It's a fine site: come and see us in the Lewes Arms again as soon as you can.

By the way, the story about the battle to get Harveys bitter back into the Lewes Arms in the teeth of Greene King has made it into the German national magazine Der Spiegel. It's roughly equivalent to a combination of The Times and all the Observer colour supplements rolled into one:

From Der Spiegel, 30th. April 2007, page 136.
Rough translation by Valmai Goodyear, German A-level 1972.

THE BEER'S ON!
Thomas Huetlin

Global Village: In English Lewes the regulars at a pub take on a big brewery – and overturn the rules of globalisation.

(Caption under picture of eight deliriously happy people pretending to drink Harveys:)
Regulars in front of the Lewes Arms: flicking bar towels at the dancers

Valmai Goodyear strides up the narrow streets of Lewes, East Sussex and it looks as if yet another quiet week-end awaits her, of the sort the lady has had to get used to since that fateful date of 10th. December last year. That was the day on which her favourite drink in her favourite local, a pub called The Lewes Arms, was removed at a single stroke. In her left hand Mrs. Goodyear carries a white five-litre container whose contents are the kernel of the conflict, Harveys bitter, brewed half a mile down the hill in the eponymous Harveys Brewery for over 200 years. 'It's our beer,' says Goodyear.

What binds her to this beer is a sense of closeness and familiarity. Many people in Lewes share Mrs. Goodyear's view: 'Harveys is our beer.' It was a passion which allowed beautiful evenings in Lewes to be that little bit more beautiful and which was thwarted by one single thing: Greene King, the publicly-quoted big brewery which acquired the most important pub in the town in the shape of the Lewes Arms. For Greene King a market share was eluding them, not a spiritual home, and every time 'our beer' was ordered the brewing giant experienced a small defeat.

It simply removed Harveys Bitter from the bill of fare.

Valmai Goodyear, dressed in earthy colours and also deeply entrenched in other ways, looks sharp and scornful. 'They couldn't have looked for better opponents. People in Lewes take up the struggle when they feel injustice is being done to them.'

It was less injustice and more ineptitude, as the law is completely on the side of the giant. Greene King's strategy was, in the context of a beer market which is becoming globalised, a completely normal squeezing-out operation. Most proceed without problems. Pub customers first swallow the alteration, then the new beer. They do not call for a boycott of the local as Mrs. Goodyear and her friends have done. They do not stand with posters round their necks by the door of a boozer and persuade chance tourists wandering past to drink their beer elsewhere.

The sun shines, it's spring and from up here you can scent the sea-salt from the coast 17 kilometres away, but Mrs. Goodyear says, 'It's very, very depressing.' She has not seen the inside of her favourite pub for 132 days. 'It's not enough to make you slit your wrists, but it feels as if one of the family was on their deathbed and you weren't allowed to visit them.'

When you hear her talk you get the impression that the Lewes Arms was like a home – but much better. There were no computer games, no television, no juke box, only the customers and their conversation. 'If you had a problem,' says Mrs. Goodyear, 'you went to the Arms and you'd find an answer there.'

In the Lewes Arms there was good humour, good beer and good ideas. People invented competitions, as the English love to do, and played them out in front of the pub's door.

A world pea-throwing championship. A spaniel race for all sorts of dogs and people, provided they are dressed as cocker spaniels. A game by the name of dwyle-flunking with highly individual rules. Two teams dress up as rustics and dance to mediaeval music. In the centre of the activity people take it in turns to stir a bar-towel floating in stale beer with a stick. When the music stops, they must fling the bar-towel at one of the dancers.

It's three points for a hit on the head, two for a hit on the body and at the end everything goes to a charitable cause. Mrs. Goodyear plays a concertina for this. 'We begin at about two o'clock in the afternoon,' she says, ' and I always swear to myself I'll go home at eight o'clock. But I always stay until closing time.'

It is 12.30. The pickets must already have taken their place in front of the pub. Goodyear rounds a last corner and stands still as if in shock. She beholds scenes that have not met her eyes for 132 days. The boycotters are in the local, they are holding full glasses in their hands, and rejoicing resounds through the open windows. A man in a green jumper comes out and says, 'The brewery has just given in. Our beer is already standing in the cellar. If all goes well, we can drink the first pint at the end of next week. Hurrah!'

Mrs. Goodyear is silent and rushes over the threshold. Dread grips her that all may not be as it was. In the games room, next to the dartboard, there still hangs the notice which warns: 'Anybody using their mobile phone in the pub must buy a round for everyone'. In front of the bar, four rockers in their black jackets are still sitting. They were the only ones who didn't take part in the boycott. Because the disputed beer won't be ready for a week, Mrs. Goodyear orders herself an apple juice.

She stands outside in the sunshine and says it feels like being able to crawl under your own bedclothes after a long journey. One of the rockers towers in front of her. His name is Vik.

Vik has a long grey beard and a tattoo of a scorpion on his arm. He tilts his massive noddle. Then he says, 'Sorry.' He regrets that he boycotted the strike and not the pub.

Mrs. Goodyear is moved, as in runs Mick, film-maker and drummer of the house band The Coils. Mick is holding his mobile phone up in the air. He has had a text message from Steve, a pilot with British Airways. Steve has just taken off from Spain and texted, 'Have heard the good news – see you in the Lewes Arms tonight'.

For a long couple of seconds it seems that the little pub is bigger than the whole world.