£2.56

I bloody love Sinclairs Oyster Bar. It is, without doubt, the best pub in Manchester. It can't claim the best beer, or patronage of some footballer or Coronation Street no-mark. It's evening clientele is a mix of students and older, hardened drinkers. It's old and poky and has some pretty grotty toilets. It also has the honour of being moved, piece by piece, not once, but twice in it's long, almost certainly mock-tudor existence. It does in fact, sell oysters, though only during the day and almost certainly not farmed from the nearby ship canal. You can't get a seat upstairs to save your life some nights and the bar upstairs has a worse selection of savoury snacks than the bar downstairs. There are probably cleaner, more stylish or authentic places to drink. And the fenced off area outside for smokers resembles a creche for alcoholics or some kind of street theatre on Saturdays.

I love Sinclairs because it cost £2.56 for a pint of bitter and a pint of mild last night. It's cheaper for me to get a tram to Manchester and drink in Sinclairs than it is to drink in a lot of pubs in Bury.

Perversely, the humble pint of mild, the cheapest drink you can buy, is also the best. The bitter is variable, sometimes it's nice, sometimes it's double rough, but the mild soldiers on, unburdened by pretension or a need to prove itself. Lovely mild. Lovely Sinclairs Oyster bar. Lovely £2.56.