Reopen the Jolly Anglers

(press release)

On Sunday 19th July, residents of Newtown and customers of the Jolly Anglers held a street party outside their closed local as part of the Big Lunch celebrations.

They shared food, music and laughter. The pub was suddenly closed down on June 16th. Local residents are furious, and organised the Street Party as part of their campaign to get the pub reopened.

Music was provided by the fantastic skiffle band The Black Diamonds, accompanied by Colm Daly and Peter Crowther.

The Big Lunch was started by members of the Eden Project with the aim that throughout the UK, people will sit down to have lunch together with neighbours in streets, and on every patch of common ground. See http://www.thebiglunch.com.

Local Cumberland Road resident and campaigner Rob White said:

Sunday was a really positive community event. Having 50 to 100 people turn up over the afternoon shows what strong local support there is for getting the pub reopened. The food was also really tasty and the music held the afternoon together nicely.

Newtown resident Adrian Evans said:

An excellent turn out in spite of the weather. The girls who took charge of the petition were very helpful; we got well over 100 signatures, some were passers by but many also had received a street party leaflet or read about it and come down especially to sign it.

I attach below an e-mail of support received from an American who lived in Reading for several years and has recently returned to New Jersey.

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 three oldest 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 yuckwater that typically dribbles from the taps 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 to soothe 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 one Yank who hopes that she will.

Sincerely yours,
Eric Mintz