This month we’re proud to have collaborated with our friends at Ferment Magazine, who’s latest issue focusses on Manchester and is guest edited by our co-founder Matthew Curtis. We didn’t have room in the print magazine for every article commissioned, so please enjoy this bonus feature, while also remembering that pubs are very much more than simply places to go and consume alcohol.

We’d also like to remind you that we’re currently aiming to hit 500 Patreon subscribers by our 4th birthday on May 1st. Reaching this target will mean Pellicle becomes a profitable business, allowing us the space and time to commission more work, invest in our small team, and secure the future of our publication for the next few years. Help Pellicle thrive with a donation from as little as £1/$1.50 a month by signing up here.

***

When we decided to go on a lime and lemonade crawl, the idea started off as a plan to meet for food. Oversaturated by alcohol and the coming winter, we decided to make Mondays a strict no-alcohol day—the most obvious switch for a bar setting is one with food instead of drinks. But neither of us wanted food. We wanted the comfort of a pub, the atmosphere of a communal sitting room. We didn’t want to be wowed by flavours or waited on. We just wanted somewhere to belong.

It’s easy to forget that you’re just as welcome in a pub as a non-drinker. Somehow it feels awkward; unusual. But, if you want to sit in a cosy corner and play cards, you go right ahead. Using pubs is essential right now. Your diet coke, your packet of Quavers—they mean more than the pennies in your pocket. You’re using an institution that’s dear to the heart. The phrase “use them or lose them” has never been more relevant.

So, my friend Bridie and I headed out to meet each other on one of the first dark evenings of the late Manchester autumn. Our plan was to visit our favourite places to drink lime and lem, just to see each other, and have just as much fun without alcohol’s pushy involvement.

Cask, Liverpool Street

The walk from Salford Central train station to Liverpool Street was brisk, especially over the canal bridge where a bitter wind cut a channel through the city, flapping my coat and burning my fingers. The type of weather you’re thankful to come in through pub doors from.

Cask is, I suppose, what you’d call a craft beer pub, in that it has an exceptional selection of really great beer. Since we weren’t drinking beer, I approached the bar and gingerly asked for a lime cordial and lemonade—a pint, with ice, and a straw if they had them. My friend hadn’t arrived yet so I settled myself in the back yard to wait. I knew she’d want a cig, and anyway, I like the city feeling the smoking area’s high red brick walls give.

You can eat chips from the chippy next door here, and I was planning my order when Bridie arrived. We sipped and swapped health calamities, a thing we do, and then we launched into the big topics right away. We’d met up primarily to discuss things you can’t say via Whatsapp in any meaningful way, and me being me, I cried almost immediately. It’s being listened to: I can’t cope. We sat in thoughtful silence for a moment, then I laughed, shrugged, dried my face, and went back to the bar for another drink.

“Everything’s okay, love,” said the wonderful barman, who looked like he could give the world’s best hugs if you asked him to.

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t convince him, however, because he popped my drink on the bar, plopped a straw in it and said: “You can fight me if you want. Outside.”

“Honestly… that would actually do me the world of good. See you in ten?”

The Peveril of the Peak, Great Bridgewater Street

The Pev is a Manchester institution, tiled in yellow and green, and has been written about at length by many adoring advocates. I won’t bore you with the details others have covered so carefully and lovingly. When we arrived, a man was giving his lilac-grey English bulldog a breath of fresh air by the door. She had picked up a fallen leaf in her jowly mouth, and it stuck out like a curly brown tongue. We doted on her, and her owner told us she was a nightmare. A right madam.

““We wanted the comfort of a pub, the atmosphere of a communal sitting room.””

Inside, my glasses steamed up, adding to the mythic atmosphere. In truth, the Peveril of the Peak is just a pub—it doesn’t do anything that other good pubs don’t. That’s why people, including us, love it. It will not be moved, changed or bulldozed.

It’s got a small selection of decent beers, and the Guinness is only okay. The lime and lemonade is the most expensive of all our stops today. But, the implicit agreement is that the value lies in the pub itself, with its gold leaf glass and Victorian wood. The people you meet while you’re there. The dogs who become co-conspirators in your pre-tea crisp snacking.

We sipped our softies and spoke about this and that, heavy shit put aside for now, while Ian Brown played endlessly on the jukebox. Time passes smoothly here, and you never feel rushed. Get the next train if you’re cutting it fine. You’re among friends.

An illustrated map of central manchester showing the location of the four pubs in this feature — Illustrations by Dionne Kitching

The Old Nags Head, Jackson’s Row

In the back corner of The Old Nag’s Head is where you’ll find me and Bridie, if we’ve invited you to join us. The front seats are out of bounds, due to the huge fish tank built into an adjoining wall—she is mortally afraid of anything that lives in the sea.

Fish tank out of view and best (and cheapest) lime and lemonades acquired, we make ourselves comfortable under a wall of framed pictures of George Best in his prime, and chat about boys. It turns out that even alcohol-free events can be hijacked by them.

The Nag’s Head is an ideal pub if you love tall tales, wild overheard conversations, and the privacy of darkly varnished wood and heavy furniture. We become emotional, then giddy, then serious—at one point I take out a notebook and make business plans I will never activate. We hug, and we tell each other not to be silly. We have personal revelations. It’s not the lime and lemonade that’s encouraged this.

““It’s easy to forget that you’re just as welcome in a pub as a non-drinker.””

What I like most about The Old Nag’s Head is that it still feels like a cosy pub, even in the midst of Deansgateville—a name I’ve given the built-up area around historic Deansgate, full of glass, polished granite and perpetual roadworks. There is a lot of space inside, and often when I’ve popped in at odd hours midweek it’s been mostly empty. However, I’ve never felt awkward stepping in there alone, and while I’ve yet to have a full conversation with any regulars there, and though there always seems to be a group of lost tourists trying to find their way to a market or a theatre, I feel welcome.

Mulligans, Southgate

It was now fully dark, the wet paving slabs shining with the late evening traffic. Christmas lights were hung unlit from the rafters of Deansgate, and the sense of anxious anticipation was in the air. I believe I would have taken a blurry photo of the scene to find the next day if I’d had something more alcoholic to drink.

The last stop on our crawl was Mulligans, an Irish bar just off Deansgate that lays claim to pouring the best Guinness in the city.

I would dearly love a Guinness after so many hours of deep chat, but we have rules and we are stubborn. We order lime and lemonades and sit in a dark, leathery corner, and let the long, grey evening become animated, enjoying the sight of more and more drinkers joining the atmosphere out of the cold. Adding themselves to our people-watching directory.

Mulligans is a place for the living, and for living in. We talk with our hands, getting into topics we can’t believe we’ve never spoken about before in our many years of friendship. The live band starts, and we get another round of drinks and Taytos. Soon we’re dancing, totally sober, raising our arms and shouting along with the folk songs we know. Lifted from the sodden, encroaching winter by ourselves, our conversations, our pubs, and our love.