The Litvins arrived today and we had a fantastic evening with them. We fed the kids pizza and then walked into Winchester through the old town. It was cold, crisp and quiet, a glorious night. As we walked we heard the cathedral bell ringing and joked that it was warning the residents that there were Jews within the city walls.
We took them to the Wykeham Arms for a pint and then wandered through the High Street and stopped at the Black Boy. Now, you could look at that name and wonder at its insensitivity in this day and age, especially in the company of our liberal minded friends from New York. Perhaps it should have been renamed the African American Boy or, given this is England, the Afro Caribbean Boy.
The truth, as I discovered in the pub itself, was that it was named for the juvenile chimney sweeps in the 19th Century. Their size made it easy to send them up and down chimneys, from which they appeared black as the soot they encountered. The pub itself is a bit of a labyrinth with big wooden tables and randon stuff, including 1970s thriller novels (Maclean, Deighton, Francis etc.) and various stuffed animals. Fascinating.
