For some time the licensee of the Hobgoblin, Broad Street Reading has been looking for another pub. This isn't surprising: the pubco never spend tuppence on the place [1] but keeps raising the managers' targets, which is unrewarding for all concerned. The regulars' choice to succeed him was a lad named Dom. We can now reveal (since everyone already knows) that the current management will be driving a van to their new pub in Cambridge on 30th April, and they're taking Dom with them. This put the pubco into a flat spin, since the shabby [2] Goblin brings in Loadsa Money and the loss of its faithful clientele would hit them where it hurts. The pubco rang the chairman of the local CAMRA branch (who is also thought to be looking for a pub) and asked if he knew anyone who might be interested. He told them a complete pubco attitude transplant would be a prerequisite to anyone who knew the Goblin touching it with a ten-foot pole.
So it seems likely that a pubco rent-a-manager will arrive on the eve of its busiest weekend of the year. If they can get one [3]. There are other real ale pubs we can go to. They'd have to spend a fortune to get the place into a state where any other clientele would consider drinking there.
[1] Nor, apparently, do they spend a penny in it. The drain from the ladies' loo collapsed so female customers had to use the Gents' and nothing was done about it until said customers reported the matter to Environmental Health, who forced the pubco to act. The Gents is now almost as bad. [2] The skull that used to grin down at you from the corner of the bar gantry has apparently already left. Its place has been taken by a customer service award, made from a chunk of glass but already beginning to look tarnished. The glass-washing machine was working when I last saw it but the mechanic says it's beyond economic repair. The bar has a tiny sink where staff can kneel to wash glasses by hand when the machine breaks down. The electric supply is unreliable. And shouldn't switches be fixed to the wall? The cellar is reached from the bar, by a trapdoor which has a wooden baluster round it by way of a safety rail; one of the banisters has been broken for years. [3] Although the drains don't let water through, I understand the roof does. Also that the licensee's accomodation is worth seeing, and has to be, to be believed. With sympathetic restoration it could be charming. The rear of the building was part of a timber-framed mediaeval house, while the brick front was added around 1798, when the opening of the Kennet and Avon Canal brought prosperity to the town. The two parts are held together by a vast iron staple in the licensee's bedroom. Each part has its own concept of "upright". A steep narrow staircase without handrails forks into two similar staircases: bijou, but not very practical if you're carrying anything or if you're not quite sober.