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By Jeff and Judy

Snug as a bug

A profound revelation hit me earlier today. Not something that happens very often but even the normally wary Jeff Sellers consented this one has merit.

We were sitting in the cosiest corner of the friendliest 'pub' in the sweetest little West Sussex village imaginable agreeing wholeheartedly with a delightful group of locals that they have every reason to call their nation "Great" Britain.

After all you never confront people preparing to buy the next round and anyway it's true. You can debate the long and quirky history of these storm-battered islands until the cows come home but there is no disputing that the so-often fog-shrouded inventive people who choose to live here voluntarily have given the world more than a fair share of pleasures and joys.

Without belabouring the point few other countries have so successfully exported so much. Almost all modern sports were sent abroad from here - even though the people who first organised them rarely haul gold - and where would we, and this column, be without Britain's greatest gift of all, our wonderful common language.

But looking around and soaking-up the delights of this most typical symbol of Britishness it suddenly hit me that the one thing never exported successfully is the pub itself.

Now I hear readers saying "wait a minute, we have a "Rose & Crown", or "King's Head" in our town, as authentic as any in Sussex, Middlesex or Wessex for that matter."

But they just aren't. As often as anyone else Jeff and I have sat in pubs claiming to be British, from Hong Kong to Rio di Janeiro and from Bombay to Helsinki and not one comes even close.

There's that distinctive smell. Of lingering stale ale fumes, centuries of engrained tobacco smoke and a particularly pungent disinfectant carpet cleaner that must exist only in the UK. That alone would give the game away if you were plonked blindfolded anywhere and asked, "where?"

But most of all there's the reassuring calmness when you realise the place hasn't changed a whit since highwayman Dick Turpin stopped-in for a pint of hand-pumped lukewarm bitter after calmly plundering the London to Chichester stagecoach.

That's probably why they call one room in the pub the "snug".

To help you shed the cares of the world and make you feel soft and cuddly all over.

Hold-on, wait a minute. Now I know why sly Jeff agreed so readily.

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Just who are Jeff and Judy? Judy and Jeff Sellers are a US couple who love sunsets, world travel, fine wines, good food and each other. As often as possible and not necessarily in that order. They currently seek a congenial publisher for their "Frisky after Sixty" book ('A Good in Bed Read') and after many requests from friends all over the world waiting impatiently for their local newspapers to carry this column. To find out more go to Frisky After Sixty.




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