The original Spoons: Playhouse, Colchester.
After
hearing my flatmate refuse to go for dinner in Wetherspoons, I was deeply
offended as it’s honestly my favourite place on Earth. Where else can you go
for breakfast, dinner, tea, and also your evening pint? In the last year, I’ve drank
my first bright blue cocktail from a pitcher, reconnected with old friends,
cured hangovers, pieced together a broken heart over (too many) chocolate
puddings, all thanks to Spoons. Wetherspoons holds a very special place in my
heart and in my stomach.
There are
teens in there drinking their 2 for £12 pitchers at 8pm, the alcoholics have
been in there since 3pm, and there are sometimes even some mums out for lunch
with their prams blocking up the space between tables.
There have
been times where I’ve been sat wobbling on a bar stool in Spoons sipping a Strongbow
and I’ve looked around and never felt happier. Granted I was a little bit
drunk, but also very happy. Wetherspoons has been the setting for many
momentous events. My friends and I have split chocolate brownie sundae’s the
night before Alevel results day and made ourselves more sick, we’ve been for
chips and puddings when we’ve been broken hearted, and we’ve been laggered
many, many times in the booths at the
back of Colchester’s Playhouse. Wetherspoons was also the place where I had my
first legal drink – I bounded up to the bar in my little bowler hat, tshirt
dress, and Dr Martens and ordered four more pitchers. There were only four of
us at our table, and two of us weren’t even of age, but my 18th
birthday was a huge success (although the crushed Snickers in my pocket and my
banging head the next day may have disagreed). Of course post-results Alevel
celebrations were held in Spoons from 7pm onwards in August. I remember seeing
my friend’s tattoo for the first time and screaming so hard I almost threw my
glass of Blue Lagoon all over my other friend. Wetherspoons is honestly the
most memorable place of my teenage years after something obvious like my school
or college.
Also, the staff
employed there are all teens too. In Playhouse back home, there were several
people from my old school wandering round in their black aprons pulling pints.
It’s good that Wetherspoons is not only the place providing the drinks, but
also the place signing the pay cheques of young people. It seems appropriate
that a place which is the setting for so much fun, gives you some money to go
out and have even more fun, and maybe a kebab or a new pair of shoes. Of course
it’s awkward when you’re pretty wavy in front of that boy who was in your form
group for five years who never looked at you, and the girl from your old PE
class – but you’ve got to have that pint somewhere. As I’ve said, Wetherspoons
is an essential part of any teenage night out. There is no where else anyone
still living at home can have pre-drinks before going to a shit nightclub in
their tiny town, partly because our parents only gave us £20 to go out with for
the night, but mostly because you need to leave the house.
This also brings
me onto my next point about the menu. You get real value for money at spoons. I
spent just £5.50 in my local Spoons at one point this summer and was writing ‘HELLO’
in squeezy mayonnaise on the table and ordering a pasta alfredo and garlic
bread (which is actually really delicious and is now my thing amongst my
friends). Luckily we were on our way out, so my friend wiped up the mess whilst
I shouted at a girl from my old school who was on her shift, and was then
yanked out of the pub. There is no doubt that most of us roll into Wetherspoons
in hope of getting a drink down our neck, and boy do they have a selection of
those – a whole A3 sized menu of drinks. From cocktails to tequila, and from
beer to Hooch – you name it, Spoons probably serves it. Also if you love ale
and beer (so you love yeast) there is only one place to be heading.
The menu
even includes food as well as alcohol would you believe. You can get a vegetarian burrito and a Coke for £4.25 on the
outskirts of London and I don’t really know where else Londoners could afford
to have a meal out. The Wetherspoons menu also has speciality days where you
can go for “Mexican Monday’s” or “Wing it Wednesday’s” and, although I’m
vegetarian, the vast choice and the appeal of the specialities on certain days
is enticing enough to get my butt in a seat.
Not only is
Spoons the setting for your Sunday roast and the beginning of your wild Friday night,
it actually does a bit of good for our country. The franchise buys up old
buildings that would normally be left to rot (or even have been rotting, like the grade 2 listed Art Deco State
Cinema in Essex
which Spoons bought in September this year) and converts them into happier
places. They’ve also previously bought theatres, post offices, banks, and even
swimming pools to save them from being demolished or abandoned. In addition to
saving our architecture and heritage from the 80s, Wetherspoons is the leader
of health trends such as the smoking ban which, although inconvenient for the
heavy smokers amongst us, is generally a good move.
If you
consider yourself to be above Wetherspoons, you need a healthy sized slice of
humble pie and then I’ll take you for a (large, pitcher sized) strawberry daiquiri.
Wetherspoons is the symbol of working class success. The owner of Wetherspoons
is not actually named Mr Wetherspoon – his name was Tim Martin. Significantly
less exciting, I know, but his teacher who told him he would never amount to
anything was named Mr Wetherspoon so, in possibly the greatest ironic move
ever, the UK’s most successful branded pub with exactly 1000 branches up and
down the country, is named after a poxy school teacher. How English. How are
Americans coping without a single Spoons in their huge, huge country? I dread
to think. Luckily Wetherspoons is so cheap, I could afford to get sufficiently
plastered as not to have to think about it. Cheers to that.
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