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.

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[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.

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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.

Apologies

I will blog soon - I'm just snowed under at work at the moment.

I'll try and get one of our [currently mute] other authors to post something though.

Opening Nights

I haven’t been in myself yet, but the feedback I’ve heard so far vis a vis the Kings Head has been mainly positive, and judging by the number of people who went back for a return visit on Thursday night for the grand opening (following the private opening on Wednesday), they also must have been at least fairly impressed.

When I got to Taps on Thursday evening there wasn’t a single regular in the place – hell, there wasn’t a single person in the place at all apart from myself and Jade (although, Gareth, Daryl, Adam and Gerry turned up soon thereafter – as well as Casey who was on to work after Jade).

Which was very odd. I’ve never seen the Taps completely empty at half six on a weekday night in all my years drinking there; which I think means that we can definitely take it that the ex-Kings Head crowd, Matt and Alice, Tom, Sean, Terry, Barry, Derek, Rebecca, Murray etc have all decamped en mass – which is completely understandable (and also a shame as they were/are a bunch of really nice people), who, I've no doubt, we’ll all miss.

While Gerry only had a couple in the Taps before popping back to the Kings Head where Dave and Pete were.

It’s clearly too early to extrapolate anything too certain from one Thursday evening, but there are clear indications that the Kings Head might well go some way to appropriating the bulk of the regulars from the Taps.

Now, as you know Thursdays are generally one of my favourite nights in the Taps (except for on those nights which I’ve previously documented – and last night was one of those nights, which, as always, meant that the place was filled with 20yr old baboons).

Something which I’m sure you’ll agree I generally endure with gracefully stoicism (if graceful stoicism was a euphemism for a graceless whinny huff), but last night I really couldn’t stop myself from thinking: screw this, I’m going to the Kings Head.

But ever the whisper in my heart: Taps Faithful, Richard, Taps Faithful, restrained me.

Though for how long I wonder?

[What was interesting to note though was that Tommy, Dan and Len, and Skiddy (I don’t know why they call him Skiddy – and frankly I’m not that anxious to find out) all came back over from the Kings Head because they preferred the Taps].

Rules of the Taps #1

A few years ago on a long Saturday afternoon (when else?), a few of us had a bash at drawing up some Rules of the Taps -  and which, when I’ve got a bit more time I’ll try  and revive, but in the meantime let’s try and piecemeal compile a list until such a time as we can collate them all more fully.

So, for example, saying please and thank you is an established rule. Likewise not waving your money around when trying to get served.

But, for me, here’s the basic, fundamental rule of the Taps:

Don’t act like a twat.

That’s it.

For instance, don’t come into a quiet pub at 10 o’clock at night when three or four people are gathered around the bar having a chat, and start shouting and capering like a bunch of drunken baboons.

Instead, try and follow this simple rule: act accordingly.

And that, also, is it.

So, for example, if you go to a pub on a Friday night and people are shouting and capering like baboons then by all means feel free to join in, but if you go into a pub on a Wednesday night and people are quietly talking, don’t start shouting and capering like a baboon.

It’s a simple enough rule isn’t it?

Personally I can’t really see any reason to shout and swear and guffaw like a horse faced, slack jawed, goon, but if that’s your cup of tea, go somewhere where other people are doing the same.

i.e, act accordingly.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

So then, the big day is finally here. The paint has dried, the floor has been varnished, the beer bought and the brass buffed and shone. We have our invitations in our pockets and we’re all off to the Kings Head Private Opening Party tonight, and then the Grand Opening tomorrow.

That being the case, now is probably an appropriate moment to stop and consider what the opening of the Kings Head might mean for the Taps and her regulars.

There seem to me to be several scenarios.

I suppose that the worst case scenario is one in which the Kings Head super pub hunts, kills and eats the plucky little Taps small regular’s pub. And let’s be fair – it’s not an unreasonable concern. I mean we know that it will have a good manager in place who certainly knows what she’s about (and who we all already like and know). We know that it will have a wider range of interesting beers on and (according to all the reports I’ve heard) that the place is looking good. We know that (apparently) the bar stools are wonderful oak and leather creations (complete with backrests), and we know that due to the slightly higher prices (and the range of drinks on) that it should attract the older more civilised crowd who make up the bulk of the Taps regulars.

That being the case will the Taps regulars defect wholesale to the Kings Head? Because here’s the thing. The Taps mid week after work regulars aren’t there because of the price of the drinks, they’re just there. That’s why there’s no difference between those who are there on Mondays (with Monday club prices) and those who are there on all the other days.

That is, it’s not the prices that keeps us there but the quality of the pub experience itself.

The Kings Head is also attractive in that it’s a real pub – complete with real ales and little alcoves and right angles on the bar. And that’s an attractive proposition for a bunch of people who genuinely love pubs.

Equally, the higher prices in the Kings Head should, in the long term, make it less of a draw to the George and Ratlers crowd who flock to the Taps on a Friday and Saturday night (and sometimes on a Thursday), which is a massive inducement to the regulars to go to the Kings Head on a weekend.

All of which makes for a fairly convincing argument for total destruction.

[I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure].

Do I think that will happen? Not really. I think that the more likely scenario is that the mid week regulars will, for the most part, stay the mid week regulars. I mean we’ve got a good thing going here so why spoil it? We know what we’ve got. And what we’ve got is cosy and comfortable and nice.

The weekends and the odd Thursday night are a different proposition entirely. Now, there’s nothing I like more than getting to Taps on a Friday evening after a long week at work, but after 10pm or so it just gets too busy (often with some not terribly nice people in). Now assuming what I’ve said above about the Kings Head holds true, wouldn’t it be nice to go somewhere which will stay consistently nice in the transition from the evening to the night?

All told, as I say, I think the most likely scenario is that the Taps will mainly stay the same during the week but that of a weekend we’ll just wholesale give it over to the rowdier younger crowd who like the impossibly loud music and the huge numbers of people crushed together like garlic in a Frenchman's kitchen.

I also think that the Kings Head will come to be the place for the big events – the big football games. Christmas Eve. Birthdays and Leaving parties [I think that partly that will be because given the choice the bar staff won’t want to use the Taps for stuff like that. I mean, really, they spend half their time working there, will they really want to drink there as well – well unless they’ve got loads of tickets to use that is]. It will be the place where people will say, ‘lets go the Kings Head it’s too busy/scummy/dead in here’ (depending on your personal point of view).

All in all I think that it will mean the death of the pure Taps faithful and with it that very clearly defined sense of community. It seems to me that what will instead develop are people who either use the Kings Head exclusively and people who use both the Taps and the Kings Head regularly, because there really aren’t any good reasons for not using the Kings Head at all, while I can well see why some people wouldn’t want to use the Taps.

All I think we can be certain of is that we’re seeing the end of an era tonight. I don’t know how things will change, but change they will.