Perhaps this is why I'm just so exorcised about the Rovers Return, and more particularly, the fact that its technological offerings are out of the Eighties. I used to dismiss it as cheap landladies not upgrading properly, but after the fire caused everything to be replaced, there's really no excuse; this place should be a lot more modern that it actually is.
Take the tills. As a regular habitué of public houses, I can tell you this: no-one has a till like the Rovers any more. Even the grimmest back street boozer has one of those touch screen tills, where different bar staff can register the drinks without having to know the price off by heart. In Coronation Street, however, the barmaids and men are required to memorise the entire drinks list because the till only has a number pad. I don't want to sound bitchy, but Eva is no Rachel Riley; I can't see her being able to add up the price of three pints, a red wine, a VAT and a packet of pork scratchings in her head. Yet there she is every week, confidently coming out with "twelve pounds eighty love" and then keeping the change. Get that girl on the Countdown Numbers Round! A modern till would certainly help matters when the "someone's been stealing from the Rovers " storyline comes back again (it's roughly on a five year cycle).
Similarly, the music provision is distinctly lacklustre. My iPod contains 10,000 songs, and yet the Rovers jukebox is still a series of CDs you flick through with a couple of big red glowing buttons. Pubs don't have jukeboxes like that anymore. They have touch screen activated music machines that can offer pretty much any tune that's been in the charts over the last sixty years. If the mood took you, you could skip straight from the Ace of Spades to the Beverley Sisters and Beyonce before putting on The Floral Dance. They're updated with the latest tracks and sometimes can even show the videos.
I suppose I should just learn to let it go. I mean, this is Coronation Street; its attachment to reality is, at best, theoretical. But come on Liz - drag the pub into the 21st century!
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8 comments:
Fantastic!
You're so right though i wouldn't want to see the Rovers go with all those technologies. A new till, definitely, and it's odd there's no television. An updated music system would be good as well and hey, what about free wifi, with the password being bettyshotpot!
One of the reasons I'd like to drink in the Rovers is the lack of flashing lights and screens. However given the clientele I don't suppose I'd be left alone to read my paper in peace and do the crossword, so maybe it's not for me anyway.
No karaoke, please!!!!
I seek out pubs with no TVs and LCD screens, and it's getting harder. I'm praying the Rovers never stoops to either. I have noticed the increasing use of laptops and smart phones by residents of the Street which had to be done as it was frankly odd that nobody, even the young folk, appeared to have any. But as far as pubs go, for me it's the more quaint the better.
The Rovers return is quite a rough pub, I think, with regular slanging matches, and even fisticuffs, between the patrons. It's only occasionally the place you'd go for a quiet, sociable drink. A video screen would make it worse, especially if Hear Say's negligible music was on it.
And then you'd have to endure regular visits from the Queen of Sharkness herself, Tracy Luv Barlow, indiscriminately chucking pithy little verbal darts at whoever will sit still for long enough.
I'd personally stick with Steve and Lloyd for good company.
I love that picture of Liz at the end of the article. She looks nice with that hair colour.
- Pod
One or two of the pubs we go to play darts still has a cd jukebox :-) you should have seen the tills at the club where i worked as stewardess, 80s vintage :-) -Smelloid
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