What Butlers Saw

There's something strangely both stupid and exciting at the same time about going out on a Saturday night to get drunk. At the time it's brilliant but the next day you always wonder why you bothered.

J was was driving down from Glastonbury, undecided about whether he was staying the night although he wanted to catch the Liverpool v Charlton game on tv in the evening. Well, this we did at the nearby Cowley Bridge Arms, the pub by the railway mainline that occasionally gets totally flooded and ruined. The place is as empty at 6 o'clock on a Saturday evening as my pint glass is after five minutes, this being my first pint for a few days, courtesy of J.

But, the football is on, and it's actually quite an entertaining match.

Later on, it's over to the Mill on the Exe for a steak, after some deliberation about going to the revamped Ruffwell Inn, past Stoke Canon, instead. J, Z, G and mum are all there, really quite a family outing. Well, that's enough of family outings for the new few months - time to get down the Mint, the best pub in Exeter.

W was on the door so I congratulate him on the Liverpool win and a fine goal by the Spaniard, Luis Garcia. Then, with E, it's off to Butler's pub just up the road, where I land up staying right through until closing time at 1am. Butler's pub, in Mary Arches Street, is what you might call a 'town pub' - it is right near the middle of Exeter, amongst a number of other similar places, and has been granted, by the city council and licensing authorities, one of those modern, late night weekend drinking licenses. This means that it can stay open until 1am on weekends.

Butler's is a large, rambling pub housed in one of the original buildings of the street, just opposite the church of St Mary Major, a street which used to be narrow and medieval before the council got to work on it after the war. This pub was until about two years ago in an utterly desperate condition, tatty, fake wooden beams everywhere and water leaking through the ceiling. The mens toilets were like something out of the black hole of Calcutta. However, it closed down for about three months and has re-emerged all cream-coloured with a nice new bar.

It draws its weekend crowd from people waiting to go to Rococo's, the plain, bland nightclub next door. But, if you are in Butler's before the old closing time - 11 pm - then you are permitted to remain until 1am.

I met two new people, a nice couple called Debbie and Mike who even invite me around their place for a further drink, somewhere down in King Street near Stepcote Hill. I stagger back home at about 2am.

Their flat is really superb, about three floors up in what turns out to be a housing association block. They've done it up in the modern, Homebase urban minimalist vernacular, complete with fake wooden floors, quite tastfully decorated walls, suitably plain, just a few plants scattered around and a nice, vertical CD rack (which includes the greatest hits of the Human League).

But the staggering thing is the view - on one side you can see right over the River Exe to the Haldon Hills, in the distance and on the other side you can see uphill to Exeter Cathedral and the city centre.