Monday Memories: Beer Mats and St David's Day

Saint David is the patron saint of Wales and today, 1 March, is St David's Day. 

Following up on a previous post, Gail Benjafield from St. Catharines sent a Monday Memory. Gail has Welsh heritage so it seemed appropriate to save it for today.

Decades ago, our family lived for a couple of years in South Yorkshire, later in Cardiff. When there we collected beer mats and coasters in whatever pubs we patronized.  In fact, Sheffield had an off-license shop that sold beer mats from time to time. We have various beer mats dotted around our kitchen counters and elsewhere. On one of our last visits to the U.K. we stopped in a pub in Childe Okeford, Dorset; they had a beauty of a beer mat and gave it to as, as other pubs had done.  It is our favourite.

As for beer coasters, we just collected them throughout the U.K. We have dozens still in use as coasters.  We discovered in our last years of visiting that of the pubs still operating, many had become Gastro pubs owned by global conglomerates and they had no coasters unique to the area, just standard ones, often from American breweries.  So we took our old unique and often eccentric ones and had them framed. They are now mounted in our library and remind us of our good fortune.

Thanks to Gail for sharing her Monday Memories story.

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