Letter: Angling for a reprieve for pub

Published 18 Jun 2009 08:00 2 Comments

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Get some Jollydarity in your life

I live nearby the Jolly Anglers" pub in Kennetside and have heard that it will be turned into housing.

This pub is a valuable community resource.

I have met all sorts of people from the local communities there and gained an insight into their lives. Where else could I do that? It seems outrageous that the council grants licences for big noisy pubs in the town centre, and then assists in the closing down of valuable community resources like this local pub.

Hundreds of people use this pub and are outraged to hear that it has been sold to developers and will become housing.

We don"t need more housing in the area, what we need is a nice small pub where real people can meet up, get to know each other, gain an understanding of other peoples lives, do something other than

watch television, have real human contact.

This pub is part of the life blood of the community. Members from a wide variety of different areas of the community interact there, where else could that happen. It is a tragedy that it is closing.

Hundreds of local people are furious about this.

Cathy Marsden

East Reading

This letter appeared in Reading Chronicle 18 Jun 09

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newtchaser
Unregistered User
Jul 17, 13:58
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I received this message from my friend Eric and his wife Shelley in New Jersey USA. They lived here a couple of years and didn't waste a second of it to soak up all Reading has to offer.

Please add my name to the petition to reopen The Jolly Angler. I used

to drop in there for a pint now and then as I walked along the canal.

Even though pub life in Reading is a mere shadow of its former self,

Shelley and I loved the pubs when we lived there.

It sometimes takes a foreigner to see a place's beauty. I marvelled at

Reading every day I lived there. Combine the age of Reading's threernoldest churches and they predate Christ. Raise your eyes above street

level and feast on the brickwork. Visit, say, Sweeney and Todd's, or

Everest 53, or any of Reading's many other character-filled nooks and

crannies. And afterward, go for a pint of beer -- beer, mind, rich and

strong, not the weak, anaemic yuck water that typically dribbles from therntaps on my side of The Pond. The pubs in Reading often serve two drinks

for the price of one -- the first to slake the throat, and the second tornsoothe the spirit.

Sadly, Reading has lost one of its best when the Jolly Angler closed.

There will always be an England, but will she have pubs? Here is onernYank who hopes that she will.

Please fight the good fight on my behalf, and let me know how I can help.

Please give my very best to Colm, Linda, Roger, Michael, Peter, Shane,

Anne, and all my other Good Pub Friends. Chin up!

Sincerely yours,

Eric Mintz

131 Woodbridge ave, Metuchen, New Jersey, USA 08840 2030

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