The Station Pub

in Wellingborough is gone! I passed it yesterday. It was a fabulous old place, small, soaking in the character of another age when the profit margin and corporate unformity weren't immediate considerations for every new building or business. I'd guess it had been there down by Wellingborough Rail Station slaking the thirsts of travellers and rail workers for a hundred years at least.Lee and I went in there a few times, it being near his house. I've drunk in there alone and with other people too. Now it's just a big (small) pile of rubble behind a wire fence, the space waiting to be developed, no doubt into something that looks exactly like everything else, something no one needs. Overgrown with budleia, the large pointy purple heads blowing in the august wind. The only thing that's left of the original structure of the pub is the doorstep. I stepped over it, went in, sat down on one of the plucked and threadbare seats and had a pint in memory of times and people gone.