The hanging hooks of a pub’s imagined past

Here we are in the Alexandra Hotel in Derby, a two-roomed trad pub that is always somewhere I make time for whenever I have time in Derby (maybe I’m also paying my respects to the late Simon Johnson as this was where the two of us ended up after a fun afternoon of drinking not long before he died). And so I sit with a glass of Pentrich Citra IPA (hazy, plumpish in its fruitiness and rapier-like in its bitterness) and there is a joy in my heart as I note the hooks that hang beneath the brow of the scuffed, dark brown bar. It’s a habit I have, a tradition perhaps, or maybe a nervous tic, but all too often when I find myself standing (or sitting) at a bar, elbow in a puddle of spilt beer and crushed crisps, I always put my hand beneath the brow and search for a hook, usually something on which I can hang my rucksack (just like the chap has done in the photo). It’s a neat little aid, a helping hand to the drinker, perhaps even a link with the kind of imagined past that some pubs are so adept at.