Dear List, Here is a rather frivolous addition to the thread on pubs: I was back in the UK for a visit a few weeks ago and while in Newcastle took a look at the Blackett Arms in Nelson Street. Some of my forebears had it from 1839 to the early 1850s. It is a busy market pub and at 11am on a Monday it was already packed wall-to-wall. I could easily see the original 'bones" of the place downstairs but upstairs the windows had been painted black and there was a stage that must have seen quite a few rock bands. The place is known as a live music venue. The floor above that is now empty. The landlady and her bar staff were delightful and indulged me in a little family history trip back in time to the 19th century. (When I arrived and explained about my ancestors running the place when the pub was new, one of the regulars, sitting on a bar stool, pointed back over his shoulder at the crowd, and suggested they were probably still in there...) She showed me upstairs and mentioned that there was indeed a pub ghost and that a clairvoyant, who had been brought in, sensed that it was a man. There was a cat as well, she said. It was oh-so satisfying to be able to tell her that my great-great-great grandfather had died there in December 1848 of "paralysis, five months" according to the death cert - a stroke, maybe? ...or perhaps he just fell over the cat. Pamela