Taps Richard Is Stressed Out

Today’s my last day at work until the 4^th of January and I’m currently flat out trying to finish off seven different things at once, so I’m afraid there will be no post today.

I’ll see you all at the Taps Christmas party tonight though.

[And I expect a large Jamesons and ice to be waiting for me on the bar]

The Taps Christmas Party

I love the Taps Christmas Party. I mean I really love it. After Christmas Eve I think it’s the best night of the year. Everyone dresses up and gets incredibly drunk, and well…

Well…

Hang on a minute, is that it?

Is that really it?

Everyone's drunk and it's in the pub?

Is that the only reason I like it?

And if so, how shallow am I? I mean is that really my criteria for the 2nd best night of the year. 2^nd out of 365 days?

I mean do my interests really only to extend to drinking in pubs, reading about pubs, talking about pubs, thinking about pubs and writing about pubs? (Preferably donel while actually in the pub?).

[give me a second to think about it]

Well….yes they do.

I really am that shallow. That really is all it takes to make me happy.

And you know what? I don’t care. Well I do care a bit obviously, I mean once as a callow youth I had harboured ambitions of growing up to be a refined, well-read and cultured adult, but that seems like a barely remembered passing fancy now, like that brief period when I wore baseball caps in the mid 1990’s.

But, thinking about it, you know what? I’m reasonably content to spend my time as an existential adventurer seeking out the meaning and truths to be found deep in the dark hidden heart and soul of the British pub.

[yes, that’s right I said existential adventurer]

So anyway, basically the Taps Christmas party is a night when everyone (well most people – I just come straight from work in whatever I was wearing) makes an effort to look nice and dress up….and then get completely shitfaced.

And that’s basically it.

Although, of course (as I would hope you have come to expect) there are deeper nuances to it than just that (to be found deep in the dark hidden heart and etc etc). It’s not just dressing up and getting drunk – because quite a lot of people do that on a Saturday night as it is.  

[Sidenote: I’m genuinely surprised by how many people do this. You’ll often see (mainly) women properly dressed up in the Taps on a Saturday night,and I’ll be sat there thinking, ‘well they must be just having a few drinks before they get a train/cab to London or somewhere’, but no, these people stay all night. They’ve literally got dressed up to come to the Taps. Which just seems weird when you’ve been sat there all day in a cardigan with ink stains on the sleeve and sausage roll crumbs in your beard].

It’s also that those people all like the Taps enough to pay £35 for a ticket and (in almost all cases) get a day off the next day to go to the party, which naturally means that they're reasonably decent and intelligent people.

And then there’s the fact that it’s called a party – and that one simple noun changes things immensely, because now, temperamentally speaking, people are all on the same page. Because now it’s a party – and people can’t help but act accordingly. They’re immediately nicer and friendly and everyone invariably ends up talking to random people who under normal circumstances they would never usually meet. By the end of the night there’s always some dancing and singing and presumably I mentioned the free bar?

No, well ok. Now technically it’s not really a free bar as you’ve paid £30/35 for your ticket, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t seem like one. And I’ve always taken the view that a free bar isn’t something to be enjoyed. It’s something to be taken on, fought to a standstill and then defeated in detail. The fact that it’s impossible to drink a bar dry in a pub only makes the effort all the more Quixotically noble and hopeless – and therefore deeply deeply heroic.

And I think that (though perhaps they don’t necessarily put it in those terms) lots of people look at it in that way, which explains why everyone ends up so massively drunk.

[Side note: also, they don’t have to carry loads of change in their pocket. I accept that this might be of very little marginal importance to the overall level of people’s happiness at the Christmas party, but it’s still a factor. Every Sunday morning I wake up with tons of shrapnel in my pocket. This is because by 12pm or so on Saturday night I can’t count so I just pay with a note every time I get a drink. Could I please therefore take this opportunity to ask our wonderful barstaff readers to please count my change for me when I pay? Thank you very much] 

Drunk, friendly and happy

(oh, and well dressed).

And on a strictly personal note, given that tomorrow is my last day at work until the 4^th January 2011, that only makes it all the better.  

It Was The Best of Times/It Was The Worst of Times

For many people today will be their last working day before Christmas – which, in TapsRichardland® is otherwise known as THE absolute very worst day of the year in the pub.

I think that I may have mentioned it before, but the only serious fight I’ve ever seen in Taps (this is going back 6 years or so now) was on the last working day before Christmas.  There must have been twenty five to thirty blokes involved in a mass brawl (seriously going at it) that stretched from the hatch to the door, and every single one of them was a pissed up Christmas drinker.

The reason for my antipathy towards Christmas amateur drinkers is a combination of things really. First there’s so many of them – and they’re all out from about 5:30pm – so it’s not even as though there’s a slow build up of them as you’d get on a normal Friday night.

So they’re all just there (mainly all grouped standing in front of the door for some extraordinary reason. Although, last night, upping the ante for sheer outright stupidity, two particularly bright sparks thought it would be a good idea to sit on stools right in front of the door). And then most of them are complete bloody amateurs. They don’t know how to order properly, and many of them just aren’t used to drinking and so end up completely hammered after only a few drinks, which, inevitably, leads to people acting like complete knobs and then being sick (one follows the other like the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire or a hangover after a free bar).

And then they just don’t know how to behave in a pub environment. Don’t know how to order or where to stand. Don’t know where to put their bags and their coats and aren’t aware of how they’re supposed to move past people in a crowded pub without knocking over everyone’s drinks.

They jostle and they shout and well…

Well, it is what it is I suppose. There’s no real point in me banging on about it [not that that normally stops me of course]. Even though, sitting here writing this at 2:34 in the afternoon, I know exactly what it’s going to be like when I get there, I suppose I have to bear in mind that this sort of thing only happens on a couple of odd nights a year.

Of course, no matter how equanimical I try to be about all of this, I’d have to be made of iron and stone not to begrudge them ruining the pub at least a little bit.

I suppose that the best way to look at amateur drinkers is in the same way that people who work in central London look at tourists when they just stop dead in the middle of the pavement for absolutely no reason at all, or when they insist on standing on the left hand side of the escalator. All you can really do is take a deep breath and remind yourself that they don’t know any better.  They’re not doing it on purpose and all they’re really doing is enjoying a new experience in an unfamilair environment.

Of course, that isn’t to say that if someone takes my stool there won’t be bloodshed.

[by bloodshed I mean I’ll get in a huff and go to the Kings Head]

I am, after all, only human.

Things that made me laugh #4

Charlie told me about this, so again, I can’t say that I saw it myself, but it did make me laugh when I heard it.

Charlie was in the George on Friday for his sister’s birthday when someone from Taps (I think it was Eugene), shouted at him: ‘It’s the Taps Boy.’

Which was then taken up by George and Finbar shouting: ‘Taps Boy! Taps Boy!’

Until everyone they were drinking with and even the people around them (who would have no idea who Charlie was and had probably never even been in Taps) all started pointing at him and laughing and chanting ‘Taps Boy! Taps Boy! Taps Boy!’

The Train

I got to the train station this morning and somebody was sitting in my seat.

Which is bad enough, and often enough to make me get off the train in a fit of disgust and wait for the next one (which is only ten minutes later), but I had to be in for a meeting this morning.

But worse, that person was Sean, and he knows that's my seat.

He knows.

[Sean and I often see one another on the train in the morning, but we have a kind of tacit understanding that we won't acknoweledge the other until we actually reach Liverpool St]

So I had to sit in a random seat.

And worse even than that, some completely mental Eastern European bloke got on at Edmonton and sat right next to me and insisted on talking to me all the way to Cambridge Heath.

Every time a train passed ours he'd smack me on the arm, get half up in his seat and say to me, 'Motherfucker, that's trains going faster!'

And I'd nod and agree that indeed that train was going faster than ours. 

Five times that happened.

Five. Times.

Quit Your Jibber Jabber

There are probably scores of copyright laws and Local Authority licensing ordnances which this would break to do so, but [just as a Taps Richard flight of fancy] I’ve always thought that pubs should show television programmes and films during the evening or on a Saturday/Sunday afternoon on those evenings/days when there’s no [credible] sport on.

Before Irena was assistant manager, Joe, her predecessor had the job, and at that time Mondays were always film night. Now, Mondays are quiet enough these days – but in those days they were even quieter and it would often just be Joe, myself and maybe one or two other regulars in, so at around 10pm Joe would just flick through the Sky Movies channel and find something that we all agreed on (which often took some doing) and we’d settle down and watch it.

This went on every Monday night for ages, until Prison Break started and Monday Night stopped being film night and became Prison Break night instead.

Which was great. Everyone was a little bit drunk and we’d all sit around talking and joking about what was going on, how stupid their plans were and speculated on what would happen next week.

It was great, because it would be the same people every week and we’d all look forward to Monday to see what happened next.

And I think that [not necessarily watching a serial in that way – although I do think that would be good] would work brilliantly in Taps. I mean, really, what’s the point of putting sport on just for the sake of it? Nobody wants to watch the replay of Saturday’s match for the fifth time, or Ice Hockey or NASCAR or American college basketball.

It’s just pointless.

So instead how great would it be just to put on some seriously cheesy/classic eighties television like the A Team, Knight Rider, or Magnum PI, or films like Karate Kid, Top Gun and Back to the Future? Everyone would absolutely love it. I guarantee you that there isn’t a bloke alive over the age of 26 or so who could walk out of a pub while Karate Kid was on.

[Put him in a body bag heheheheh…]

And come the climatic tournament itself every single person in the pub would be watching it, cheering and joking and quoting along to the lines.

The same goes for any number of classic eighties films. Put them on in the pub on a weeknight or Saturday afternoon and you’ve got a captive audience for hours.

What right thinking bloke would even dream – or hell – even be physically capable of dragging themselves out of the pub while Rocky was running up a mountain, Maverick communicating while in an inverted 4-G negative dive or Jack Burton [it’s all in the reflexes] was picking up a Chinese girl from the airport?

Honestly, they just couldn’t do it. It’s so hardwired into their cultural DNA that they would literally HAVE to stay until the end of the film.

Now throw alcohol into the mix and you can keep everyone happy for hours on end.

Of course that’s just the best case scenario. Just putting on Eastenders or Corrie or Emmerdale would be a laugh. Everyone would still sit around and laugh at the dialogue and critique the story and make bets on what was going to happen next around. Because even now some of the best parts of watching the football in Taps is half time when we laugh at the foreign adverts.

What I mean then is that the television would function in much the same way as the Crossword does. i.e. just another prop around which an evening is built.

I pity the fool who doesn’t agree with my idea.

Regulars Have Superpowers

All of us [the regulars] have been drinking in pubs for a number of years (and obviously the staff and quite a few of the regulars have the added experience of having both worked and drank in pubs for a long time), and that long experience gradually brings with it the ability to tell a Wrong ‘Un within a matter of a couple of seconds.

[Wrong ‘Un – noun, definition: bad or potentially deviant person: somebody regarded as having a bad character or deviant/criminal tendencies]

As soon as that person comes in you can tell. Conversations falter for a moment and glances are silently exchanged as everyone realises at the exact same moment that that person is a horrible bastard.

You can just tell.

There’s a certain ‘I’ve taken loads of drugs in my life and have been in lots of fights, and now I’m going to be an obnoxious cunt all evening’ look to their faces which everyone immediately recognises.

You can tell that look. It’s cruel and hard and ever so slightly glazed. Sometimes their features are slack from years of drug and/or alcohol abuse (although not always), but what is always present is a certain belligerent bristling which emanates from them like an attack dog with its hackles up.

You can tell the moment it happens because everyone goes quiet for a bit, while they evaluate how drunk, big, horrible, loud, and dangerous the person is and the implications for the evening which all of those factors entail.

And I was just thinking what a terrible thing that is.

Not the fact that people make snap judgements like that in the first place, because no matter what your mum says about not judging books by their covers, there’s nothing wrong with doing so. In fact it’s a millennia old defence mechanism. What is wrong, however, is when you treat people differently simply based on how they look. Although frankly, when it comes to my own personal safety, I maintain the right to treat someone who looks like a wrong ‘un with a good deal of circumspection until they prove otherwise.

What I think is terrible is that there are people out there who the moment they walk into a room people know that they’re a Wrong ‘Un. The very second. What must that be like? I mean imagine it. Imagine being such a wrong ‘un that you don’t even need to do or say anything for people to immediately know there’s something wrong with you.

I was outside smoking on Thursday night talking to Gary and there was this random bloke out there who I could immediately tell wanted to join in the conversation, and just looking at him, without him even opening his mouth, I could tell that he was a wrong ‘un. I absolutely knew that the very first thing that came out of his mouth would be an absolute load of total bollocks.

I knew it, and Gary knew it. Without the bloke even saying a word.

And when he did open his mouth? A total bloody Wrong ‘Un who spent the next five minutes telling us some ridiculously implausible story about the safe he’s got hidden in his wall which he’s plastered over and keeps 20 grand in at all times in case he needs to do a runner from the all the people he’s got after him.

I mean, how unbelievably shit of a person must you be that people know you’re a scumbag just by looking at you? What must it be like to go through life like that? I mean was there a definite point when the transformation took place or was it a gradual barely perceptible thing?

And before anyone starts on about how I’m unfairly stereotyping people based on how they look, just remember this is nothing to do with someone’s clothes or hair, or accent or tattoos or piecings or colour. I spent many happy years drinking in the Enfield Arms where people of every sort (and you had to have experienced it to really understand what I mean) got along with one another based solely on whether people were decent or not. That was the criteria.

I’m talking about an attitude of belligerence and air of scumbagness that floats around them like perfume. That reeks and pervades the pub until everyone is on edge; wary and watchful.

I wonder if it’s something a bit like the Queen and that old aphorism regarding how she must think that the world smells of fresh paint.

That is, that he goes into a pub and thinks to himself, ‘whoa, bit of a dodgy atmosphere in here tonight!’

Things That Made Me Laugh #3

Booker loudly and plaintively wailing, at just exactly the same moment that a random couple walked through the door, “But why’s mine so small and everyone else’s so big?”

[He was of course commenting on the relative size of his Christmas card rather than anything else].

That made me laugh.

Sorry

Now I know that sometimes I can be a bit of a grumpy [judgemental, intolerant, insular, parochial] old bugger, and that my last post might be rightly construed as being ever so slightly over the top. [I mean ‘human faeces’ really Taps Richard, really?]

And so I thought about it over the weekend and I was half tempted to edit it or even take it down entirely, but I was speaking to Casey about it on Saturday and she was of the opinion that irrespective of whether it was right or wrong there was at least some artistic value/integrity in maintaining an honesty of voice (or something like that – I was very drunk at the time).

So that being the case, rather then editing or removing the last post, I thought I’d try and go some way to explaining it. Not by way of mitigation you understand, but simply in explanation.

I suppose that when it comes down to it there’s something both quite childish and selfish to my views on random scummers. In fact there’s something quite childish and selfish in some of my characterisations of people as scummers. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are quite a few genuine scumbags around, but in all honesty most of the time the people I’m talking about are just idiots. They’re young and annoying and ever so slightly gauche (in the context of the Taps setting), and just don’t really understand how pubs work, having grown up in a society where they’re becoming less and less prevalent.

So what I’m really just saying is that basically I just don’t like them. That they and I have very different views of life and pubs and probably most all other things. Their idea of what’s fun is something very different from mine.

By which I hope you understand that I realise that the problem is my unreasonable and arbitrary prejudices and expectations, as much as it is their behaviour. I’m just intolerant and selfish.

I get it. It’s a fault, and maybe I might even try and work on that failing one day.

[but I wouldn’t hold your breath]

And then there’s the slightly childish explanation – and I think that this is one that many of us share – and that narrative goes a little something like this: the Taps is ours. It’s our little private social club, and we don’t like people coming in and fucking it all up.

Because we’re the ones who put in the hard yards . Who are there day after day, week after week, and year after year.

And you can’t help but think to yourself, ‘who the hell are you to come in to our pub and mess it up just when we’ve got it all nice?’

Who are you to bump into me like that? To drown out my conversation with your vapid braying noise. Who are you to spill your drinks and block the doorway? Who are you to spit on the stairs and to leave your glass in the urinal? Who are you to speak to the bar staff like that? Who are you to sit on Barry’s stool and in the regulars’ corner?

Just who the fuck are you?

And the answer? Well the answer is that who they are is probably mainly just regular decent people who work the longest hours of any country in Western Europe. Who have all manner of stress and worries in their lives and who at the weekend or on a Thursday night just want to have a laugh in a nice pub.

It's probably an unsolvable issue. But I do think that when you put it in the above context they've probably got more right to feel aggrieved (should they ever know of it) by my scorn and intemperance than ever I do by their behaviour.

You Know What The Problem With People Is? People.

I don’t necessarily know how it’s happened but it seems that apparently Taps is now the place to be on a Thursday night for the good and worthy citizens of Enfield.

Now, as I’ve always said, Thursdays are always the best nights in Taps – or that is to say, Thursdays always were the best nights in Taps.

I say were because people spoil everything. Even the nice ones. And you know why? Because the nice ones bring the scummy ones. It’s just the way of the world. A universal truism: once something’s nice it’s only a matter of time before people turn up to ruin it.

That’s the problem with people. People spoil everything.

I don’t know what the catalyst for it was but over the last 7 or 8 months more and more young people have been coming to the Taps on a Thursday as a specific night out. By which I mean planning for and dressing up for it.

Now, I can’t say I particularly understand why youthful people with a whole range of exciting options open to them only a train/bus ride away in London would want to do that, but somehow it’s happened for all that anyway.

[Perhaps someone else can explain the reasoning for this to me because I’m at a loss]

And on the whole, those people were mainly nice decent people. Which makes sense. Nice people discover that a place is nice on a particular night and they want to keep going back. And they tell their friends about it and their friends go as well. And soon you have a lot of nice people going to the Taps on a Thursday night.

Now, Ok fine. It’s true that I can’t, in any honesty, say I’m that happy about it, but as I’ve said before, you’ve got to be realistic about these things, and as long as they don’t take my stool [which they do], don’t try and join in the crossword without invitation [which they do], don’t try and talk to me [which they do], I can [just about] live with it.

But, and there’s always a but, then the scummy people find out about it. They find out that all the nice people are going somewhere else on a Thursday night and they want to get in on the act as well.

Why do they this? Well I’m not sure really.

I suspect though it’s that scummy people don’t actually realise they’re scum.  It’s like unknowingly trampling dogshit around someone’s house, only they’re the human faeces and they don’t know it.

They don’t realise they’re scum. They think that they, with their ridiculous walks, their bad manners, their stupid hair and their pitiful attitudes, are actually adding to the overall marginal utility of happiness  of the pub.

They think they’re normal. In fact, they think that everyone else should be happy they’re there because they’re so funny and cool.

[Hey, look everybody, the human dogshits are here!]

That must be it. They think they’re regular decent members of society.

I mean if you knew you were scum, wouldn’t you think to yourself, ‘hang on, I’m a bit of a scummer aren’t I, so maybe I should just stay in the George and then go to Ratlers with the other scummers, and that way I won’t spoil it for all the nice people. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do tonight. Maybe I’ll have a fight outside of Tubby’s before I go home as well if I’ve got time. I mean that would be nice, but I’d better wait and see before deciding anything definite.’

But not knowing they’re scum, they don’t think that. Or maybe it’s precisely because they’re scum they can’t think like that. Just the very idea of taking the time to consider how their actions impact on other people just an entirely foreign concept to them.

And then there’s the alternative view, and this is one my brother forwards. Maybe they both know that they’re scum and enjoy reducing the overall marginal utility of happiness.

That is, it pleases them to annoy, anger and irritate other people.

Well, whatever the explanation. I don’t like it. Eventually we’ll reach a scum critical mass and the nice people will have to leave to find somewhere else nice, and then we’ll be stuck with the scum for months on end before they clock on to what’s happened and go off to ruin somewhere else.

I think that for me then, at least in the immediate future, Thursdays will become Kings Head night.

The Crossword

"It is one of man's curious idiosyncracies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them." - Joseph de Maistre

In Taps we love our crosswords….well…I should more accurately say that in Taps many of us love our crosswords. The corollary of which naturally being that in Taps some people hate the crossword.

And they hate it for the reason that we love it. Because it consumes our attention and our time, such that we neglect their conversation and, as a result, their feelings.

This bothers some people more than others (Irena and Gerry for instance).

Unfortunately for them though is the fact that a good crossword should be something of a struggle. It should be difficult and devious. It should be obscure and subtle. It should, above all, be hard.

There’s no fun in just whizzing through filling everything in [Jade] – you might as well just be writing out your shopping list if you do that.

The fun comes in the puzzle. In looking at it from every angle. In breaking it down into its composite parts. In deciphering the cryptic clue. In reevaluating your previous answers. In ransacking your memory for meanings and definitions, and then – and only then – getting it.

That moment of epiphany when you get it.

That House eureka moment when it suddenly comes to you. That brief moment when for a second you feel like a bloody genius.

Of course, in the Taps, the crossword is more than just a personal mental challenge, because in the Taps crosswords are communal. They form the centerpiece around which conversations revolve. We can spend an evening puzzling over a crossword together – sometimes giving it all of our concentration and focus, and sometimes only half a mind while we talk about our desert Island food and whether if a secret passageway were to appear in the Taps we would go down or not.

So, in that sense, the crossword is something of a prop. A familiar contrivance around which evenings are sometimes built, as well as being valued in themselves just for the enjoyment they give.

Or at least that’s my take on it anyway.

Anyway, Hate the White Spaces, yo.

First Draft Rules

I present these as a draft for further discussion just based on some preliminary brainstorming.

That being the case, these are all up for review, expansion, negotiation and mediation.

They’re also not in any particular order.

1. Bar Stools are for sitting on. They are not for your coat or your handbag or your shopping.[1]

2. When you order your drink, always say please and thank (or some variation thereon) to the bar staff.

3. Don’t put your money on the bar. Put it in the bar staff’s hand.[2]

4. Do not tell someone the answer to a crossword clue without first asking their permission.

5. Don’t try and push in at the bar. You know who was waiting before you.

6. Anyone caught spitting on the stairs or anywhere else in the premises will be thrown down said stairs and water boarded in the toilet.[3]

7. If you see a paper, an unfinished pint, a pen, a pack of cigarettes, change and a phone in front of a bar stool, it means that bar stool is occupied. Do not take it away and sit on it.

8. If you are ordering a round, order your Guinness first, not at the end.

---

[1] I suppose that exceptionally, it’s reasonable to put your coat/bag on a stool when the pub is empty, but as soon as there are less than 3 stools left, you must remove them.

[2] If you let the bar staff know that you leaving the money on the bar because you’re going out for a cigarette or are popping down to the loo, that’s alright.

[3] This isn’t a joke. Whoever it is doing that, just fucking stop it. It’s disgusting. You are an animal.

Why Would You Do That #3

Daryl told me about this, so I can’t say I personally witnessed it, though I don’t doubt that it happened exactly as he said. And so I ask: Why would you do that?

Daryl went out for a cigarette on Saturday during the day, leaving his pint (with his pack of fags on the top as he always does) and his paper open on the bar in front of his stool, only to come back to find not that someone had taken his stool away (which would be bad enough), but some bloke sitting on his stool and happily reading Daryl’s paper.

Daryl comes back in and looks at him completely dumbfounded and goes, ‘How’s my paper and pint?’

Only for the guy to put the paper down and get up in a huff and move up the bar.

Just where in the hell are these people coming from?

Never Say Never Again

Well then, I finally made it over to the Kings Head on Saturday.

I certainly hadn’t intended to go, but I got to Taps at 2 as usual, only to be told by Gareth (who was none to pleased about it himself) that they didn’t have the rugby.

I called Brodie and she said the Kings Head did have it on – so, after a certain amount of umming and ahhing (that’s really quite difficult to spell), I eventually decided that while the Taps was lovely and quiet and warm, that I just really couldn’t miss the titantic forwards battle that England/the ‘Boks promised to be (and I wasn’t disappointed – well I was disappointed with the result - but it was a magnificently bruising, ferocious physical encounter marked by total commitment in both defence and attack. Matt Steven – the England forward banned for taking cocaine, once likened playing an international game of rugby to being in two car crashes, and watching the players come off on Saturday you can believe it), so I went over the road.

And I have to say I really liked it over there. It’s a pub pub. A real pub. Victorian and distinguished but also paired back, comfortable and welcoming like all good pubs should be. I especially like the way that it’s broken up into distinct areas. I watched the game round the back in the small little slightly raised room, with a group of like minded random rugby people, while everyone in the front bar watched the football. Equally, there’s the entire back room (where the boat is – which I think it totally brilliant by the way), which has the huge T.V on the wall and had the football on during the ruby, but then showed the Wales/All Blacks game afterwards (where one Welsh woman in particular was going completely bloody mental).

Which I think illustrates how there’s a space for everyone in there (even mental Welsh women).

Afterwards I moved around to the other side of the pub with Brodie next to the tea/coffee machine (which is where I think I’ll definitely be sitting whenever I go over). I have to say that I liked the Kings Head a lot. There was a pretty decent crowd in. More couples and shoppers than we ever get in Taps on a Saturday and far more rugby types than we get in Taps [in fact the crowd in there was one that I mainly didn’t recognise. I suspect that a lot of them might be from the Stag. And while the likes of Matt, Alice, Murray and Rebecca have come from the Taps, it seems to be as though they’re carving out their own bunch of regulars – and therefore its own identity].  It was nice and I think will certainly come into its own over the Christmas period.

So, as I say, I liked it, and I will go back.

Anyway, after a while I said my goodbyes and went back to Taps for the second half of the Wales/All Blacks game – and…well, here’s why the Taps will always be H.Q for me. I got back and apart from one random bloke sat at the bar, there were only regulars there.

Gareth was watching the game/doing the crossword with Daryl and Jim, and Mark, Len and Den and Skiddy were sat at a table being well…what that lot normally are.

(A bit mental)

So we shouted at the rugby for a fleeting brief time while when it seemed like the Welsh might improbably pull ahead, and then chatted until the end of the game, at which point Len, Dan and Mark decided that they would have a bit of dance (at 7:30 in the evening with barely any music on), and well we all just had a laugh.

And that’s the Taps. That’s what makes it:  – the immediacy of comradeship. The abstract lunacy and impromptu whimsy. Knowing everyone and them knowing you. The cosiness and homogeneity of a small pub on a cold day (where the Kings Head is larger and more fragmented).

After a while Dan and his sister (who was celebrating her engagement) came over to the Taps (and isn’t there something slightly telling about the fact that they came to drink there rather stay in the Kings Head?), and from there the evening proceeded as Saturdays do.

i.e. a blur.

The Kings Head

I have to admit that I haven’t made it over to the Kings Head yet. Which is by no means due to any sort of protest or point of principle (well maybe a little bit of a point of principle – in that I may have – subconsciously – wanted to be the last person to go – which I am now) on my part as some people have erroneously speculated.

I’ve known Brodie for a long time and I wish her and the Kings Head nothing but success, but here’s the thing, and the only thing: I just don’t want to go.

All things considered, I just can’t think of a single reason to go which trumps the enjoyment I get from Taps.

All I want to do is sit down at the bar in Taps and have a chat and do the crossword.

And that’s it.

I have absolutely no desire to go somewhere different. To sit (or God forbid stand) at a strange bar, being served by strangers, and be surrounded by random non Taps people.

Just don’t want to do it.

I will go soon I’m sure, and to do so I’ll take a day off work to go.  That way I won’t spend the whole time thinking: I wish I was at Taps, because if I wasn’t there I’d be at work anyway (where I definitely wouldn’t want to be). And that way I’ll be able to fully enjoy myself.

It will be nice to spend the day at a rejuvenated Kings Head, and I’m sure it will be fun. But at the moment the equation for me is a simple one.

Taps = somewhere I’ll enjoy

Kings Head = somewhere I’ll enjoy less

And the smaller component parts of the equation break down in the same way:

Don’t I want to see what it looks like?

Not more than going to Taps.

Don’t I want to go and see if any of the old Enfield Arms crowd are in there?

Not more than going to Taps.

Don’t I want to try the different beer?

Not more than going to Taps

Don’t I want to try a change from the same routine?

Not more than going to Taps

Wouldn’t I enjoy going somewhere different?

Not more than going to Taps (although actually the answer to that is just no, not even a little bit)

See what I mean? So all that being the case, why would I go to the Kings Head? I’m not for a moment saying it doesn’t make me weird. I’m just explaining the reason.

Wish You Were Here

Sometimes you get those random nights when you really, really just want to stay.

But you can’t because you’re the stupid bugger who has to get up to go to work the next day at some ungodly hour, while everyone else is living the high life, high fiving and drinking shots and other such irritating obnoxious behaviour (to the poor bedraggled bugger who has to go to work that is).

As I’ve said before, Thursday is the best night in Taps (as long as the scum stay away – which last night they did). Best atmosphere and best crowd. But sometimes – and this is an interesting paradox – sometimes it can be too good.

I got in around 7 as usual and knocked off the Mail crossword with Daryl and Casey (who apparently wasn’t staying long), and then unsuccessfully had a go at the Guardian Cryptic at Casey’s hubristic instigation (sometime during which Daryl left – fleeing the field of battle – discretion being the better part of valour and all that). Eventually (and in humiliation) we gave up on the Guardian, and instead communally (with sometime support from Irena, Fran and John) did the Evening Standard – which, for some reason, turned out to be unreasonably tough yesterday.

Now to many people I have no doubt that this sounds incredibly boring, but to me this is a perfect evening. 

At some point during the evening Irena decided that she would be drinking that night as well, and then Jade and Gareth came back from the George/Kings Head – and Casey sang a bit – and somehow managed to drag Gareth up (Gareth who can sing, but who chooses not to because he’s to cool for all that) and all in all, it was a really nice night.

When I left, Jade, Irena and Casey were sat at the bar, and I knew that my brother and cousin would shortly be coming back from the Kings Head (no doubt completely trashed), and I was in absolutely no doubt that everyone was going to continue to have a good time for some hours yet.

In fact probably even a better time now that I was going [This is because I'm convinced that everytime I leave a room everyone always says - and I mean literally and out loud - ‘God, I’m glad he’s gone.’ Convinced of it]

And I so wanted to stay.

But I couldn’t.

Because I was the stupid bugger who had to go to work the next day.

“The Taps is a pretty depressing, marginally unfriendly shop-conversion Irish pub - the kind of place you can only see inside properly through the door when someone is entering or leaving. It might pick up on weekends, but on the basis of our midweek visit, leave it for the locals who like shop-conversion Irish pubs.”

                                                             ----  Fancyapint.com

What makes a pub then? Because it’s not just the building. It can’t possibly just be that, because if it were we’d be in some trouble, since there’s certainly no doubting that she’s not much to look at from the outside – and what she looks like from the outside is what she is: a shop conversion Irish pub.

Inside – well, it’s not overly inspiring, but it is cozy. A long bar, wooden floors, stone work and fireplace. Plasmas dotted around, row of draught pumps, fridges for the bottles and shelves for the spirits. It’s certainly not the Princess Louise in Holborn that’s for sure, but then where is.

(Or - say it quietly - the Kings Head in the Enfield Town Market Place, for that matter).

What she is however, is what she is. And that for damn sure isn’t the building. For if it were...well, I just covered that.

What the Taps is...what the Taps is....well, try it is this way: the Taps is the place where Brodie and Dan had their leaving drink when they went travelling around the world; and it’s the place where they celebrated their return. The Taps is half a dozen Christmas Eves shared and New Years seen in. The Taps is Christmas Parties until 6 in the morning, and impromptu, uncalled for, regretted lock-ins on a hundred School nights. The Taps is where I drank (and drank) for weeks after my mum died. The Taps is England football World Cup elation and misery shared; the Ashes won, Liverpool coming back from 3 nil down to win the European Cup, Spurs coming back from 2 nil down to banish a 17yr curse against Arsenal, Tom Watson almost banishing his age to win the Open. The Taps is the Lions coming oh so close in 2008, 3-1 against Internationale Milan. It's Nadal/Federer, Mayweather/Hatton.

The Taps is watching Sky News together in silence on July 7^th 2005.

The Taps is a thousand crosswords puzzled over with friends. The Thesaurus checked, the internet scoured. The Taps is a hundred arguments, tens of fallings out, scores of friends made, innumerable ridiculous jokes told and a hundred lock-ins just for the hell of it. The Taps is books borrowed and DVDs lent.

The Taps is promotions celebrated, break-ups gotten over and break-ups caused, happiness shared and private misery endured. The Taps is long honest, conversations about life and love and politics and morality over too many drinks and at too late an hour, while it silently snows outside.

The Taps is friendship and the people.

The Taps is Jade and Charlotte, Len and Dan, Matt and Alice, Daryl and Judy. The Taps is Booker, my brother, Adam, Cooper, Gareth, Casey, Jim, Irena, Pete, Gus, Michelle, Fran, Deon…the Taps is too many people to say. The Taps is all of those people. Their laughter, their anger, their jokes and their stories. It's their bad days and their good days. Their advice and their stresses. Their pride in their kids and their fears for their jobs.

The Taps….well, apparently the Taps is a pretty depressing, marginally unfriendly shop-conversion Irish pub. The kind of place you can only see inside through the door properly when someone is entering or leaving.

And if you believe that I'll tell you another.

I'm Back, Jack.

Whew – well I’m back; and what an absolutely, completely, God awful couple of weeks I’ve had at work (most of you already know this because I’ve spent the last two weeks complaining to you about it every night – for which comfort and sympathy I have received you have my thanks – apart from Irena who doesn’t know what comfort and sympathy is, but has a vague idea that it might have been written by Jane Austen).

So I thought that I’d just give you a run down on some of the things which I would have blogged about if I’d had the time.

And again, my sincere apologies for my slackness and forgive me if I miss anything.

1. Jade doing Irena’s hair on Tuesday night behind the bar. It made me smile. There was a wonderful warm easy familiarity to the scene.

Gerry, Pete and Dave, barely batting an eyelid at the sight, were sat up in the regulars corner and Irena was sitting on a stool behind the bar down near the hatch while Jade did her hair, and they happily chatted away while Jade kept half an eye on the bar.

[I didn’t understand why Jade was using ‘straighteners’ to curl Irena’s hair though. I don’t think she was using them correctly]

What I particularly liked about it wasn’t that it was odd or strange or unusual (though there’s no doubting that literally speaking, it was), what I liked about it was that it seemed completely right for all that it was unprecedented and (probably against several licensing laws).

2. The Saturday before last being one of those perfect Saturday afternoons that I value so much. Irena was working, and as has been the case over the last few weeks, many of the regulars had cleared off to the Kings Head. So I settled in for a pleasant afternoon of watching the rugby in relative peace, but as with all such well laid plans that never came to fruition as the rugby was on the same box as the Spurs game…

So I settled instead for watching the Wales game and trying to see if I could see Gareth in the crowd (who had gone to the Millennium with his dad to be all Welsh and sing about Bread and Heaven). In the end the Wales/South Africa match turned out to be a cracking game and I spent the time trying to explain the rules of the game to Irena (who I suspect was being deliberately annoying by refusing to understand even the most basic principles).

We were joined for most of that time by a slightly odd crowd of blokes (by which I just mean that the make up of the group and the dynamics of who was friends with whom in the group was slightly strange) who were out on a joint birthday/wetting the baby's head type affair (i.e. the same bloke who’s birthday it was, had also just had a kid), who were quite loud and slightly annoying, but ultimately harmless and intermittently amusing in their running banter and commentary on the football.

[On a side note, I should point out that I really don’t like large crowds of ‘event drinkers’ (that is to say people who are out during the day for a stag or a birthday or a going away party etc) – hell, I suspect that none of us do. Especially on a quiet Saturday afternoon; but you normally get two sets of those crowds: those who are completely obnoxious and those who are fairly amusing. And the choice of which one of those they are is completely and absolutely within their own gift to make. 

There’s no getting around the fact that they’re going to be annoying to some degree or another. That’s a given. Any random large groups of boisterous blokes – as it usually is – is going to be fairly annoying in a small regulars pub on a Saturday afternoon (and genuinely, even grumpy cumudgeon that I am, I don't begrudge them their rowdiness. They're out for a big day with their mates celebrating something important to them in a pub. They should be a bit loud and drunk and boisterous. It just is what it is), but there are things that can be done to mitigate against that annoyance factor. For instance: Don’t shout for no good reason. If someone says something funny then by all means laugh. But laugh or shout for a reason, not just because there’s loads of you and you know that you’re too intimidating a group for anyone to say anything.

Basically, don’t ruin it for everyone else just because you can.

Equally, fine, you’re out having a laugh with your mates, you’re drunk and celebrating, you’re going to have a bit of banter with the girls behind the bar – but don’t be creepy about it. 

Basically, just be nice. Be nice and funny and decent. When you leave, you want to be the people about whom people smile and shake their heads in rueful relief, not the people about whom people spit, ‘what a bunch of total cunts.’]

[This isn't a bad general life lesson]

[One day I even hope to learn it]

After a while Casey, who had, apparently, been at a baby shower turned up and we started on the crosswords. Irena stopped for a drink after work as well, and then my brother turned up, and Adam and Jim, until eventually the whole regulars corner was very drunk (as it should be on a Saturday. – There’s something really quite wonderful about the regulars corner around 11pm on a Saturday night.
It’s like its own little world hermetically cocooned off from the ridiculous scum who routinely fill the pub on a Saturday night. A world filled with people who have been drinking all day and who's eyes are barely focused and who's words barely articulated, but inhabited by the comradship and friendship of those who crew the HMS Taps through the sometimes chopping seas of the long quiet week) and all was well with the world.

That was a nice day.

3. Last Saturday for  the Spurs/Arsenal game

I have to say that I didn’t enjoy this Saturday as much as I did the last. And that’s mainly because by the late evening there was a slightly fraught atmosphere in the air which I haven’t sensed for a long time. I think that atmosphere was mainly due to the fact that most people had been drinking from 12:45 and that those people were then evenly divided between those who were ecstatic and those who were depressed. This was exacerbated by the fact that the cause of half of those people’s ecstasy was also the same cause for the other half’s depression.

All of which, by 7:30 or so led to the kind of atmosphere that you used to sometimes get in town when England were playing in the World Cup ten or so years ago.

Nothing happened and I really am only talking about the whiff or something potentially unpleasant, but it was there and I didn’t particularly like it.

Really, my main problem with Saturday was that everyone was a lot drunker than I was. First I got in at 2:30, when most people had started at 12:30, and then I was drinking slowly because I was far more hungover than I usually am (I’d finished early on Friday and got to the pub by 3:30, full intending to leave at 9:00 or so, but staying until 11pm).  So by 9 o’clock when I was nicely drunk, everyone else in the pub was totally paralytic.

Daryl told me the same story about arranging to tape Match of the Day at least 3 times (in – honestly – 3 minutes) and was rather loudly (I assume he thought he was speaking normally) discussing somebody, in not entirely complimentary terms, who was sitting right next to me, i.e also right next to Daryl.

Which is not even to start on Adam introducing everyone to his lunatic friend from Bush Hill Park.

However, it was still a nice day. Jo-Jo (who’s started working at the Kings Head) and John came in for a few drinks, and we had the sound on for the rugby for the first in the Autumn Internationals. Gareth was out for mainly the whole day (with only a few hours at the Kings Head and George) which was – I think – the first time that Gareth has ever done the all dayer on a Saturday purely as a customer rather than working the day shift and then staying to drink.

----------

Now, there were undoubtedly many other things – notably Holly’s leaving drinks – which I could write about (although there’s nothing to stop Jade from doing so – in fact it would seem completely appropriate for her to do the honours), but I realise that this post is growing to unwieldy lengths and I’m starting to ramble all over the place.

I’ll only say that if I’ve missed anything which should have been included just let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

On a general note though, regarding the pub as a whole, it’s been my impression that while the Kings Head has certainly (and understandably) had quite a large initial impact on the Taps, things are now slowly starting to stabilise, and a clearer picture of the future is emerging.

And while we’ve certainly lost some good folk for good, many have stayed, while it also seems that the majority of people have chosen to divide their (with varying eveness depending on their preferences and loyalties) time between the two. Which I think is an arrangement that can and will work to everyone's benefit.

Anyway, whatever else happens, you can always count on finding me at the bar.