Een goed café

Volgens Orwell, een man van de wereld, kon je een goed café hieraan herkennen:

1. The architecture and fittings must be uncompromisingly Victorian. 2. Games, such as darts, are only played in the public part of the bar. 3. The pub is quiet enough to talk, with the house possessing neither a radio nor a piano. 4. The barmaids know the customers by name and take an interest in everyone. 5. It sells tobacco and cigarettes, aspirins and stamps, and lets you use the phone. 6. There is a snack counter where you can get liver-sausage sandwiches, mussels (a speciality of the house), cheese, pickles and [...] large biscuits with caraway seeds. 7. Upstairs, six days a week, you can get a good, solid lunch -- for example, a cut off the joint, two vegetables and boiled jam roll—for about three shillings. 8. [...] it serves a creamy sort of draught stout [...]. 9. They are particular about their drinking vessels  [...] and never, for example, make the mistake of serving a pint of beer in a handleless glass. Apart from glass and pewter mugs, they have some of those pleasant strawberry-pink china ones. 10. [...] You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and find yourself in a fairly large garden.

Uit: George Orwell, The Moon Under Water, Evening Standard, 6 februari 1946.

We zijn, als je dat zo leest, vandaag wel heel erg snel tevreden.