At the Faversham there was thumping house music, projections of lava lamp bubbles, and bottles of K Cider. Rave culture had hit Leeds, and my friends and I plunged in
I can mark out stages in my life by the pubs I’ve been to – and I started early. My grandparents used to take me to the Sandford Arms across the road from their house in Leeds on a Saturday afternoon to play the jukebox – and since I remember records like Boney M’s Rivers of Babylon this must mean I was about four. My other grandparents, meanwhile, actually ran a pub in the city centre. Their days usually started with my grandad, who did not have the bonhomie of a natural landlord, groaning to my grandmother: “You open up, Kath, I can’t face it!”
The summer before I went to university I worked in the tap room – where the beer was slightly cheaper and the presence of women discouraged – of my local pub, the Eyrie, known to my friends as the Dreary. By then, I was a regular at the Faversham, an enormous pub close to Leeds University. When I started going, “the Fav” was heavily patronised by student goths who probably hoped to meet members of local bands Sisters of Mercy or the Mission. This would have been about 1990, when I was underage – the bouncer on the door would ask younger clientele for their dates of birth (a slightly tricky inquiry if one had been pre-loading with vodka on the nearby Woodhouse Moor), but I don’t remember ever being turned away.
