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. 

Simon H Johnson

Last night I heard the sad news of Simon’s passing. It is desperately sad. I can’t pretend to have known him well and we only met twice, but they were memorable times, which I think is the measure of the man. First time I was standing with Nick Otley in the Rake on the night when we launched Saison Obscura a couple of years ago and I said to him, ‘I thought that Simon Johnson bloke was coming’, the guy to my left, who had been standing there and drinking the beer with us, said, ‘I’m here’. I don’t know why but that always made me smile whenever I thought of it. 

The last time I met him was in February when I was in Derby en route to Burton and he suggested a drink. We went to the Exeter Arms, which I wrote up for the Telegraph putting Simon in it, and we spent an enjoyable afternoon there and then finished off at the Alexandra before I lurched off to get my train. In between there were emails and tweets and his thoroughly enjoyable blog; it was only the other day when I was smiling at it as I read the account of his bonkers Derby Bimble last Saturday. 

He was generous with his information, telling me about pubs in the East Midlands, including the General Havelock, and I tried to get him to join the British Guild of Beer Writers, but he never did. He will be missed by those of us who communicate about beer in whatever form but first and foremost my thoughts go out to his family.