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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Viv Groskop

The pub that changed me: ‘We celebrated Christmas in July – and suddenly every night was Saturday night’

Viv Groskop in pub raising arm towards male friend
Viv Groskop and her friend Ken at the Blue Ball in Bruton, Somerset, summer 1992. Composite: Guardian Design; Courtesy of Viv Groskop

The Blue Ball, Somerset

I was an employee and a customer at this pub as a teenager in the early 1990s. This was one of four or five pubs clustered around the high street in the town where I grew up in Somerset. We gravitated towards the Blue Ball as teenagers, not because they served underage drinkers. They didn’t. And we could only afford to drink lime and soda anyway. No, we loved this place because it had (drumroll) two bars. So we were not only cool enough to go down the pub (never “to the pub”, strictly “down the pub” or, better still, “down the Blue”), but we even had our own bar.

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