Well, a pub with no roof is better than one with no beer...roofs can be replaced, unlike lives. Anyone who's lived in an isolated spot knows the population of the crossroads where the pub happens to sit is irrelevant to the business if the next one is a hundred miles away.

CBC radio runs excerpts from various international shortwave braodcasts overnight--which is why at 5:30 one Sunday morning, I heard a lot about the life, times and music of one Slim Dustie, (sp?) whom I'd never heard of but I gather he'd be the most long-lived Australian country singer...wasn't responsible for the execrable song in question was he? And they played his version of "Pub with no beer"--did he write it?

He kinda reminded me of Stompin Tom Connors, a Canadian icon of independent-minded real country music (unplayable on "New Country" radio, needless to say).

Bill C