Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on September 21, 2003 at 22:01:26 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: Pubs, Inns etc posted by Peter Willis on September 21, 2003 at 19:39:19:
Indeed they did, but I have assumed that the telephone was outside the bar itself, which, as I recall from my youth, was a fairly normal arrangement, so that someone telephoning a wife, employer, or anyone else who might not have been pleased to find the caller in a pub, could do so in quiet, rather than with the background noise of a bar!
I am led to this conclusion because in BS it is made very clear
that the three boys do not enter the bar, except briefly at the end of the book, whereas no such reservations appear to surround the Swallows ringing Mrs Walker in WDMTGS.
I should have defined my terms more precisely.
On a point of information, the Ship at Blaxhall, get-at-able on foot from Snape, but only open during the latter half of the week, has Woodfordes and Adnams.