When I first came to Edinburgh in 1977 there was very little real ale available. The Southsider was a longstanding Maclay’s house and there was a little Belhaven available on cask (back before they changed the water source and the 80/- stopped being such a great pint). And then there was the Green Tree which was an unprepossessing howf in the Cowgate. The Green Tree had one of the very few Bar Billiards tables in Scotland and a TV above the door upon which a cat usually sat, occasionally leaping off onto the head of an unsuspecting punter. The Green Tree was a great wee pub and had as it’s main beer a very well kept Sam Smiths Best Bitter, brewed in Tadcaster in Yorkshire.
Sadly at some point in the early nineteen eighties some idiot decided to remodel the pub to attract a younger clientele and, inevitably, it closed down within months as the character which made it special evaporated (and the young people didn’t come). The memory of that Sam Smith’s still lingers though and Kirstin and I went for a bar meal today at the other Sam Smith’s pub in the area – The Crammond Inn. What a disappointment: the soup of the day came from a tin and the beer was all bland nitrokeg. The staff were friendly enough but there was nothing to take us back there.
Some of you know that I have been making an acoustic guitar for some time, but it has been put on hold for a while due to lack of time to get it finished. I have taken that opportunity in the remaining days of the holiday and today marked a moment of truth of sorts – joining the neck to the body. The glue is setting as I type this and we’ll see what the end result is. All that is left is to fix the bridge, drill through the bridge pin holes and set it up.
What could possibly go wrong?
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