The Steve Davis Effect...

In the same way that 80s satirical puppet show Spitting Images lampooned snooker player ‘Interesting’ Steve Davis in a parody of his apparent lack of personality, the Society Room is about as interesting as....an office...

Ironic really, that during an overnighter in Glasgow for work,  I resisted the charms of an evening meal in the Novotel (with lager only option), and ventured out for something more exciting...
Weatherspoon’s Society Room, is not to be confused with their other Society Rooms (with an ’s’), which is at the other end of the British Isles in Maidstone and is hopefully more interesting.
While the Glasgow ‘Room’ is named after previous occupiers The Star Life Assurance Society, the Maidstone ‘Rooms’ is apparently named after William Shipley, founder of the Royal Society of Arts and the Maidstone Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge.
Well - that’s a bit of useful knowledge promoted...
Like Steve Davis’ approach to snooker the Society Room seems clinical and business-like.  Still looking very much like an ex-office, with plain concrete and glass 60s style facade, it cries out for a really imaginative interior but hasn’t got it.  Just plain internal decor, tables and chairs, the occasional coloured light panel and multi-colour panel friezes on the wall...

Coloured light, plain, uninteresting, functional...(the pub not the beer)...

...only the desktop computers, printers and talk of spreadsheets, service standards and targets are missing.
Nevertheless, interesting or not, a Spoons is like an oasis in a desert when you want a reliable decent meal and a good real ale at a bargain price.  So when in Glasgow - it had to be the haggis, neeps and tatties - with HP sauce, which of course in Scotland stands for Holyrood Parliament sauce.

Scottish haute cuisine on ex-boardroom executive tableware...

A meal deal at seven Scottish pounds and forty-five pence with pint of real ale - can’t go wrong.
Completely in keeping with the ‘lack of interest’ theme there was also a minimal number of cask real ales....with the usual culprits...

Sassenach invaders - Greene King and Marstons...

Fortunately the Caledonian Deuchars was the perfect pairing with my haggis, neeps and tatties....
The Deuchars (pronounced with a ‘clearing your throat’ sound by the Scottish barman - as if to subtly correct my ‘dew-cars’ version) was good/very good with trademark quality lacing on the glass...

A thing of interest...

There were a few groups of customers lost at remote tables in the wide open space of this pub... the wind whistled and the tumbleweed bounced off the table legs on its way through...
The only thing disturbing this empty stillness was a lager fuelled ex-army Scotsman who, with colourful army language and animated gestures, was entertaining three old blokes with tales of combat.  I couldn't understand most of it as I was too far away and he had a thick Glaswegian accent...
I was just thinking of moving nearer, when I heard him say ‘machete’ and I lost interest after that...

Ex Scottish squaddie entertains oldies with tales of machetes....

This place really needed something interesting on the TV screens, like a Steve Davis match at the Crucible Theatre,  but they were showing an advertising loop of Weatherspoon's craft beer range...
...I watched stupefied, as the next craft can appeared...and the next...then a bottle....
...back out on West George Street on a the cold February night I went in search of something interesting...

West George Street life...