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Community Pubs Week 16th - 23rd February 2008
It's a frightening reality that at least 26 pubs are closing in Britain each month... and research carried out by CAMRA suggests that the true figure could actually be significantly higher. Worse still, the majority of these pubs are not high street chain bars or theme pubs, but community pubs, recognised by most people these days as important amenities. The local pub, after all, is often the heart of the community.
CAMRA has successfully run National Pubs Week since 2003 in an attempt to convince more people to visit more pubs more of the time. CAMRA members across the country have worked hard to promote pub-going in response to the growth in home drinking. Despite low supermarket prices, nothing can match the British pub for its service and atmosphere.
In light of the increased threats to community pubs CAMRA changed the focus of its week of action in 2007 to help raise the profile and importance of pubs in the community and encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to use community pubs more.
The new Community Pubs Week complements a range of CAMRA-led initiatives including the Community Pubs Foundation, launched in 2005 to support campaigns to save local public houses by offering assistance to community groups, as well as a whole range of local campaigns by CAMRA to save and promote community pubs.
Community Pubs Week celebrates and promotes all community pubs - not just village locals, but urban gems too.
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What's Happening in the Solihull Area
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Perfect Pint Puller
Solihull & District CAMRA, in association with the Solihull Times, is searching for the Perfect Pint Puller 2008. If a barman or barmaid at your local fits the bill, we want to know.
Pub Quiz at the Wharf Tavern, Hockley Heath Thursday 22nd Feb 2007
Thanks to Bob Bell, seven Solihull CAMRA members formed a team for a pub quiz at The Wharf, one of the pubs participating in this year's Community Pubs Week. The team bus collected us all and arrived on time - costing slightly more than estimated (don't they always) but they gave us an OAP discount! We arrived an hour early to discuss team tactics, and for Bob to order his dinner before they stopped serving food. The beer was all good, Directors, Theakstons Best and a guest from Fyne Ales - Pipers Gold (3.8%) which merited a return to the bar on more than one occasion.
Our neighbours on the next table were from Ireland and north Wales - hey this was an international pub quiz!
The tactics turned out to be "see who knows the answer". It was fought over 6 rounds, with the final round being high risk - any mistake and you lose all points for the round, so no guessing.
- Round 1, identify pictures of celebs of various ages, we did OK.
- Round 2, topical news items, including: in which decade was the last nuclear power-station built. The answer was 80's, whereas anyone in the meeting I was in the day before (so it was topical) knows it was the 90's (Sizewell B in case you wonder).
- Round 3, sports and music. We did OK on the latter but only managed to think of one Olympic sport that had always been an event (we sort of misunderstood the question).
- Round 4, trivia. Our resident fisherman did not know the answer was bass (the fish).
- Round 5, some easy questions. Got those right but failed to spot the connection - they were all types of chair.
- Round 6: the high risk one, Steve knew the answer was Len Deighton, I wrote it down, Steve went for another pint (his work done) and then the team got cold feet and we crossed it out. He was right.
Final score... we probably came about 3rd by 3-4 points. Then the discussions started, what if we'd understood the Olympic question, and the quiz setter knew his nuclear reactor history better, and democracy had not rained on Steve's Len Deighton answer... what might have been.
Oh well, it was an entertaining evening with friends, the beer was good and we'd done our bit to support the community pub. On that basis, it IS the taking part that matters and I suggest we do it again.
Robert Cawte
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