It’s perhaps a slightly random thought, but I was listening to a piece of a ragtime music just now, and it occurred to me that you never see a piano in a pub these days. You find them in London bars sometimes – usually covered in pint-glass marks – but most landlords would no more think of having a piano in the pub than they would think of having a chamber orchestra.
This is not me being an old git – I don’t ever remember seeing a piano in a pub, with the possible exception of the Angler’s Retreat at Marsworth – I just wonder where the pianos that the cheery cockneys crowded round in the Blitz have gone. Is there a corner of the country where you can still find a piano in a pub? And if so, does anyone ever play it?