June 20, 2003
Eeeh, I remember when it were 2 shillings ha'penny...
The good folks at CAMRA have been busy recently, undertaking the enviable task of researching the average price of a pint across all regions of the UK. Turns out that this columnist lives on the border of the 2 most expensive regions for lager drinkers, the South East and London, a pint of nectar costing £2.35 and £2.34 respectively. The only place where a pint of real ale averages at below £2 is in the North West.The full results of their research can be found here.
June 16, 2003
Früli, madly, deeply
A shocking — in a good way — development down Guildford way; a pub has changed hands, leaving the Scruffy Murphys chain and becoming a "Firkin Beer Company" pub instead. Don't know if this is a new and improved version of the same Firkin company that seems to be selling most of its boozers to O'Neills these days, but whether it is or not is immaterial; put simply, The Britannia is a much much better pub than it was before. As it happens the decor and facilities are pretty much identical — the improvements are in liquid form. Amstel on tap is good enough but the Belgian white-beer-with-strawberry Früli is an absolute belter of a drink. They have a tap for it, but were only serving it in bottles yesterday.Leaving there we were heading toward the station when we decided, based on a tip-off from a sibling of Anne's, to check out the Three Tuns, mainly because the last we knew it was still called the Mash Tun, and any name change means we need a new photo. Turns out there was this 'Battle of the DJs' thing going on, where basically a load of Guildford's vinyl junkies had all turned up to show off to each other what latest 45s they've bought, and what tricks they could do on the turntables, all in extreme volume. This meant we were treated to 3 hours of hip-hop, drum 'n bass, happy hardcore and a bit of gabba thrown in for good measure. 'ave it!
June 13, 2003
Pubs for fun and profit
2 years ago, during the days of cheeseintheafternoon prior to BITE being born, a pub by the name of the Rising Sun in Surbiton was visited. A decidedly unpleasant experience was tempered only by the fact that the quiz machine of the time — Strike It Rich — paid out £40 to us on our first credit. The clientele and general atmosphere, however, was sufficiently threatening that our winnings were collected piecemeal in an effort to attract as little attention as possible; it would have been fair to surmise that this machine paid out so much money so easily because the rest of the punters were, to be frank, thick. And so, ignoring the abuse from the lads playing pool, we left in a hurry, in no mood ever to return.Fast forward to yesterday and 3 comments were left in the space of 7 minutes extolling the virtues of this establishment, including a rousing call to the residents of Surbiton to 'support [their] local public house'! Never shying away from a challenge like that, we bit the bullet and went back there — and what a pleasant surprise. It really was a much better pub than before. The aforementioned Strike It Rich machine is no longer, replaced by a multi-game box; the pool table has been moved (and was free, so we played for a couple of hours; final score was 5-4 to Anne), the staff were friendly and the atmosphere was fine. A marked and welcome change to our last visit, the only link between past and present was, fantastically, the profit to be made: not in the £40 range, but the quiz machine paid us a tenner, and the fruit machine next to it coughed up 12 quid. Result.
June 12, 2003
The Falcon stays on form
As is mostly typical, last night's England game was watched at the Falcon in Clapham. This has been the venue of choice for a fair few such games over the past couple of years and it has always been a triumphant time; Beckham's equaliser against Greece being perhaps the best of the lot. Thankfully none of our party seem to succumb to Falcon Ring, an condition that seems to afflict certain BITE users. Even more thankfully, the Standard's anti-South West London bias in their free pint offer hasn't precluded them from choosing this pub as one of those participating in the scheme. Mine's a Carling, please!June 09, 2003
Apostrophe abuse in Putney
Went to the Prince of Wales in Putney yesterday, first visit for a while. This used to be a semi-regular watering hole for us but since moving away from the area we have, somewhat understandably I feel, not been there very often recently. Its been through 1, or maybe 2, refurbishments over the past couple of years but thankfully they've not changed it much -
they don't seem to do food any more but the sofas out back are better than they were. However they have committed the worst case of apostrophe abuse I've seen for a long long time.