Bunting High And Low

Joe Fusniak would have been well looked after when he appeared at the White Lion, which remains a great, unpretentious pub. Not a few places in the Dales have been gastrated with varying degrees of success. I've heard of stares and even outright hostility toward visitors wanting just a pint and some crisps rather than a glass of Barolo and a bisque-infused crab and pea risotto with sun-boiled onions. None of this, mercifully, at the Fox And Hounds at bunting-wrapped Starbotton where we stopped for a post-Pike quencher. It's a classic Dales Inn - bow back chairs, flagstones, old shotguns on the walls - and a polite notice asking walkers to remove muddy boots. There are never any surprises with beer in a Dales pub. Jennings, Theakston. Maybe a Taylor's. There's always Black Sheep Bitter, which must surely have a claim to be Yorkshire's Official Pint with the demise of Tetley.



The Fox's guest was the Yorkshire Dales Brewery's Nappa Scar, and we took a couple of pints out front to watch chartered accountants wobble past on their Harleys. On our last encounter with an unsparkled Nappa Scar, I thought it smelled like a farmyard. Here it was all hops, billowing facefuls and huge mouthfuls of the stuff. I don't know much about IBUs - but I bet this wasn't far off the Stone Ruination that I tried t'other month. The hophead's perfect pint after a four-hour walk. And we didn't even mind that it was £3.20 - about the same price it would be at the Harp just off Trafalgar Square.

Those We Have Loved

I'm a photographer who loves beer, so I've often got my camera with me in the pub. I've had nothing much to blog about just recently, so I hope you don't mind me sharing some images of beer that i've enjoyed over the last year or so. Apologies if some of the captions read like an optician's wall chart - It's times like this when I wish i'd chosen Wordpress over Blogger.

Bush Inn, Morwenstow

The Lamb, Bloomsbury

San Sebastian, Spain

Bad Toelz, Bavaria

Georgbrauhaus, Berlin

Elizabethan Bar, Westward Ho

The Narrowboat, Skipton

The Square and Compass, Worth Matravers

The Ship Inn, Lyme Regis

The Beaver, Appledore

Blue Bell, York

Seehaus Biergarten, Munich

Landsberg Am Lech, Bavaria

Starnberg, Bavaria

London Pride

TIW favourite The Harp has been voted CAMRA's pub of the year - the first time ever for a London pub.

Is it the best pub in Britain? It's all highly subjective of course, but The Harp is certainly in my personal top five, and is easily my favourite London boozer. It's been my default Zone 1 destination for years. The Harp just gets it all right. Always busy, but never too busy to get you served quickly and with a smile. Genuine, unforced character and seven or eight ales and real ciders - It's where I first fell in love with Dark Star's Hophead*. No music, no idiots and I've never once had a bad pint. Proper, Northern-style friendliness, too. The Harp is one of the few places in London where you can strike up a conversation with a total stranger without them secretly dialling 999.

*pictured here on one of the rare occasions we've managed to bag one of the window seats.

Devon Knows

Just realised - I forgot to mention that after years of searching, I've finally found a decent pub in Barnstaple. It's the Rolle Quay Inn, a two-minute walk from the northern end of the High Street. It's much bigger than it looks from the outside, and a bit chintzy on the inside - but none the worse for that. We had a couple of first class pints of Proper Job (it's a St Austell house), served up by a friendly and knowledgeable barman, and enjoyed them while we sat defrosting by the pub's fragrant woodburner. It was light years from the usual Barno boozers with their knots of shivering rollup smokers, karaoke, pints of vinegar and two-for-one WKD promotions.





(Didn't have my camera with me when we went to the Rolle Quay - these pics were taken on Westward Ho! beach a day or two earlier)

From The Lions Mouth

Bad Leytonstone news and good Leytonstone news.

The good news. Lots of action at the Red Lion (which is now on Twitter) - and should be open by the end of march. Here's the latest release from owners Antic:

"I’m sure you have noticed our lovely builders getting stuck in at the Red Lion, work really is moving along and we are revealing more and more of the lovely old building all the time. Yesterday saw two false ceilings being removed from the bar area to really open the room up and the old kitchen being knocked out to make way for a brand spanking new one.
 
The pub now has it’s own Twitter account if you would like to be kept bang up to date with goings on: Theredlion_e11. A Facebook group is soon to follow.
 
I am also pleased to let you know that The Red Lion will be taking part in this years Leytonstone Festival. We will of course be looking for artists, groups, clubs or acts to appear during the Festival so anyone interested should either drop me a line or wait for the pub to open and pop in and have a chat.
 
Finally we are vey pleased to announce that we have appointed Mark Sprules the new General Manager  of the pub. Mark is currently the General Manager at  another of our pubs, Westow House in Crystal Palace and although he is sorry to be leaving the area,  is very much looking forward to the new challenge the Red Lion will bring. I am sure we can count on you all to make him feel very welcome when he takes up his new role in March. "

And the bad news? "Troubled" High Road landmark pub Lincoln's has had it. It's been bought by a housing association who want to demolish the place and shoehorn seventeen flats onto the site. When completed, this will give E11 the same population density as Hong Kong. Probably.

I haven't any suitable pictures, so I hope a Bavarian dog wearing sunglasses is OK.

The Lion In Winter

A big sign (hoho) that things are at last progressing for Leytonstone landmark The Red Lion (ex Zulus). Rumour has it that a lot more work is needed refurbishing the old place than was first thought, which may have put the reopening back a few weeks - so it'll be spring at the earliest. New owners Antic have set up a holding page for the pubs website, showing how it was in (I presume) about 1900 and hopefully how it might look again. Can't wait.

A King At Night

The original Tron was baffling for the thirteen-year-old TIW sat in Keighley Picture House. But Our Lad and me were there for the computer animation rather than the confusing but lame storyline. All done on the Foonly supercomputer with its astonishing two megabyte memory. There'd been nothing like it before - but of course, there's been a lot like it since. Last night I saw Tron: Legacy. Not without its moments - though every time the CGI 'young' Jeff Bridges came on screen I couldn't help but think "why have they made him look like Gary Barlow?".


After that a drink was needed, so we nipped round the corner to The Kings Arms. The pub's on Roupell Street SE1, part of a conservation area of early Victorian terraces which looks like it belongs on the cover of a book by Valerie Wood called something like 'The Ragged Princess' ("she was the daughter of a jellied eel seller, he was the Fifth Duke Of Witney").

The King's Arms is a multi-room boozer, modernised a bit but still retaining a lot of character and original features. When I worked nearby, I came here a lot, but i've not been in for months. Back then the beer could be a bit inconsistent, but last night the Adnam's bitter was in prime nick, unlike the Doom Bar I kicked off with which just about OK. Out the back there's what looks like a converted courtyard where you can be brusquely served Thai food. The bar staff are pretty brusque too. I don't expect a high five when I order a round, but some verbal communication would be nice. And please, do something about the rickety bar stools. Sat swaying three feet in the air does not make for a relaxing visit. It was nice and warm though - old fashioned iron radiators and a real fire crackling away in the tap room. Good atmosphere too, and pleasingly busy for a chilly monday a week into the new year. Bit of a curate's egg for me, this pub - it ticks a lot of my boxes but I didn't find myself wishing I could still nip in after work. Hmm.

Photo by Lars Plougmann

A Deep And Dark December

There’s a Yorkshire dialect song that we used to sing at school. I can’t remember the title, or much else – just the line “Nivver bin warm sin ah left me bed” – ‘warm’ pronounced to rhyme with ‘calm’, obviously. This line kept appearing in my head during my recent, pre-christmas visit home. It was cold. So very, very cold. One day we took a walk to the top of the Five Rise Locks, looking at the ghostly, frozen valley below us. Nothing moved except woodsmoke lazily curling up from chimneys, and a group of kids sledging down an iron-hard field.



In the five days I was up in Keighley, the temperature never got above minus 4. One shocking night it was minus 15. It’s the sort of weather where you never feel entirely, properly warm – except in about three places: My mam and dad's house, my grandma’s living room (hotter, in fact, than a nuclear reactor) and sat in front of the fireplace in the Boltmaker’s Arms, where I took this short film while supping Ram Tam - Taylor's famous winter warmer - with my dad and my uncle. I hope it captures a little of the welcoming banter of this very special pub.

Happy Christmas, and many thanks for reading my humble blog - see you next year!

LocAle

"Don't have that. It's horrible." Said the the friendly James May lookalike behind the bar. He was right. The sampler of Brodie's Kosher Rye Ale he gave me smelt like gloss paint, and tasted like grass clippings. His recommendation of Old Hopper was right on the money though.

It was saturday evening and pouring with icy rain. Mrs TIW, my brother and I were warm and snug in the William The IV in Leyton. This is the tap of the prolific Brodie brewery, which produces its beer in what looks like a big stone shed round the back. The pub is a large former gin palace, with original mirrors for Truman and Charrington on the walls. It looks and feels like a mash-up of the Cross Keys* in Covent Garden and former TIW saturday night favourite The Old George (AKA Kempys) in Bethnal Green, and the place was bustling. There was some sort of fraternal organisation having a black tie do in the back room, footy was showing unobtrusively on an enormous projector screen, watched by leather-jacketed geezers. The other punters were a mixed salad of East End hipsters, couples, locals and beard-stroking beer-o-nauts. Staff were zipping around clearing glasses and wiping tables, and one of the barmen kept interrupting his roast dinner to leap up and help out on the pumps, which were everywhere you looked - about twenty of them.

Brodie's are very active, as anyone who follows them on Twitter will know. They currently produce about 12 regular beers, as well as seasonals and what seem to be experiments, like the Kosher Rye. We only tried two out of the battalion of pumps - the smooth and bitter Amarilla and the Old Hopper, brewed with hops from Cable Street down in Whitechapel. Both beers tasted rather green and young - like they often do at beer festivals. Still perfectly enjoyable, especially the Hopper which was miles better than the version served at another Brodie outlet, the Old Coffee House in Soho, home of the most miserable barman in London.

The William's certainly had its ups and downs in recent years. Never quite knowing if it was on an up or a down is the reason that i've never taken the short journey to visit until now. Brodie's is in fact the resurrection of the pub's old Sweet William micro, brought back to life in 2008 by James and Lizzie Brodie, and the pub's new ascendency is clearly down to their hard work (and maybe helped by their £1.99 a pint pricing). We certainly felt instantly at home - it's that kind of place - and I'm looking forward to going back.

Disclaimer: Our lad and me had spent a good chunk of the afternoon in the Euston Tap getting acquainted with Fyne Ales' Vital Spark. So don't take my word for it, go and have a look. Leyton's really not that far from Zone 1.

*I've heard the Cross Keys and the Old Coffee House is are run by the owners of the William IV. Can anyone confirm?

Rail Ale

Never thought I'd look forward to visiting a pub near a train station. Finally got to the Euston Tap for a late-afternoon visit on monday. At first, the place was empty, except for an extremely posh young man who appeared baffled by the beer menu ("Um, what's a nice beer?") and a grizzled CAMRA vet in a faded beer festival shirt stretched over an impressive belly. Twenty odd-beers on the blackboards, reasonably priced and numbered like a Chinese restaurant*. Two fridgezillas creaking with bottles. We liked the place instantly.



No sign of Boak and Bailey's snooty barmaid, thankfully - the lad behind the bar was smiley enthusiasm personified. Mate had a Bristol Stout ("excellent") while I settled for a Lagonda, the first Marble beer I've really enjoyed. My pint was none the worse for a slight haze, something that seemed to affect the other light-coloured ales we saw served up. Our only real complaint was that the place was freezing. Even though the barman was in a t-shirt - everyone else had their coats on. Another gripe was that we'd left it too late to stay for more than one before we had to go and meet the wives.

The Euston Tap is full of potential and deserves to do well - and might even prove to be something of a kick up the arse for the capital's beer 'scene'. Range+decent prices = happiness. More of this sort of thing, please.

*You're meant to order by number, apparently. We were ignorant of this, but the barman didn't mind. Perhaps just as well - I even get baffled by the ordering system in Nando's.

Playing The 'Spoons

I've been offered some bad pints in my time, and i've even had to bat off the infamous "It's meant to taste like that" cliché on a couple of occasions. But this is the worst example yet, encountered last friday at the (usually reliable) Crosse Keys as we caught the tail end of Wetherspoon's real ale festival. Wasn't even a full pint. Changed with no drama, but still - it shouldn't have made it to the civilian side of the bar. It was meant to be a Marston's Old Empire, but looked and smelled exactly like the residue in the bottom of the fish tank one of my housemates had back when I was a student. I think the correct term is 'mulm'.

Hopeful

Central Keighley must be one of the few places to escape the decimation of its pubs. In recent years the town has permanently lost the Eastwood Tavern, The Masons Arms and The Market Arms - and that's about it, although a number of pubs in outlying villages are said to be struggling and just lately The New Inn at Crossroads has become an ironmongers.

Several pubs have closed and reopened - one example is the Hope and Anchor freehouse on the outskirts of the centre, just round the corner from Timothy Taylor's new site. I've only been in once, several years ago. It was like walking into an episode of the Likely Lads, a 1960s time capsule complete with redundant buttons to summon a waiter and tin ashtrays for defunct brewers like Whitakers of Halifax.

Whitakers - founded in 1848 - had the usual post-war trajectory of mergers and takeovers before having their own brewery (trademark - 'Cock O' The North') demolished by Whitbread in 1969. Their ales became nothing more than a proprietory name on a pump, made elsewhere in Whitbread's empire. They faded away sometime in the early 70s. A similar thing happened to fellow Halifaxoneans Websters - closed by S&N in 1996 - and whose beer is now brewed by John Smiths for the club trade. I always associate Websters with bleak, wind-blasted Calderdale villages where there wasn't much more than one of their mid-Victorian pubs, a silent mill, a few houses and a dripping-damp Wesleyan chapel. Their Pennine Bitter had a few fans but to be fair, I don't ever recall anyone saying they could murder a Websters.


This sign was found in the Hope and Anchor's cellar during the refurbishment and fixed to the pub's back wall where it was photographed by my mum and dad on a recent visit. "Pretty good. Irish and friendly" was their verdict. The pub that is, not the sign.

The Lion Thing

According to dismal hysteria-sheet the Waltham Forest Guardian, Leytonstone's best-known deceased pub Zulus will indeed reopen as the Red Lion, as I speculated a few weeks back. A bit later than expected, though - "february at the earliest" according to Max Alderman of developers Antic Ltd. This is due to squatters taking roost, something that seems to have become a bit popular round our way lately - this pic shows the old police station further down the High Road from Zulus, recently occupied by (according to my neighbour) 'crusties'. Now, there's an adjective seldom heard since the late 90s. The building is due to be sold for £1.5m, and they, their dogs and their henna may have been evicted by the time you read this.


“It is a little bit annoying" say Max with no little understatement "but hopefully the process won't take too long. We can't wait to get started. Our plan is to take The Red Lion back to being an old-fashioned style local pub with home made food."

Great news for our bit of East London - and gratifying to know that Antic think Leytonstone is "slightly up and coming". It won't turn the area into Marylebone overnight, but it's a start.

Spot The Difference

The Tadcaster brewer Samuel Smith seems to embody many of the attributes of the music hall version of the professional Yorkshireman. Stubborn, self-reliant, shrewd and reticent to the point of only getting a website in August 2010. They're certainly eccentric and somewhat secretive - they never seem give interviews. Their London pubs are a bit love-or-hate, but they certainly care for the fabric of their buildings. A few years back, they closed their famous gin palace The Princess Louise for several months while they restored its 1891 interior. Given the quality of the work, literally no expense was spared. As far as I can tell, they didn't even bother with a press release saying what they'd been up to. There's something nicely old fashioned about their flagship ale, Old Brewery Bitter. It's not to everyone's taste, but I like it - it's a decent standby for a swift quencher, and one of the few beers still drawn from the wood. They have a cooperage at the brewery. Local deliveries are by drays pulled by shire horses. Traditional isn't the word.

Just one bit of folklore about Smith's claims that the reason OBB is so cheap is that tax and duty apart, the brewery hasn't raised prices since they first started brewing it. Ah, yes. Folklore. And Rumours. For fear of getting my wheels sued off I won't go into any here, but speculation about one or other members of Smith's senior staff on this site might somehow help explain why they're taking the Cropton Brewery to court.

In 2008, Cropton launched Yorkshire Warrior, a 4.4% ruby ale. Profits from sales go the Yorkshire Regiment Benevolent Fund. More than £10,000 has so far been raised. The bottle displays the regiments' badge, which of course features the Yorkshire Rose. Samuel Smith, in their wisdom, say that having the rose on the Warrior bottles is 'confusingly similar' to their own labelling. A writ has been served for 'copyright infringment'. You now have the absurd situation of seeing Warrior bottles and pump clips with the county symbol on it blacked out.

Cropton, y'see, are a Yorkshire brewer. Go to Leeds on a match day and half the men (and I dare say a few women) in the city centre will have a white rose tattoo on their arm. How many businesses in the county incorporate it into their own logo? It's everywhere. It belongs to Yorkshire. It does not belong to Samuel Smith, who in any case use the symbol upside down. They may have been around for 252 years but Sam Smiths shouldn't take their great age as a guarantee of brand loyalty, especially when it comes to something like this. It's so petty and wrong-headed it defies logic.

The case will reach the High Court next July. Cropton have said they will fight the claim all the way, but if they lose they are likely to face bankruptcy. I don't know about anyone else, but I won't be darkening the doors of any Smith pubs for a while.

In The Red

Just recently there have been all sorts of rumours about Leytonstone's two most prominent dead pubs. Lincoln's, which dominates the middle section of the HIgh Road has been sold. Or it hasn't. Planning to convert it to flats has been rejected. Or it's been accepted. It's going to become a restaurant. Or it isn't. Whatever the case, the premises remain closed and increasingly tatty.

However, more substantial gossip concerns Zulus up the road. This was the Red Lion until 2002, when it became a theme pub aimed at E11's large population of young South Africans. It wasn't popular with local residents, some of whom grew familiar with splats of puke decorating their front gardens, pavements and cars. Zulus was part of a chain that seems to have gone belly-up early this year, when it suddenly closed. It briefly reopened as some sort of Eastern European night club before remaining tinned-up with the usual ALL ITEMS OF VALUE HAVE BEEN REMOVED signs. The Red Lion has a bit of an iconic status locally. During the late sixties and early seventies it hosted gigs by Yes, Genesis, Iron Maiden and was even the scene of an early outing by a youthful Led Zepellin. Since those glory days it's had a few incarnations - including a brief flirtation as a 'Salsa bar' named Cuba Bella. However, the pub was known as the Red Lion from at least 1754, and before that it was the Robin Hood. There has been a pub on the site since the 1600s, and the present building dates from 1891. It's a prime site in an area that's improving. Indeed, some even say that Leytonstone is (re)gentrifying.

Step forward, then, Antic Ltd who, it has been confirmed have bought the site and will be adding it to their brace of other London premises. Antic are chiefly famous for running the Dogstar in Brixton and the well-regarded White Hart in Stoke Newington. I'm not familiar with their other pubs, but a poke around their website seems to indicate that they're all about creating places with a bit of organic character, rather than the cut-and-paste refurbs of some other chains. No indication as to what the place will be called yet - but let's hope it's a welcome back for the Red Lion.

At Last, At Last

You're probably sick of me banging on about the dire state of beer in Bideford. I know I am. Despite the town being in part of the country studded with micro and regional breweries, it's hard to find a decent pint in the towns and villages on the Torridge Estuary. True to form, I had three miserable pints at the Kingsley, the local in the village near to where my in-laws live. Doom Bar, Bombardier and Exmoor Gold. All as dull as ditchwater, in that annoying condition where you can't quite justify returning them to the bar. The Kingsley is a Cask Marque pub, which only reinforces my opinion that the Marque can't be trusted as a badge of reliability. It was a similar story down the hill at the (un-Marque) Village Inn, Westward Ho. Another grim pint of Doom. Eggy and flat. Could it be that drinkers in Bideford forgotten what a beer in good condition tastes like, and just put up with whatever is served?

It got better, though. On the friday of our visit we had one of those nights which starts with the notion of a couple of brewskys and home for tea, but ends up with a kebab, cab, and a sore head. We were in the White Hart, a 17th century pub on a backstreet off Bideford quay. It's a tiny place that's had it's ups and downs over the years but is now seems to be back on form. The pumps usually have a couple of the local (and unexciting) Jollyboat ales and a guest, which on our visit was Hartland Forge IPA. It was without doubt the best pint I've supped in twenty years of visiting. Prime condition, fresh and bitingly hoppy - everything an IPA should be. Haven't been that surprised since I saw Bill Clinton sat in a pub in Covent Garden. So that was that, from 5 until closing. Sadly, Dexter, the ancient collie that used to loll about in front of the fire like an animated rug has passed away since our last visit. One of the Jollyboat pumps was dedicated as a memorial. Cheers, Dex.

Hip To Be Square

We were in Lyme Regis on our way back from a birthday trip to Devon. We liked Lyme, despite our visit to the only restaurant run by the Keystone Kops. Don't be fooled by the pink sky in the previous post, our visit coincided with Dorset's notorious rainy season. The next night was spent at a waterlogged Corfe Castle. Good thing Mrs TIW has some experience as a sailor, as our little Ford Ka practically floated its way down the lanes to the Square And Compass at nearby Worth Matravers, where the pub suddenly appeared out of a thick sea mist like the Flying Dutchman. Everyone knows about the Square and Compass. How it's been in branches of the same family since 1907, how the chuck-it-and-skip-it refurb fads of the 60s and 70s passed it by. The beer on stillage, served through a hatch. The outside bogs. We legged it up the hill from the car, raindrops thudding against my hat like gravel. Only to find the door locked. Bugger. Oh hang on, it's just stiff. A local appeared and shouldered the door like Gene Hunt after a toerag. Ah, that hatch, with a bank of casks racked up behind the barmaid. Hot chocolate for Mrs TIW and a pint of Eddystone for me, brewed up the coast at Torcross. We took a table in the right-hand room with a group of sodden hikers. Parquet floors, wood panelling, mind your head on the beams. People were staggering in at regular intervals, as soaked and wild-eyed as shipwreck victims.



Suddenly, a wet collie arrived begging the drinkers to throw a piece of bark. We all sat there dripping, drinking, throwing bark - all of us in the knowledge that sooner or later we were going to have to go outside into that rain. And so it went on, with Mrs TIW generously watching me sink another three excellent pints of Palmers Copper Ale before we had to reluctantly leave. There should be a national day to remind us how capricious the survival of places like the Square and the Blue Bell is. As we pulled on our coats I told one of the regulars that I considered a dog the sign of a good pub. "Oh, he's not the pub's dog. He lives round the corner. He just comes in for a pint".

Blue Bell? Would.

I'll try to get to the end of this post without using the tired old pub reviewers word 'gem'. But I'll struggle.

I first heard about the Blue Bell about three years ago, after my mum and dad found the place on one of their visits to York. IN PUB U'D RLLY LUV - came the text from my 70-year-old-dad, whose messages are apparently ghostwritten by a Walthamstow yoot - BLUE BELL INNIT.

Our visit last saturday afternoon was almost thwarted by a handwritten 'private party' sign on the front door. A bloke with a cig cupped in his palm sidled up and theatrically whispered "Go on in. Yer all right. That's to keep idiots out". So, officially recognised as not being idiots, in we went - back to 1903, the year the the pub was last given a makeover. Much has been written about the BB's untouched Edwardian interior, which has survived thanks largely to an ain't-broke-don't-fix-it approach from the family who ran the pub for decades. The last family licensee, Edith Pinder (by all accounts a redoubtable character - "she used to sit here like Mrs Haversham"), retired in 1992. Doubtless it was present owners Pubmaster who stuck the godawful sign above the marvellous tiled exterior.



Everyone remarks about the size of the Blue Bell, which has a street frontage of exactly 13 feet wide. It may be small for York, but it's not a lot smaller than the Mitre in London, and it's almost cavernous compared with the pocket-sized Boltmakers in Keighley. There are two rooms, front and back, split by the bar and connected by a dark, narrow corridor with its own serving hatch, presumably once there for off-sales. There are six hand pumps and a rack of continental bottles - La Chouffe and St Bernadus among them. We settled for an excellent Roosters Leghorn and a perfect Camfell Flame, which was a new one to us. The other beers were reliables like Deuchars, Landlord and the ubiquitous Black Sheep. I suspect this is more to do with Pubmaster than the tenants, who have an obvious enthusiasm for beer - the Blue Bell hosts one of the country's smallest ale festivals. The landlady reportedly knows the names of over 200 of her regulars, who were a mix of young and old and all backgrounds and classes. We were drawn into conversations that involved the whole room, and its possibly a good thing that we we only had time for a couple of pints, otherwise we'd still be in there now. The Blue Bell is one of those things that leaves your soul singing to know it exists, like Bolton Strid or the Merlin Engine or the Polar Bear or the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a much loved, much-used boozer, welcoming to everyone. Except idiots. An almost perfect pub, then, and oh, alright - a gem.

Given The Choice

The ebb and flow of pub closures continues in Leytonstone. Firstly, some good news. The Loaded Dog has reopened. This has had a pretty chequered past, even being run by Jamaican Yardies at one point, which resulted in a dramatic termination of licence involving stun grenades. For a couple of years after it was a good music venue, but got torpedoed when the pubco went bust. It was boarded up for a year or so, and now seems to be serving generic lagers to generic punters. Next door, the Britannia is being converted to flats. Kirkdales, a pub/winebar hybrid with a ravishing view of the bus station closed suddenly last year and has been replaced with The Olive, a mediterranean restaurant. Up the road from there is Zulus, one of the oldest licenced premises in E11, and for decades was the Red Lion. Apart from a brief flirtation with being an *ahem* Mexican cantina, Zulus was the boozer of choice for Leytonstone's large population of South Africans. At the moment, the building is tinned up - rumour has it that there's a refurb in the offing. Mind you, they said that two years ago about Lincoln's, which still sits like a beached cruise liner further down the High Road.

The Woodhouse Tavern is up for sale with a view to being demolished and turned into a four-storey block of flats. The pub dates from 1865, and has a nice lounge bar with wood panelling from a 20s refit, and a newer half with conservatory, rebuilt after a visit by the Luftwaffe. The landlord was interviewed recently, saying that they don't get many customers in any more. I hate to say it, but I'm not surprised. Clean and pleasant as it is, you do have to wonder what would make you go there when they don't even serve one ale, and the rest of the very ordinary fodder is much cheaper to drink at home. Where's the added value? I'm very happy to pay a premium for a good pub experience, and I suspect most people are, but I've no wish to drink Smoothflow to the sound of a ticking clock. I've been in about three times - I like to give pubs the benefit of the doubt - but each time the place was virtually empty, with all the atmosphere of a crypt. On my first visit, I went in with my dad. When he asked what was on their four handpumps, the barmaid looked surprised and said "Oh them? They're just for show".

Leytonstone has a large and growing middle-class demographic. A lot of drinkers spend their money in the West End rather than locally, because apart from the excellent North Star, there just ain't the choice unless you like Karaoke and Carling Premier (and I do, now and again). Much as I loathe so-called Gastropubs with their contrived blackboardery and gigantic plates, I'd be pretty happy if one opened round here, just for the variety.

The Rat Race

Much as I adore riding my scooters, mixing it with the traffic on Mile End road isn't my idea of a proper larf. I haven't used the Vespas to ride to work for many months, having worked out a cycle route where I can remain largely unmolested by East London's numberless untaxed, unlicenced, uninsured, untrained and un-brained drivers. Unfortunately, London's famous black cab drivers have it in for me and they are everywhere. A couple of recent incidents involving cabbies mean they won't be getting any tips from me for a while, but that's another story. This picture was taken yesterday morning in cab-free Victoria Park, which I'm delighted to say makes up about a fifth of my ride. Leyton behind me, Bethnal Green and the City up ahead. Yesterday's ride was a stuggle - I was suffering with what the Germans call a Katzenjammer.

The night before had been one of those rare evenings where friends and colleagues shift patterns align and we all found ourselves guzzling Harvey's at the Royal Oak. The Best was superb, but the Pale Ale was a bit lip-curling. It seemed like a good idea at the time to finish the evening with a couple of pints of Thatchers Traditional. It's been a while since I knocked back a Thatch, and the robust balance of dry and sour floated down a treat. Stick that in your bunghole, Malcolm Gluck. I used to drink Thatcher's at the Fighting Cock in Bradford, where as teenage idiots we used to put ice in it to deaden the flavour, pre-empting Magners by about 20 years. By the time I took this picture I was realising those last two pints had not, in fact, been a good idea. I was still realising it by teatime.


This other pic was taken on friday's ride home and shows the state the Olympic stadium's in at the moment. At night it looks like the Starship Enterprise. Out of shot on the other side of the canal is Fish Island, an enclave of industrial units now becoming populated with artists priced out of London's Trendy Shoreditch (TM). While I was stood here an Afghan hound trotted up to say hello, but legged it before I could get a picture. It was the image of Paris Hilton.