48.
Warm up for Birmingham trip - a couple of Cowley Road pubs,
I had a bit of a hangover from boozing at
the Elsevier quiz the previous day, but in order to avoid any little shits who
might have come to annoy us trick or treating, Dave Wacey
and I decided to leave the house and get a few Cowley Road/Iffley
Road /St Clements pubs done as a warm up to the following day's festivities in
Birmingham. Getting a bus into town, we had to swing via the geology department
and upon exiting, decided that we would break the journey to St. Clements with
a swift pint at Linacre College, where the beer was cheap though the choice was
limited to pissflow Tetley, Carlsberg and Guiness. Mind you a friendly chubby barmaid served us which
was nice, so all in all worth a stop, though the bar
doubles up as a common room so there are more arrogant foreign types in there
with polo neck sweaters than you would like.
It was at this point that we reminisced
about the old days, and particularly about the sometimes eventful Geology
Department Christmas parties which had been held in Linacre in 1998, 1999 and
2000; the move from the department proper being facilitated by arch-shit Darren
Grock's glass smashing tirade at the 1997 party where
the floor was like the Italian glass museum in Moonraker
after 007 and the Japanese bloke thrashing around the kendo stick had been
fighting. This pissed me off no end as in the good old days we used to stay
well after midnight and siphon off all the spare beer. Such a
wizzened Australian git.
Pressing on, we had still to reach St Clements, so instead stopped off for a
swift half at Next Door, a Young's establishment next to the King's Arms. The
Special wasn't special at all, and was the only proper beer available, so it's
not a pub for the punter out for some ales. Despite
this, the surroundings are very pleasant, in particular the tree that the pub
has been constructed around, and I'm sure the food is nice. I also noted that
they give you a wine bucket if you order wine, and there are some very nice
leather sofas on the way in.
Finally we got to St Clements where we had
to go to the Half Moon, and paid £2.40 for two halves of crap quality
IPA, so I don't know how astronomically expensive the Guinness was. It was a
shame that the pub was dead because it can be quite a pleasant place to settle
in on a wintry day, but on this occasion there were just too few people. The
interior is pleasingly down at heel, notably there is textured wallpaper on the
ceiling and walls, of a dark nicotine stained beige colour, and another interesting point is that where the beam
in the ceiling intersects with the above-bar glass rack, the restricted
headroom means that only small shot glasses can be kept there. UB40 were
playing on the jukebox, interspersed with other songs you don't often hear down
the pub. Could do with a kick up the arse.
Moving swiftly on, we got to the
Cricketers Arms which over the last few years has had a variety of good and bad
incarnations. On our particular visit, it seemed to have improved and there was
a Halloween do on with lots of gothic wenches dressed up. IPA and Hen were the
only available ales and were below average in terms of quality, yet annoyingly
priced slightly higher than the going rate. The rear part of the pub now has a
pool table and some very, very comfortable chairs, though the rest are still
dark wood rickety tables and chairs. OK I suppose, since 18 months before we
went and it was dire.
Last time we went in the Oxford Blue it
was full of tossers, but this time wasn't too bad,
though still below average. There was a middle aged barmaid pulling pints of
Courage and Spitfire which were in fact very reasonably priced, though the
Spitfire tasted ropey. The interior is very bright, full of pine furniture in
pub style, but the toilets are disappointing - the trough has been crudely
filled in and three urinals slapped on the wall with a single pipe to take the
piss away to the old drain hole in the trough. Not very good.
Getting bored of here, we went to the Star
which last time was also dire. This time it was heaving with Poly people doing
Halloween festivities, and a large number of them were quite cute, not least
the barmaid with a fake knife carefully sticking out of her head. The best
costume was some shaven headed bar man with a big pair of horns. However, the
beer quality was only moderate, and that was only IPA, so the combined mass of
humanity, fag smoke and clouds of mist from the dry ice machine made it very
oppressive for someone with a hangover and a heavy coat, so we left.
Final stop was the Elm Tree which I have
rated already this year but which has changed a little bit since. For a start
the
Dan
Lovegrove
dan@doctor-lovegrove.com
Last updated 9th November 2003.