And as I wake up and smell the coffee...

We had an early finish at work yesterday, as the sun was shining and business was slow. I decided to wander home via Covent Garden and the South Bank and do a wee bit of shopping en route. It was nice to be back before K and have dinner ready, a cup of tea about to brew and be ironing him some shirts by the time he got back, like a true ‘domestic goddess’!

I idled along, actually looking at London for once in my life and getting a whole new perspective on it. I normally speed walk everywhere with a permanently bent elbow bashing any tourist that dares to get in my way and eyes fixed on the skyline giving filthy looks to anyone heading in my direction so that they clearly understand it is them that will be moving!!

I have come to the conclusion, therefore, that most pubs are actually dives. All this propaganda about one closing every day comes as no surprise. It doesn’t seem to occur to people that whilst a pub is indeed the heart of a country village, needing preserved for the sake of the community, the majority are huge spaces which are allocated for drinking with scant regard for design (interior and exterior) or quality of food and beverages. We are all (as a nation) so hell bent on getting access to cheap booze, cheap dinners and somewhere to fag it outside, that we will tolerate a wide variety of what can only be described as shitholes.

I have frequented many in my time and can claim no superiority on this point. Yates’ Wine Lodge, Weatherspoons, the Firkin chain – you name it I’ve been there. I’ve also been to a vast number of lovely pubs, bars and hotels and am not suggesting we close each and every one, but what I would like to see is some sort of quality control. It’s the simple existence of these places with their 2 for 1 offers, happy hours and shots on special, that encourages and glamourises getting drunk.

I walked past two on the South bank that were heaving. As it was a boiling hot day, they both reeked of chip fat, smoke (from the assembled nicotine addicts outside the doors) and stale beer. It was quite simply foul. Both buildings were 1960’s abominations and part of one of the chains, so their character was non-existent. The only reason for anyone going there would be to consume vast amounts of cut price alcohol. Am sure the lager is weak and warm, the wine like paint-stripper and the alco-pops will be lined up on promotion by the till. This, my friends, is the image that greets visitors to London, from far and wide, in search of a real English pub experience. How nice eh? And if they are really, really lucky then can witness a drunken domestic, someone retching between their knees and a crude drinking game. Lovely souvenirs for them when they are recounting their tales back home.

It’s amazing how turned off I was, when I put them into context. Here are pubs (one of which I had frequented on a number of occasions) that I now see as the drinking dens that they really are. There is no experience to be had from going there, no atmosphere to soak up and certainly no wine list or half-decent menu. However, if I wanted to get rat-arsed then this was where to start the proceedings and certainly, in times gone by, where it would have ended, with me heading home via London Bridge more than a little worse for wear. Of course, I would have done this under the pretext of ‘catching up with a friend’ but, truth be told, that would have simply been my excuse to drink a vat of wine. I can see now why pubs hold no allure for K. He is usually fine with one in the countryside that has a garden and a family feel, but in terms of London, there isn’t exactly a long list of places to go that don’t involve being deafened by drunken twats or hooray henrys stepping on your feet and guffawing (they are always so fucking clumsy – must be the in-breeding).

We can map you the West End in coffee shops, however, the finest and the worst and nowadays I am more than content to while away an hour or so outside a Cafe Nero watching the world go by. Hey, maybe I am growing up as I am sobering up and am looking for a more dignified and genteel place to hang out. It also serves as a reminder that getting drunk was usually a great way to forget about sub-standard surroundings.

Anyway, top news of the day is that my wedding is now booked!!! Registrar from Hastings, venue in Rye and all I need to do now is make appointments in Woolwich to register our bans and the first bit is all done. I am more excited by this than anything I’ve done for as long as I can remember!!!