alison Jones

I was born in Finchfield in Wolverhampton, and I drank in the Tavern between ’73 and ’79. I was seventeen, I suppose. Maybe sixteen. I probably went with a friend that I went to school with.

I used to go two or three times a week, always in the evening, and got to know people in there. People from Wednesfield. Two guys, Dave and Vince. Dave’s father owned a bike shop there. I don’t know why it was, but everybody I spoke to, that I can remember, was from Wednesfield. That’s why I got to go to Wednesfield to use pubs there. They’d say Try such and such a pub. And we’d go. Sometimes from the Tavern, and sometimes instead of the Tavern.

If I’d been in the Tavern and someone had gone Right Alison, here’s 50p, put some tunes on… I’d probably have chosen T Rex… David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, Slade. Stuff like that. Not necessarily rock, but ’70s stuff. But I did like rock as well.

I didn’t drink. I didn’t drink till I stopped going to the Tavern. I tried lager and lime, but I can’t stand lager. Or beer. I tried drinking half a pint of lager with lime topped up. It was like syrup, but it was the only way I could drink it. It was the same with lager and black. I’d need another shot, another shot, and it’d make it thicker and thicker, and it was like drinking syrup. I’d think I don’t like this. So I just drank soft drinks. Tomato juice. Stuff like that.

I stopped going because my circle of friends changed. I don’t think I was seeing my friend I went to school with any more, and I met other people and found new friends and started going other places. I think I was going to the Giffard every week. And then I started going to nightclubs as well.

And I passed my test when I was eighteen, and had a car, so that probably changed things as well. I remember going to Kipps’ a lot. The Giffard was one place, but Kipps’ was the main one. Wine bars weren’t really known of back then, so we went to Kipps’, because it was new.

When I went to Kipps’ I started drinking wine, and cider as well. I’d go to the Students Union, the Polytechnic as then was, because that was cheap drinks. But in the Tavern, I didn’t drink. I still enjoyed going, even though I wasn’t drinking. It’s a bit strange to say that now, when I think about it.