On Monday I attended a meeting in London. It was held in the same place where I lived for five years, The Docklands. As the tedious meeting came to an end I decided that I would have a quick lunchtime pint of beer in my favourite local pub.
These pubs were places that hold many fond memories for me, parties, stories, emotions and love all hidden behind the doors of these once regular haunts of mine. I made life changing decisions in these bars, and of course it would be nice to see some of the old faces behind the bar.
It was raining very hard that day so I ran down the road towards my favourite bar, The Heron.
Only to find that The Heron, that beautiful riverside bar has now been turned into an OFFICE BLOCK! NO!!! I was SO thrown back by this, how could this be? The Summer BBQ’s spent there, the drunken howling games of pool, the laughs and loves.
So I thought I would pop into the Anchor, the oldest pub in the area, to see Lynn and catch up on old times….
At first I thought, my god a broken window, nothing new for the Anchor 🙂 But to my dismay there was a For Sale sign and all the furnishings had been removed. My heart now sank, my two favourite pubs were closed.
Soaking wet and saturated I decided to drown my sorrows in the Puzzle, which was another great haunt of mine and also the pub just around the corner from where I used to live.
You guessed it…they had gone into administration.
There was only one more pub in the area, the rather run down “Plough” so I went there to take a breather and think how this could be.
As I walked into the Plough (yes it was open) I noticed that it had had a rather serious make over, gone was the dart board, the pool table and the sticky carpet and instead had gone through a transition that Extreme Makeover would have been proud of, it smelt of fresh paint, the doors were new, there was art for sale on the wall. Was this the same pub? I ordered a pint of beer and almost choked on the price £3.40 for a pint of Smiths. I did not want to take out a bank loan for another pint so I decided to go to the toilets and leave. Upon entering the toilets I wondered if the old broken hand dryer that used to spit hot air upwards rather than downwards was still there….oh no it had been replaced.
By a small man offering me a “Hot Towel”
Fuck me the past has changed. So no more! I demand that this government stop shutting down pubs, hiking up the price of beer and let’s reclaim our locals!