18.
Trip to Simon and Nova's house warming party in Richmond,
Simon Gough and Nova Dudley had invited Mr Wacey and I
to their house warming party on the outskirts of
Alighting from the Oxford Tube at
Shepherd's Bush, we spurned a couple of rough looking pubs in order to go to
the Mailcoach Inn. This was a surprisingly decent pub
with a hint of the Irish about it, and we supped a couple of bargain pints of
Greene King IPA, the only real beer on offer, at £1.50 each whilst watching the
half time football scores. Much tube train paraphernalia festooned the walls.
Upon purchasing our one day bus passes, we got on a 72 to Hammersmith and
changed to a 33 for a couple of stops where we alighted on espying the
Up the road, we found a slightly better
pub, the very dark and alcove like Old City Arms where at least reasonable
halves of Websters were on offer. Quite
nice and, if the range of beers was increased, worth spending an evening in.
On the embankment under Hammersmith Bridge, we ignored the poncey
Rutland and instead went to the Blue Anchor. This pub signalled
our first proper beer and bar-totty of the day. We
went for Brakespeare special, but Courage Best and
London Pride were also on though they were expensive. Not only giving splendid
views over the Thames, this pub also has an excellent solid steel bar work top
('looks like something from a steam ship' said Wacey)
which I imagine was put in by Victorians wearing stove pipe hats.
Another bus ride followed, to the Halfway
House at Mortlake, where we decided to have a piss
break. Whilst Dave was shown the 'khazi', I pondered
whether to have Pedigree, London Pride, Brakespeare, Adnams or Flowers. All in all a
reasonable pub if it were your local, though the toilets were not pleasant.
After making our way to Richmond, we were advised to go to the Green, and found
the Cricketers' which affords good views over the herbaceousness.
The Cricketers was not a bad pub, having Old Speckled Hen, IPA and Abbot at
reasonable prices and more importantly, pleasant surroundings. After bolting
this pair, we popped round the corner to an alleyway where we found the Britannia, a bright looking though inoffensive pub. Even
though Bombardier, Young’s Special, Courage and Pride were on [Bombardier
was below standard], it seemed to lack something and was really quite mediocre,
so we left.
By this time we were looking for chips so
started to walk towards Simon’s where I thought we might find a chip shop
on the way. The one I thought was there had actually gone, so we foolishly went
into Molly Malone's proclaiming ale at £1.50 a pint. Foolish indeed as next
door there was a Young's pub doing Winter Warmer which we shunned. Malone’s
had a tap with a paper label on - how were we to know that in fact it was poor
quality Brakespeare disguised as something else?
Horse racing on TV made the experience worse, so we drunk what we could and
left sharpish.
Our luck was certainly in as I spotted a parade
of a single shop up the road - it was a chip shop, providing fine fried
chicken, galvanising us for our final two pubs. After
finishing our evening meal standing on a railway bridge we walked the short way
to the Mitre, a fine back street boozer with
excellent front windows and potted plants in the pisser. Although only Young’s
Bitter and Special were on, they were of good quality. This pub makes an
excellent quiet local, well worth a visit. Time was pressing, so we left and
quickly slotted in the Bishop's Finger which served Spitfire and, of all
things, Oranjeboom. We hustled on the pool table for
a bit which was quite cheap and opined that this was actually quite a good pub
for a session - it certainly had the best toilets of the evening [can't
remember them], though the beer was a tad expensive.
Being 9.30, we made haste, via the awful beer aisle at Sainsburys, to the flat in Dancer Road where we encountered a Halloween party hosted by sober Nova and arseholed Simon, who had to be put to bed at half 10. After ploughing through about 8 of those 3% stubbies each and making sure the 80s were revisited again, the party wound up at the civil hour of 1am, allowing us to speed to Marble Arch by night bus to intercept the Oxford Tube which had a broken toliet, though I actually managed this trip quite comfortably despite initial feelings of dread. All in all an evening consisting mainly of piss poor beer and piss poor pissers ...
Dan Lovegrove
dan@doctor-lovegrove.com
Last updated 26th October 2002.