Before the era of online reviews, pubs existed as personal landmarks in the minds of teenagers. For one student arriving at university in Nottingham during the mid-1990s, that landmark became The Hand & Heart, a pub carved into the city's famous sandstone caves.
A Cave Dwelling Local and Last-Minute Rituals
Much like the more famous Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, The Hand & Heart offered a unique, almost Gotham-like atmosphere, where you could feel like Batman enjoying a quiet drink. Its location was its greatest asset for the group of six students who shared a house nearby. Being just a short stagger away created a unique drinking culture. While others started their evenings early, this group built a reputation for arriving just before last orders.
This meant leaving the house at 10.20pm, having a pint in hand by 10.30pm, and if they drank quickly, managing two or three before the lights came on. It was a routine born of proximity, turning the pub into a true second home.
The Quiz Machine Mafia and a Noel Edmonds Side Hustle
The group's true talent, however, lay not in speedy drinking but in dominating the pub's quiz machines. They would gather around the Monopoly machine like a trivia syndicate, pooling their diverse student knowledge. With expertise spanning politics, history, French, Spanish, chemistry, and economics, they could turn a 50p stake into a steady profit, especially as the questions repeated.
Their specialist side hustle was the Noel Edmonds Telly Addicts quiz machine. Mastering this prize game meant that just one or two 50p games could yield the £5 jackpot, effectively bankrolling their next round of drinks. It was a perfect, self-sustaining student economy.
The Real Lesson: Kebabs and Camaraderie
While the pub could have taught profound lessons about collective intelligence, the real takeaways were more visceral. The quiz winnings funded free rounds, which in turn led to the essential post-pub ritual: a visit to the Sheesh Mahal kebab shop.
Here, every customer faced the same crucial question: open or wrapped? One friend, Tony, preferred his kebab wrapped, to be eaten with dignity at home using a knife and fork. The author and most others chose 'open', consuming it on the walk home with kebab sauce dribbling down their chins, disposing of the remnants over a convenient garden wall.
This was the unpretentious, sauce-dribbled heart of their student experience at The Hand & Heart—a place defined less by profound revelation and more by friendship, trivia, and the simple, messy joy of a shared kebab after last orders.
