Signs of the times: decoding the pub
No matter how long we live in England, we still seem to have difficulty understanding exactly what the signs are trying to communicate. Language conventions are just different here.
Take tonight, for instance. Getting the urge for some exercise, Elizabeth and I decided we could walk 10 minutes to the Dog and Partridge and get a couple of pints, too. Unfortunately, it is closed on Mondays. This being England, another pub was just minutes away. Even better, the sign outside of the pub advertised both Real Ale and some sort of pseudo-Mexican food.
In America, when an establishment goes to the trouble of making and displaying a sign, it generally means that this is what’s on offer. Not in this culture and not at this pub. Food is only served during lunch hours, and they weren’t pouring anything that didn’t come out of a very large and very generic factory. The Carpenters Arms did have taps for London Pride and at least one other real ale, but the barkeep wouldn’t give me any. Disappointed that I couldn’t get a proper pint, and unwilling to take a generic lager (like it makes sense to ship urine all the way from Australia, let alone Belgium), I took a Strongbow, an overly sweet fermented apple juice intended to give young people something to swill.
We encountered signage ambiguity during our first several weeks in England, when we were living in a temp flat in Windsor. Heading out of town on foot, we stopped at the first building with a sign advertising ‘food’. Inside, we were told that they actually hadn’t been serving anything but beer and crisps for 2 years. Nobody else was wandering around looking for nourishment, and they seemed almost amused that these funny foreigners would think that a sign advertising food would actually mean that they serve food. I’m convinced that there is some sort of subtle signal, other than the overt and misleading one of the signage, that allows the native English to know whether or not a pub actually has food.
I think I’m beginning to crack some of the code, though. Assuming that the pub does have food, I can usually tell whether it is going to be any good or not. If the sign says “Good Food Served All Day,” it means “We Have a Microwave.”
July 30th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Couldn’t these establishments be taken to task under the old Truth in Advertising Act? I always understood Guinness had to drop their longstanding “Guinness is Good for You” ads because of the law. Maybe that’s an old wive’s tale.