury item because it is just about perfect.  It’s close to my house, it has great beers, a good wine list and wonderful food (when you go make sure you have the treacle tart).  But the Five Elms is more than this because of the people who run it, work in it and use it, it is in all senses a pub of the community.  Every year at Christmas there’s a carol sing-a-long outside with friends and strangers huddled together drinking mulled wine and eating homemade sausage rolls.  I can honestly say that some of my happiest times in recent years have been spent next to the fire in the small snug of the Five Elms or lolling around outside after a long hot summer day.

So, if you love your pub then heed the advice of the Motley Crue from their 1985 album Theatre Of Pain, Use It Or Lose It.