A toast to Auld Reekie

really. In fact not at all. With the usual apologetic cough that comes

from being on the butt-end of all the weary cliches and hoary myths of

Edinburgh, the pub-goer will shuffle feet and confess that yes, there

are more than a few good pubs, some great pubs and the usual sprawl of

frankly- awful drinking holes.

With the nervous laugh learned through years of simulating a polite

gritted-teeth grin at the West Coast braggart's jokes and japes about

ho, toffs and fur coats and knickers, or the lack of them, hum, the

Edinburgh pub drinker will at last allow a sigh and relax the

achingly-clenched jaw enough to concede that the city does have (not

boast, heavens no, never that) every sort of pub, serving every sort of

customer.

When the drinker from the West swaggers into town he, or she, might

try a visit to the Black Swan or Izzy's in Leith or the Piershill Tavern

or the Diggers or the Bailie or the Guildford or -- but then if you are

in search of hackneyed images, there would be no point.

The literati, whoever they are, will not be there. Probably quaffing

at dining tables furth of Harthill these days. But you will meet postal

workers, or dockers, or insurance workers, or slavering topers, or

brickies, or scallywags, or brewery workers, or old men in frayed caps,

or lawyers, or young women in the old profession, or braying bores, or

cleaners, or just about anybody really. Much like anywhere else. But

more so.

The award of the Good Pub Guide's ''Best City for Pubs in Britain'' is

not so much an accolade, more a case of casting off the blinkers,

according to four Herald writers from Edinburgh who explain their

affinity for some favourite city pubs.

On the other side of the great divide sits Jack McLean, whose

antipathy to the East derives from a terror of losing his umbilical cord

to Heraghty's:

Where no

change is

as good as

the rest

AH WELL, the argument goes, the Capital's pubs are good but their

customers are lousy. Take it from me, I am that customer. And the pub I

subsidise is . . . how might I put it without being barred? . . .

greater than the sum of its parts.

The Jinglin' Geordie is the newspaper pub in town, by virtue of simple

geography. There is a photograph on the wall taken circa 1967 and it

doesn't take a trained observer to notice that not a lot has changed.

And a good thing too, when you consider what change has meant at Milne's

or the now-risible Old Chain Pier Bar in Newhaven.

The fag machine now has a scrolling illuminated message (''Welcome to

the Jinglin' Geordie'', recently amended to celebrate a regular's office

farewell -- ''Good luck Drew, you wee Hibby B*****d'') and cooking

equipment was upgraded after a request from the sanitary inspector. But

the rest is pretty much as was.

The carpet sucks at your feet, in spite of a recent shampoo, an

exercise akin to putting a corpse on a ventilator. They Hoovered the

curtains before the Herald photographer arrived. These are of bottle

green velvet, but were royal blue when first hung. If they were ever

actually opened, several regulars would shrivel up like Dracula at

daybreak.

However, the staff are terrific -- especially the proprietor Roger,

should he deign to pop in on his way to the golf course -- and you can

even get a cheque cashed if you make it out to an obscure company with a

name like a computer manufacturer. My bank manager therefore thinks I

have a technology fetish instead of a drink problem.

The regulars are wonderful, an admix of newspaper vendors,

ex-printers, football fans, drunks and journalists. My friends there

will doubtless say I fit the last three categories. Oh, and the more

politically correct of the city's Labour councillors drink there, so

that Edinburgh's rival political factions are known by pub names. Thus

the Bow Bar may have real ale and more polished surroundings, but as for

the customers, maybe Jack McLean has got it right for once.

ROBBIE DINWOODIE

Home from

home is

where the

hearth is

ASIDE from the odd Glaswegian with nothing under his bunnet but his

preconceptions, few drinkers dispute Edinburgh's pre-eminence as a

massage parlour of the soul. This being the capital, we don't go on

about it, but the quality, quantity and diversity of our pubs speak --

or slur appealingly -- for themselves.

We have dives, discos, Victorian monuments, family pubs, smoky howffs,

artisans' refuges, cocktail bars with more raw fruit than the man from

Del Monte and, for the discerning, the places I patronise.

Your choice of pub defines your reason for drinking. For some, the

organic authenticity of the beer is paramount, as though being able to

name the ingredients of your hangover mattered. Others favour bars with

distinctive architecture they can study, like Michelangelo in the

Sistine, from the horizontal. Some seek no more than sexual congress and

a slice of lime.

I have my own criteria. I like to be served in less time than it takes

for winter to become spring. I like an interior that is neither a

heritage centre nor the departure lounge of a Parisian airport. I like

newspapers, a decent fire, comfortable furniture, and staff who can pour

a pint using fewer than four glasses.

Mather's, situated at the top of Broughton Street and not to be

confused with others of the same name, qualifies on all counts. The

great thing about it is that it is not what it seems, yet everything you

could wish for. It looks like an old bar but isn't; it is a brewery pub

(S&N) but is managed as though it were as free as Estonia.

Those for whom it matters tell me the 80 Shilling is excellent. The

staff, too, are efficient, even on days when Brendan the barman has

decided that what he thinks about journalists should best remain unsaid.

Then he says it.

But I go to Mather's, by and large, because I know that there I will

see the people I want to see and, more important, avoid others of the

species. It's called ambience, and Mather's has it on tap. My only

quibble is the insolent-looking stag's head gazing down on the throng.

When the bugger starts to wink you know it's time to go home.

IAN BELL

No frills,

no fuss

''THE Abbotsford? But that's a Calvinist pub,'' a friend said, which

is a bit ironic when the interior of Rose Street's first pub is

distinctly Jacobean. But then maybe that sums it up.

It is all things to all people who fancy a drink within the warm

orange glow, behind the swing doors, in the richly-dark wood interior of

the first pub in Rose Street.

Sometimes you like a place for what it is not. The Abbotsford is not

an exclusive club run for the benefit of five doleful regulars. The

unwary do not walk into baleful stares and a feeling of intrusion into

some deep private grief, where dreary men care deeply that the barman

recognises their existence with a surly nod, where they have desultory

exchanges about the meaning of life and the size of the arse on that

bint in the corner.

Nor is the Abbotsford a dismal dive smelling of old dogs and anoraks,

a brasserie, a glitzy wine bar, infested with computer games or Muzak or

leering drunks. They do not serve drinks to people who are lying down.

No woman is ever pestered for long at the island bar. Gropers and

assorted pests are politely, if swiftly, dispatched on to the pavement

outside by attentive bar staff. A karaoke night at the Abbotsford is as

likely as the Bolshoi doing the birdie dance.

No fakery, no pretension. It is a great place to watch the supreme

Edinburgh trick for deflating show-offs. They become invisible. Everyone

looks away.

If Sean Connery or the Queen Mother walked in, they would have to

queue for the phone like everybody else. But their drinks would be

waiting on a clean bar when they got back.

There are plenty of pubs which, like the Abbotsford, offer superb

service, decent food, and a true social mix. There are few if any which

are as ageless and enduring and solid and friendly and cosmopolitan.

MARGARET VAUGHAN

A cheerful

tradition

IN DAYS of yore when Glasgow was nowt but a sod in a bog, Auld Reekie

was a flourishing imbiber's delight.The Romans started it at their camp

in Cramond, complete with officers' mess and statutory vomitarium.

In medieval times, under the auspices of the monks of St Anthony, the

finest wines continued to flow into the port of Leith. And no doubt

draymen in those days stopped at the Windsor Buffet in Leith Walk (or at

least its progenitor) for a swift swallie on the delivery run into

Edinburgh.

It is pubs like the Windsor which will maintain Edinburgh's

pre-eminence as the drinking man's El Dorado into a third millennium.

An Edwardian bar that has hardly changed in 100 years, it bridges the

briny spirit of Leith with reserved, but cosmopolitan, Edinburgh. A

good, decent boozer with no pretensions, all sorts are found at its bar.

Manager Richard Stewart said: ''You get wee old guys like Freddie who

have been coming here for 50 years and then there are your businessmen,

workies, students and lots of women on their own, as they'll get no

hassle.''

A son of Glasgow, Richard dismisses misconceptions of Edinburgh's

stand-offishness. ''Well, Leithers definitely aren't. If anything, I

find you get more of a crack here than you may in Glasgow and the banter

can be quite wicked at times.''

Its long narrow bar, with stained glass, wood panelling and tiles, is

complemented by nooks and crannies for dangerous liaisons and a

smoke-filled back room that is much loved by leftist cabals or even the

occasional wedding party.

All are welcome, even the Urban Voltaire during his stint on the

Herald sports beat last season.

SIMON PIA

Pubs for the poseurs

I COULDN'T give an Australian brand beer for whatever drooling drivel

thae Edinburgh boys -- and girl -- are crowing about concerning their

pubs. I wouldn't employ such effete easterners in the first place, but

there youse are. The Good Pub Guide for this year has decided that in

the name of pubs ''Glasgow lags behind''. They would say that anyway. It

is awfy nice for the English to find itself in Edinburgh; merr genteel:

you get an accent with your pint.

Even Morningside, of all places, can boast a fine establishment in the

Canny Man's, a splendid place which has its own postcards and where the

bar staff are understandably proud, but in the Edinburgh way determined

to tell you how good everything is.

Elsewhere in the so-called capital you could have found the Bennet's

in Leven Street with its porphyry and marble and mirrors and mahogany

gantry. Or The Abbotsford, with the carved wood and the early closing in

the afternoon, but a magnificence which would have done service in J.

Pierpoint Morgan's house, for Chrissake. (This reference is not entirely

misplaced. The late poet Sydney Goodsir Smith once wandered into a grand

Edinburgh bar, all carved wood and gleaming glass and ordered a large

whisky as an early-morning curer. The reply from the assistant behind

the counter should remain as one of the great quotes in the canon of

Scottish literature. ''But Sir,'' said the bemused chap behind the

counter. ''This is a bank!'').

Edinburgh is rich in grandiloquent pubs, and rich in literati who once

frequented them. Milne's Bar, now not a kick-in-the-arse off a bloody

Pizza Hut, once had a clientele of a literary pretension which would

have done credit to the whole of Bloomsbury. MacDiarmid talked great

gobs of nonsense in there in the past. The last great Scottish literary

chap who frequented Milne's was Alan Bold.

The most literary circumstance I ever encountered in my five-year stay

in Edinburgh was the regular sight of Boldy being violently sick on the

pavement outside Milne's. I'll bet it was the conversation as much as

the beer which led Mr Bold to such an exposition. Edinburgh pubs are

smashing. It's a pity about the folk. Boldy should have come to my city.

Lots of wonderful pubs have disappeared from Glasgow. I can name Langs

(the first self-service restaurant in the world), or the St Mungo

Vintner's, or the horribly-destroyed Lauders. But there is still Sloan's

in the Argyll Arcade and The Old Toll Bar at Paisley Road, or the

spit-and-sawdust Royal near the Infirmary or Johnnie McLean's wee dark

Castle Bar. And how about my own howff? Heraghty's has everything going

for it as a pub. Including even a welcome for Edinburgh's notorious

Martin Currie, a habitue of many an Edinburgh bar. Martin was once a

bricklayer, he tells everybody, and I remember when he was. If he had

laid as many bricks as he had panel lines he'd have built the bloody Taj

Mahal by now.

But what about pubs outside of the two rival piles? If I can find a

nicer pub than Camphill Vaults in Bothwell it is only because the nearby

Rowan Tree in Uddingston is a stagger away. The people who compiled this

guide chose pubs which poseurs like themselves are likely to sip a

half-pint of Old Threepnettles Peculiar in. They didn't choose pubs for

the people in them, customers or barstaff. Or the fun, the bonhomie, the

chance of a drink after hours, or the decency of a publican, or the

money raised for charity by the intemperate of this land. For the above

you wouldnae go to Edinburgh.

Lovely pubs in Edinburgh. Shame about the Edinburgh drinker. He

doesn't deserve a half bottle of Cyprus sherry up a close, if you ask

me.

JACK McLEAN