Ok, hands up, I should have written this about a month ago. There was a whole Fulham thing that we did that, due to various lame excuses, neither of us has got around to writing up. However I will stress, with vehemence, that it has nothing at all to do with the quality of the venues we visited. Far from it. In fact we went to some of our best pubs yet so this is the first step in redressing that balance. Continue reading →
As I write this, actually sat in the bar, my fellow Publocator is stuck in a Maplewood, New Jersey version of Groundhog Day. Courtesy of the Icelandic Volcano Scam he’s on night eight, of what should only have been four, of a six-hour-a-night bar crawl in a one-bar town. And he’s not due back for another week. Lucky b…
I digress. Continue reading →
The Stag, Hampstead
To follow a previous analogy, if the Regent is an old friend and The Churchill Arms is an older brother then The Stag must be, by definition, my old friend’s sister. Therefore do I fancy the pants off her from afar, pretend to ignore her beauty whilst secretly liaising with her at every opportunity? Or do I hang with the lads, play it cool and avoid her like the plague? OK, you’re on to me- I’ve been back and I’m looking to take advantage of her at every opportunity. It may not be love but the infatuation is growing. Continue reading →
The Queen Adelaide
Queen Adelaide, as the wife of the then King George IV, once acted as counselor, confidante and guide to the young heir apparent Princess Victoria. In 2010 along the Uxbridge Road out of Shepherds Bush two aptly named pubs are themselves elegantly transforming west London’s boozers. Whilst a similar relationship between these two pubs would in most minds be quite the reverse were it to exist at all, the comparison of a brash young Princess Victoria already great but perhaps set for immortality, and the much beloved and respected Adelaide, is readily made.
We were talking recently about how we should compare the venues we visit, in particular how we stack up bars against pubs on the same scale.
We felt that bars were more often going to come out on top because of the ludicrous attention to detail they put in but pubs aren’t really about that. However when you compare them point by point (drinks, standards, service etc) more often than not the bars are going to come out on top. Of course there is a quality to a great pub that takes the whole beyond the sum of its parts but this happens in bars too. All said and done, we stopped flapping about it and decided to let the chips fall where they may, resigned to the fact that the bars may well end up the prevalent outlets in the top fifty.
That was before we went to The Anglesea.
If anyone sees these incoherent ramblings – please to ignore. I’m just testing some functionality that is clearly way over my head.
God loves a trier.
Bobby
The Cow
Many years ago I had a good friend who was very fond of the phrase, ‘if you don’t eat you die’. He was a jovial fat bloke who really loved his food and, rather ironically, he’s dead now. His untimely demise, if perhaps highlighting a flaw in his strategy, in no way lessens the undisputable accuracy of his words and it was with this inspired rhetoric in mind that we dragged our increasingly corpulent frames to Uxbridge Road and the Princess Victoria.
By Way of Kensal Green to give its full G K Chesterton moniker, but had we in fact stumbled into John Milton’s equally seminal prose?
I have known, drunk and supped at this Kensal institution for a long time and through various incarnations. Not as far back as the coaching house days (mores the pity) but certainly twelve or so of its trendier years. I think I speak with some authority when I say a sensational venue- that’s forgotten to brush its hair this evening.
There are many times when we go out for a drink that every bar is full. Every table taken, every stool sat on and everyone is loud and happy (except the inevitable couple outside ‘having a barney’, but that’s a given). This environment is what we think of as ‘the pub’; bustle, laughter, loud voices and queuing at the bar. It’s a generic shared memory we all have and it’s what most of us picture when some one says ‘we’re going out for a drink tonight’.
There are also times when we go out for a drink that this is not the case. There are mid-week evenings in January when it’s minus three with an angry wind and solid, lumpy, kneecap-threatening ice underfoot. These evenings are not bustling and loud, the hardy souls who muster up the wherewithall to leave the house and get amongst it (ahem) are few and far between and the pubs and bars take on an entirely different perspective.
