My first pint of beer cost 2/8d. That’s two shillings and eight pence – from the days when there were 20 shillings in a pound and 12 pence in a shilling. In today’s money that would be about 13p. Decimalisation arrived in February 1971 so I guess I must be talking about 1970 and I would have been 16 years old. Oddly enough 1971 was not only decimalisation year – it was also the year in which CAMRA was founded – but more about that later. The pint in question, I remember well, was Watney’s Red Barrel. My learned older brother told me that it was much better than the alternative offerings of the day, Watney’s bitter and Ind Coope mild and well worth the extra two pence. It was served in a thick dimpled glass with a handle, at the Bottle and Glass public house, in the village of Scothern, Lincolnshire – a small village four miles from the city of Lincoln, which was later to become our family home.

Decimalisation followed shortly afterwards and the beers offered by local hostelries mysteriously crept up to 15 new pence a pint (three shillings in old money). Watney’s Red Barrel, Youngers Tartan and Double Diamond were the most common beers in rural Lincolnshire at the time. All of them (with hindsight) were sparkling clear but excessively gassy, and not particularly enjoyable. There were a few tied houses offering locally brewed “Batemans Honest Ales,” such as its standard XB Bitter, XXXB Strong Ale, and Batemans Mild. Much as I preferred the flavour of Batemans XXXB, the Batemans pubs tended to be dingy, smoke filled taverns occupied by old men in raincoats playing dominoes (or so it seemed). The trendier pubs that offered pool tables, dartboards and were more welcoming to my generation were, I recall, also the pubs that offered mostly keg beers.

Imagine my delight on leaving home and moving up to university in Sheffield, when I discovered that the students’ union bar stocked Samuel Smiths 4X Bitter at just 11p a pint (it was 15p in the local pubs). Yes – in 1972, you could go out for a night in the union bar, get thoroughly drunk and have change from £1. Beer was so cheap, I even had enough cash left over to buy my 12” vinyl copy of “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” from my first week’s spending money. At that time, October 1972, the album which was to become my favourite for decades, cost £2.09. I find it amazing that in those days, you could buy about 15 pints of beer for the price of a long playing record. Today, a download of the same music costs the price of just 2 or 3 pints. What fantastic value for money recorded music is these days!

The Students’ Union bar was more than a mile from the halls of residence in the Ranmoor area of the city and the walk back and forth necessitated passing by the doorways of at least half a dozen inviting pubs. It wasn’t long before my student friends and I were tempted to venture inside and try some of the local beers.