20.
Monday night bender in the St. Ebbes area of Oxford,
In order to mark the occasion of the epic
completion and handing in of Simon Gough's long-awaited thesis, it was decided
to kick off with some pubs in the shitty St. Ebbes
part of
The Head of the River is a pub more suited
to the Summertime when chinless berks wearing boatie tops are cheering on foolish idiots propelling
pointy boats on a hot day. Nonetheless it has a Winter
appeal, and three well kept Fullers Ales (ESB, London Pride and Jack Frost)
meant that it scored reasonably well. On leaving here it was discovered that
the next pub would be the landmark for the year of 300, so we decided to make
it the Wharf House. This is a piss stained wooden shack of a pub, both inside
and out, but it probably serves the best quality beer in Oxford at most
reasonable prices. That particular week, we had the choice of 4 bitters –
Hook Norton Best, RCH Pitchfork, Keltek Mild
(fantastic!), Slater's Eccy Thumper – 3 lagers
– Bitburger, Erdinger,
Owans Black Pearl (oh, it says in the notes that it's
a stout) – and a perry cider. The barman was
also very helpful in making our choices. Fine bar snacks are also available.
Our next port of call was the Duke of York
in the middle of a car park, not that good a pub, but at least homely and not
full of arses. The Morells
Advent was a good pint as I recall. We then decided to be daring and go to an
allegedly gay pub, the Castle Tavern. A discarded copy of the Pink Paper
on a table in this strangely lively and heaving pub confirmed our suspicions,
as did a fay young man who asked Simon whether he had
a young man friend (Simon responded that he had a young lady friend, and Mr.
Fay became quite heterophobic). Beer was a pound a
pint, not very pleasant, IPA, but some excellent Bronski
Beat made up for that. Our second gay haunt was the
adjacent Jolly Farmers which was busy, but quieter and actually rather good,
especially as the Courage was on offer, although they also did Old Speckled
Hen.
As last orders were being rung, we pressed
on around the corner to the neo Welsh nationalist Brewery Gate where we were
rewarded with yet more cheap beer, this time Oxford Blue. Nothing too
distinctive about this place, but pleasant enough and the beer was actually
quite good. You would have in the past put this down to the fact that the beer
is made about 20 yards away, but this is no longer true as it's probably now
made in plastic vats in Slough or somewhere, so I don't know what's going on
there.
Foolishly, we decided to squeeze one more
in and popped into Bar Med, a cavernous toilet of a pub, which fortunately for
us had some sort of teen party in the lower. Bad points were that we were
forced to drink Fosters, and that we had just missed a fight as we had seen a
guy with a cut head leaving as we entered. He may well have had something to do
with the blood on the gents' floor and broken washbasin.
In fact this wasn't the last one, and when
time was called, Dave and Simon elected to have a bab before rounding off the night in the Purple
Turtle. I have rated this place already, so couldn't be arsed
again as we had contented ourselves with drinking Tiger bottles and hustling
round the table football table, eventually leaving at kicking out time which
was followed by a very, very brisk walk home. Oh well, it was a milestone
evening I suppose, but why o why go for it on a Monday???
Dan
Lovegrove
dan@doctor-lovegrove.com
Last updated 19th December 2002.