As explained here our quest to visit ever more new pubs is these days helped, even dictated, by the pubs visitors to BITE leave as suggestions. Yesterday was a case in point, although our choice of area was also partially due to our burning, foolhardy desire to drink near the tube station Royal Oak. The small matter of managing to drink in 11 different pubs in one evening after work may be worthy of a small write-up in itself, but that's for another time (and possibly another person). In this column I am going to pontificate, at some length, about the Royal Oak Phenomenon.
There's something about the name "Royal Oak" that strikes fear into the hearts of some of us. This stems from a pub crawl in March 2002 where a group of us crawled along the southern part of the Northern Line, from Morden to Kennington. Truth be told none of the areas served by this section are places where any of us choose to spend entire evenings drinking, but tube lines lend themselves to easily-organised crawls and most stations have a pub very close by. And it was all going so well, too, until we reached Clapham North.
Sort-of-opposite Clapham North tube station is a pub. A pub named the Royal Oak. Now don't get me wrong — this pub looks like it's very nice, with a fairly trendy young clientele and a smart interior. These days, that is (we went past it on a recent mini-crawl down Clapham High Street). Back in 2002, however, this place was horrible. I believe it was Chelsea who were on TV, although it could have been Spurs, but whichever team it was there was a father in there watching them intently. I know he was a father because he had his kid with him, a kid who thought it might be a good idea to turn the TV off with the remote. We suspect this poor child will never turn a television off again, such was the smack round the head and verbals he got from dear Pa as a result. :-/ We didn't stay long (we rarely do), buggering off one stop further, putting the sorry incident behind us. How were we to know that worse was to come?
The Royal Oak, Stockwell is a pub so bad (I guess in truth I should add the caveat "when we were there"), so unfriendly, so shockingly frighteningly awful that it scarred us. Take a look at the photo — we couldn't make it look any better. We went in the door on the left, finding a shitty room with a pool table being set about by a 7-year old kid, no-one else around. There was a tiny bar, and one of us stood there while the others ventured toward the back and through the little corridor leading to the main bar (through the right door on the picture).
And here's where it got even worse. In this main bar were a motley selection of lads, all sat round the edge of the room, with some staring up at the TV. And silence, horrible horrible silence. There was us, with our halves, sat with our backs to the back wall, inviting stares for daring to invade what was, with hindsight, essentially a squat with a bar in it. The atmosphere was terrifyingly hostile. We sat in silence. We drank our halves. We got the hell out of there.
It's something about the name, I swear. These two Royal Oaks were both awful. The one in Teddington is a great pub but looks dreadful from the outside. In Leatherhead there were family feuds being played out before our eyes, with tattooed and shoeless middle-aged women mediating. Prior to the start of history (that is, before January 1st 2001) a visit had been made to the Royal Oak in Tolworth where Anne and I had had our footy scarves examined and hair pulled by some frightful blokes by the pool table, hence our reluctance to revisit it.
Yet still we visit these pubs. The aforementioned manifestation in Teddington being a good reason why — even a dreadful looking Royal Oak can on occasion turn out to be a winner. And the fear of the term is the same kind of fear people get from horror movies or fairground rides — we just can't stop ourselves. And when there's a tube station called Royal Oak, we simply had to find out if it was an area infested with god-awful boozers.
Funny old thing, disappointment. Can a dreadful pub be considered anything other than disappointing? I ask because last night, in Royal Oak, we visited a pub called — wait for it — the Royal Oak. And it was shit. I mean, on paper it looks great, having pool tables, Sky TV, a jukebox, tables outside and so on. But no. It isn't great. It's shit. But in a funny way, we would have been disappointed had it not been awful, given the name & location double whammy... Anyway: you know how occasionally some people involved in a bit of rowdiness might bump into you, and will normally apologise and move away so as not to do it again? Well last night saw two lads have a faux-fight with some lass and lean back on their (single, shared) chair into our table. We saved our drinks and watched in disbelief as they just carried on, oblivious to the disruption they were causing us and the table next to us (the male inhabitant of which looked like he was ready to intervene just before they finally stopped). And it's not like the atmosphere was particularly welcoming anyway, I for one certainly felt all eyes land on us as we walked in the door. The toilets were munting too.
It's tempting to speculate about the name "Royal Oak". Was there an oak tree owned in the past by a member of royalty which got chopped down by a commoner, prompting a decree that all pubs boasting the name must in some way be fucking awful? Can some numerlogical analysis be done on the position of the letters (that make up the name) in the alphabet which would show it to be an uncannily bad selection and order? Or have we just been phenomenally unlucky in the Royal Oaks we've visited? Who knows.
Final note: the 'inner spiral' is a concept that we came up with last night to describe the members of the BITE inner circle, based upon how many pubs in the database they've actually been to, or perhaps their attendance records on the crawls we've been on. Thus at the centre of this spiral would be Anne, then myself, followed most likely by Mike Techno and so on. There are difficulties associated with working out exact figures so we'll probably not bother actually defining it, but I must admit I really do like the idea and term.
England 3 Croatia 1. Good result against a good team who gave us a real match of it for at least the last 20 minutes of the first half. But what has happened to/at the Falcon? There's no longer a TV where we watched the aforementioned Greece match, the big screen didn't come down until 15 minutes before kick-off and they seemed to only have put on 3 bar staff in a pub that contains, as they themselves proudly note, Britain's longest bar!
And then there was the switch/cashback/minimum purchase issue. Having waited an age to be served (and been queue jumped by at least one fella) I bought a couple of drinks that came to less than a fiver, and handed over my switch card. No word from the barmaid implied to me that this purchase was fine, however I was presented with a receipt for £12 to sign. Twelve quid!? I protested, and was told that the minimum purchase on switch was this amount, so I was being given £8.something 'change'. Why such an odd amount, and why didn't they tell me this beforehand, rather than just hand over a receipt for way more than the drinks cost and expect me to sign it blindly?
Still a good pub (even if they do big up sportspubs.co.uk on their blackboards) but last night was a bit disappointing.
Despite having deliberately decided not to go, then forgetting about it, and finally having a degree of difficulty getting hold of train tickets, Anne & I went to a barbecue and party thrown by some friends of ours down in Clevedon, Somerset. This was a prime opportunity not just to catch up with some people we don't see nearly often enough, but also to do some BITE duty, and so it was that we ended visiting 7 pubs on the way, 6 of which being suggested boozers in Bristol. And I have to say that we really liked them all (apart perhaps from the Llandoger Trow which was a bit uninspiring), proving that BITE users know a good pub when they see one.
The beautiful game is back on screens in homes and pubs all over the country. But those pubs are paying a heavy price for extra punters the blackboard advertised live games bring in.
Unlike the level playing field at home the bigger and busier the pub, the more money Sky charges. According to one place in this article £635 per month - and that's not including the pay-per-view games. And less pubs showing means more people in the places that are. So do you risk standing with a restricted view of the game or risk spilling cans of beer on the carpet in your own house? Tough call...
First stop in this British beer festival was, naturally enough, the Bieres sans Frontières stand, where they serve up loads of non-British beers. Being partial to the output of the low countries both Anne and I went for a bit of Dutch, in particular Anne had a pint of Johnny while I plumped for Heintje, both beers from the Prael brewery in Amsterdam. And to be honest neither of us were too impressed. Its not like they were undrinkable or anything (that comes later), but nonetheless we'd both tasted better. And better was to come very soon, but not before we finished our Dutch beers while watching the ceremony on stage announcing the winners of the various beer awards, including the Champion Beer of Britain — won by Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted. A quick trip to the CAMRA membership stand was followed first by the purchasing of some Hop Back Summer Lightning by Anne, and some German beer named "Herren Pils" for me. Anne did better there.
The Great British Beer Festival likes to fashion itself as "the worlds biggest pub" and to this end provides various sideshows and games that can be found in many pubs around Britain. Sadly there were no pool tables or dart boards, but prize tombolas were in abundance as were skittle alleys, shuffleboards, Northampton skittles and so on. Being a fan of the tombola since last year when I won a batch of beer mats, a pen, and a bar towel, I tried my luck at the "Every 1s a Winner" stand — any ticket containing the digit 1 wins a prize — and promptly won a beer glass from the Norwich Beer Festival. This was the start of an unprecedented winning streak; by the time we left I had added to this prize, to the tune of: a bottle of dark mild; a poster showing independent/family brewers of Britain; 6 half-pint vouchers (valid for any cider/perry, or any ale less than 4.7%); a bar towel; and a CAMRA book about the beers and cafes of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Admittedly the poster was a consolation prize after I whinged about not winning for the 4th time on the trot but hey, any prize is a prize.
Being a beer festival, however, the main part of the day was naturally enough spent drinking. We wandered around the halls a few times, looked at the t-shirts and pumps and other stuff on sale, had some pies, etc etc but all of this was punctuated by prize-winning as detailed above, and beer drinking as detailed below. This is a list of the beers which the four of us drank, not including those already mentioned above:
And finally, the outcome of the BITE roll-out-the-barrel challenge. Roll-out-the-barrel is a game where you get this, well, barrel shaped thing and have to roll it along an alley with a ramp at the end, which when it hits should send the vessel up into one of the divisions of the box in front. Each box is numbered differently and if you scored more than 10 you won a prize.
This is a phenomenally difficult game.
The challenge was on; Mike Silky's bravado that he would whip my sorry ass was turned (by me) into a four-way challenge. Silky went first; he scored 3. Not great — the top score of the day so far was 22. I felt confident that I would win the original two-way battle if not the entire challenge. But I wasn't next up, Mike Techno was; he scored 4. Surely I'll storm into the lead!, I thought; how wrong I was. I scored 2. Last up was Anne, with all to do. Would she get 1? Would she get 5? Neither. A fantastic 9! Equal to the rest of our scores put together. Awesome.
In other news, even-more-local-than-before pub the Antelope has got even-more-cheap-than-before, having knocked another 5p off the price of a Carlsberg and, as of today, launching yet another drinks promotion. This time all double spirits are going to be less than £2, not just crappy house ones either but Gordons, Jack Daniels, Smirnoff, and so on. Can't be bad. And while I mention it — what the fuck is Wetherspoons problem regarding Jack Daniels? An unnamed wag suggested it could be some kind of naff "We're the real JD" marketing gimmick but frankly I couldn't care less. The alternative bourbons they now stock may well be very nice but that doesn't mean I don't want a Jack Daniels now and then!
Damn, I seem to have descended into rant mode. Enough, then, until I've finished reading the latest industry news from thepublican.com — got to keep abreast of developments now that we're trade after all! :-)