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.