Goal Frenzy

Up before the lark for a 7am train to Darlo - none of my favourite caffs are open at this time of day so I head over to St Pancras for a Cafe Maya from ATM - I'm not one of those with a cup of coffee permanently in my hand but this concoction of chocolate, double expresso and whipped cream seems to be the best breakfast substitute on offer.

St Pancras is lovely at this time of the day - it's fairly quiet with hardly anyone on the upper level to spoil the view - the huge roof looks stunning with John Betjeman looking out over it all.

I wander over to King's Cross - very much the ugly sister now - and meet John Wilson on-board - we have a decent journey north other than the fact that the price of the a cop of tea has gone up again and we arrive 25 mins late - but thanks to the early start my lunchtime session is not compromised.

On the platform at Bank Top I bump into my old mates Paul Walker and Ken Toase - Paul is meeting one of his work colleagues, Carl, who is being treated to a day out at the football Darlo-style. Lucky boy!

I join them for their visit to the Three Squares cafe on Skinnergate - a traditional cafe with a bargain-priced English breakfast, £3.95. You have to time it right to get a table as it's very popular but the service is brisk and the tea is strong.

Next it's just a it's a short stroll to Taylors to get some pies for the return leg whilst Paul and co. wandered ahead to the Quaker Cafe. My opener was Pirate's Gold, a pale bitter from the Wooden Hand brewery - there was a slightly odd taste to this but not sure what.

After that I stuck to a tried and tested favourite brewery with a pint of Dark Knight from Hambleton - not as dark as I'd expected given the name - more of an amber beer with a good mixture of hops and malt.

The pub soon starts filling up with Luton fans who seem to be searching out the real ale pubs of Darlo and it's a bit more crowded than usual.

John Wilson re-joined us and then we're treated to the grand entrance of Neil Johnson who was over from Norway for the weekend. Notable absentees though are Tony and Brian who have opted for the ale-pots of York and a trip to see the Minstermen play Lewes (though it later transpires that they never actually made it to Kit Kat Crescent).

After a few points, we wander up to Number Twenty-2 - the Milestone SPA taking my fancy for a while before we settled on the porter - a stand-in for the stout of the week - unfortunately I've forgotten the name of it but it was very drinkable.

The game proved to be one of those that take you totally by surprise - 4 goals in the first 28 minutes had us all reeling from shock - and we should have had more! To be fair Luton helped to make it a good game for us - they appear to believe that attack is the best form of defence - it probably has to be if their defence plays like that every week.

The second-half was a relatively quiet affair where both teams went through the motions - they should have just declared a TKO and let us all go back to the pub.

It was good to see our token Scouse git, Greg Blundell, get the fifth goal - not the most skillful or prolific of players but he has a great attitude - like Neil Wainwright he runs at people and keeps the pressure on the opposition - to my mind this is an overlooked virtue.

For the return leg home, I'm joined by Howard and Martin - the 7am departure was too early for their delicate constitutions - and we had an incident-free journey south. Except that I'd mislaid the pies somewhere between the pub and the ground - I think the taxi-driver got a free tea out of me.

At Doncaster, the London Millers - three of them including Liz - joined the train but kept themselves to a separate carriage. Nice to see they know their place...

Sussex Supping

I had rail tickets to go to our game in Accrington but decided to not bother - uncertainty about the weather, the fact I hate using the West Coast mainline unless I really absolutely have to plus the need to work at various anti-social times over the weekend all convincing me to stay down south.

The correct decision as it turned out following a mid-morning pitch inspection decided their pitch was not fit. Despite this I still had to get to Euston by 8:30am to give Martin Deans his rail tickets.

That did at least offer me the chance to pop into the Double Six for breakfast which was up to it's usual standard. I was joined there by Chris Stockdale who had just arrived from a week snow-boarding in Switzerland - getting a baldy sprained elbow for his troubles - and who was getting the next train to Accrington.

With Rotherham's match being postponed on the Friday, frenzied discussions took place with members of the London Millers to decide on somewhere to go for a pub crawl instead - these guys didn't want their pass-outs wasted!

It was Brighton that got the nod over St Albans and I was the first to arrive there just after 11am. I headed to our first port of call, the well-known Evening Star, but found it doesn't open until 11:30am on Saturdays. Cue idle thumb twiddling...

(left) Evening Star - not usually this quiet!

No difficulty in deciding on the first beer - it's got to be Dark Star Hophead - a very nice pint elsewhere but here it was in beautiful condition, the perfect first pint.

I then went onto Dark Star's American IPA which upped the ante significantly - according to their website it is supposed to be available between March and May - but I wasn't complaining.

As I was getting stuck in, the Millers arrived in the shape of Paul, Chris, Andy and Andy's mate Mike.

There was a great range of beers on offer - further beers from Dark Star of course plus local guests from Wolf and the Rectory brewery. They also had Brigand IPA and one of the Stone brews on tap as well.

Much as we were loath to, this was a crawl and we had to move on (after another couple of pints) and probably the next best pub to go to is the Lord Nelson.

This was my first visit here despite previous good reports from John and Bev.

On arrival, we bumped into the Fast Show's Mark Williams who was making short shrift of a pint of (real) cider. Apparently the Fast Show star is a regular in the real ale pubs of Brighton.

(left) Chris and Paul enter the Lord Nelson

This place is a Harvey's pub and I went for the Old Ale and what a cracking pint it was - a beautiful black pint, lovely and smooth, just the thing to complement the pork scratchings.

From here, Andy and I made an early move on the Basketmakers Arms leaving the others in the Lord Nelson for a bit longer as we were going to meet Martin Duffy, Steve's brother.

The Basketmakers Arms is a former Gales house, now a Fullers pub but it does have some decent guests - today Castle Rock Harvest Pale was one of them, not dissimilar to Hophead so we settled for that.

Whilst Andy quizzed Martin on whatever happened to 80s indie outfit Felt and whether they'd ever reform, the rest of the gang joined us, including Clarkey who decided that football or not, he wasn't missing out on the crawl.

Mr Martin had been shopping - the search for a pair of large yellow loons for his slightly fuller figure proved to be fruitless but he did manage to find an item of headgear that appeared to be a little on the tight side. Perhaps these Peruvians have small skulls?

(right) Paul Martin tries it on

When we left the Basketmakers after several pints, I made the wise decision to curtail my drinking and head for home - I was due to be working in the small hours of Sunday morning and didn't really want to do so with a hangover - whilst the others headed off for more.

Lucky, lucky bastards...

Lack Of Dutch Courage

Liz had been dropping hints about going out somewhere nice to celebrate her birthday and for once I took heed. Unfortunately on the day itself I was at our home game against Barnet so we settled for a visit to one of old haunts the following day instead.

We'd been going to the Lowlander on Drury Lane for many years and have always enjoyed our visits there. It serves a mixture of bottled and draught beers are drawn from Belgium and the Netherlands and offer a choice of hearty food with food.

It's a venue where you can't really stand at the bar but sit at the tables - not normally my cup of tea but when you're savouring the higher percentage brews, it's probably wisest.

Not surprisingly the place was very quiet when we arrived more or less on opening time - most other folk would be Xmas shopping just up the road in Covent Garden.

Normally I start off with an Ij Pilzen or an Ij Wit as a quick opener whilst I peruse the beer menu. However the blank look on the waiter's face suggested things had changed. No Ij beers at all!

I had a quick look at the draught beers and opted for the Brigand IPA, a 6.5% beer, which was OK but nothing outstanding - some hoppy overtones but not as hoppy as I like it.

The persual of the beer menu suggested that the management have rationalised the list somewhat and whilst the lion's share of the beers on offer have always been Belgian, there were now 52 Belgian beers compared to a paltry 8 Dutch brews!

Now as any visitor to the Arendsnest in Amsterdam will tell you, there are a lot of Dutch breweries these days and some are excellent - De Molen, De Prael, Jopen and Scheldebrouwerij come to mind. See Ron Pattinson's excellent site for more information.

Luckily they had bottles of Strandgaper (from Schedebrouwerij) in stock and I decided to stay on this for the remainder of the day. I was going to try the excellent Hercule Stout but they'd run out.

The food was as good as ever - pan-European hearty fare - I tend to opt for their steak as they do it nice and bloody.

If you're in the Covent Garden area the Lowlander is well worth a visit - I just wish they'd be a bit more adventurous in their choice of Dutch beers - at least get Ij brews back on the menu - but I suspect I'm in a minority here as most will opt for the well-known Belgian beers.

Battersea Brewing

I had first seen mention of London's newest brewery on the informative BeerJustice blog a few weeks ago and once I saw that they were doing a series of open nights, I popped down to south London with Chris and Roger.

Before going to the brewery, we decided to whet our whistle at the nearby Castle on Battersea High Street. Quite a light airy pub with a roaring wood fire - the Youngs Special was on top form so we had a few pints to limber up.

The Sambrook Brewery is one of a set of industrial units and the open night was in full flow when we got there.

Brewer Duncan Sambrook was giving a tour of the brewery to a group of people whilst various familiar CAMRA faces, including John Cryne from North London CAMRA, seemed content to simply drink the beer - like us, they've probably had their fill of brewery tours over the years.

There was just the one beer on offer - the 3.8% Wandle - named after the river that flows beneath Battersea.

The Wandle was a bit chilly for my taste and it looked as if it had a protein haze but it tasted fine - quite an easy drinking beer.

Roger really took a shine to it and kept going back for refills - well we only had half-pint glasses!

We had a brief chat with Duncan once he finished his tour and he explained that he'd been working in the City but decided to return to his roots as a chemist and try his hand at brewing professionally. Whilst he only has this one beer in production at the moment, he'll be looking to produce seasonal beers once the Wandle is fully up and running.

Although Duncan has started off at quite a large scale, he has the advantage of being in partnership with David Welsh, a former MD at Ringwoods, which will hopefully stand the business in good stead, especially in today's tricky trading environment.

Apparently there are a few local outlets already, including the Westbridge Public House and Dining Rooms, but they hope to extend further in 2009 and I'm sure we'll see their wares at the Battersea beer festival in February.

Good luck to Duncan and his team.

Can'tbearsedness

It's been about a month since my last post - did anyone miss me?

Blame it on lethargy brought on by a cold, compounded by pre-Xmas festivities and topped off by a general malaise over Xmas itself.

I'll try and do better in 2009...

Concentrating on the League

Thanks to what was apparently a dreadful performance by the Quakers, it was Droylsden and not us who were travelling to sunny Saltergate for the second round of the FA Cup.

And since nature abhors a Saturday without some sort of pub-related activity, I joined forces with Chris Turner - similarly bereft of a game after Rotherham lost their replay to Aldershot - and we meet up at Lou Farrow's pie and mash shop in Bermondsey.


(left) Pie shop


Unlike most traditional P&M shops, Farrow's also offers the usual cafe-style grub.

But we were here for the traditional stuff and since I was quite hungry I went for two pie and mash - the pies were very nice though the mash was rather lumpy. I'd also overestimated the filling power of the pies so I left some mash.

From Bermondsey we made our way to the Angel and took the short walk to the Red Lion. This was a new pub for me despite having worked near by for several few years - five handpumps even if they were some of the usual suspects.

I settled for a pint of Landlord and it is probably the best I've had in London - having that nice crisp, bitterness which is often lacking.

(right) Chris and the Red Lion interior

The pub was quite empty but they were gearing up for the rugby international later in the afternoon - we decided to move on and try the Charles Lamb.

This is another pub that I was aware of but had never tried and if I'd relied on the comments on http://www.beerintheevening.com/ we probably wouldn't have bothered - complaints of rude and snooty staff.

The pub was full of people eating rather than drinking but we managed to find some stools at the bar. There were three beers on tap - a regular Dark Star Hophead whilst the guests included Butcombe IPA and Blackawton Winter Fuel. Both the Hophead and IPA were in excellent condition and the staff friendly. We'll be back.


Next stop on the crawl was back down the Northern line to Borough Market and the New Forest cider stall where we met Liz, John and Bev. This stall became a regular Saturday afternoon haunt during the close-season but we'd not been for a while.

(left) Paul and some parsley - Liz on the cider champers

As usual we were served by Paul, a shy retiring type who delights in a bit of banter, and who we've previously met in Rose's, Woolwich.

The boys had pints of the vintage Kingston Black whilst the ladies had the champagne cider - lovely stuff!

We departed as the market was closing down and popped into the nearby Rake. I'm rather ambivalent to this bar - it's OK when quiet but too often it's full of loud, shouty types who like drinking straight from the bottle which - as my Mum will tell you - is just common. They also like to freeze the tits (a technical term) off some beers that don't need it.

On the pumps tonight were BrewDog Trashy Blonde and Hophead Porter - we all went for the Porter (except for Liz who was now on the tomato juice) and very fine it was too - tasty with that familiar coffee grounds feel their Expresso Stout has.

By now the hunger pangs had started and we wandered down the road to the Royal Oak - we thought it opened at 5:30pm on Saturdays but the place was almost full when we got there and just managed to get a table.

It was good to see they had Fullers London Porter on - unlike far too many Fullers pubs - and we all got stuck into that. The food was as hearty as they come, my steak and kidney suet pudding was just what was required on a cold day. And the new London Drinker was in stock too.

(White Man) In Hammersmith Odeon

Having just had a trip round the most prominent building in Hammersmith, I made a trip to probably the most famous building in Hammersmith later the same day - the Apollo - although I still think of it as the Odeon.

I can stare out of my window at this building too. I suppose I should actually do some work.

My first visit to the Odeon was back in 1984 after I'd first moved down to London - it was to see Jethro Tull on their Under Wraps tour and I've been a fairly frequent visitor ever since.

(left) Innes

The great, the good and the downright rubbish have played here over the years - more recently the venue went through a period of hosting stage shows such as High School Musical - but it now seems to be back on the circuit for many touring bands.


Those who know me will not be surprised to hear that the majority of my visits have been for Hawkwind who used to play there on virtually all of their tours back in the 80s and early 90s.

In those days Hammersmith was a bit of a scruffy place - a dirty old bus station on the site of where my office building now stands.

Tonight though Liz and I were going to see Primal Scream on the London leg of their NME Rock'n'Roll Riot tour.

Before the gig we went for a few beers - most of the pubs around Hammersmith were chock full of Scream fans and office workers so we went to one of our backstreet favourites, the Old Parr's Head, which is slightly off the beaten track. A decent pint of London Pride and some very tasty Thai food set us up nicely.

(right) Careful - you'll have someone's eye out with that!

For tonight's gig I was going to get a photo pass (thanks Martin!) to allow me into the photographers pit with the professionals. On arriving at the box office I was told to wait until 9pm when all the photographers would be escorted to the pit.

On our way to said pit we had to go around the outside of the building - almost bumping into a confused-looking Bez who was stood outside looking desperate to get in - and we had about a minute to spare before the band hit the stage and launched into Kill All Hippies.

And so it was a hectic 12 mins or so as I tried a variety of lenses to capture the lightshow and animated backdrop but it's bloody hard under these lighting conditions - well it is for an amateur like me - but great fun being right there at the front with no one in front of you.

Before long our time was up and we were being ushered out into the cold. One of the photographers was complaining that is was hard to get some decent shots in this particular lightshow - so it wasn't just me! The pros then all disappeared off into the night whereas I had a ticket and went back in and joined Liz in the throng downstairs.

The rest of the gig was storming - acclaimed by long time Screamers as being the very best for many years. It's awfully hard to disagree...