Odin!

In Norse mythology, Valhalla (in Old Norse, ‘Hall of the Slain”) is the hall, ruled over by the god Odin in Asgard, where those heroes who have died in glorious battle go to after death. Before the great hall stands the ancient golden tree Glasir, said to be the most beautiful tree before Gods and men, and the hall's ceiling is thatched with the golden shields of a thousand fallen heroes. It has tall proud spear shafts for rafters and coats of mail are strewn over its benches. A grim giant grey wolf hangs in front of its west doors, and an eagle hovers above it.

And there in Valhalla all of the fallen heroes from the dawn of time drink and feast until Ragnorak, the end of the world, when they will stand in Odin’s host against the hordes of the demonic and the undead who would unmake the world.

[pretty cool huh?]

I only bring this up because tomorrow’s EuroMillions jackpot is £139m.

[Actually, that should probably be, One Hundred and Thirty fucking Nine million pounds]

And you know what that means. That’s right, Supertaps, baby.

And I was thinking, well how about Valhalla for a name? What do you think?

Too cheesy?

(It is, isn’t it?)

The Ties That Bind

The assertion that the Taps is a family of sorts is, I feel, mainly indisputable.

[mainly, I suppose, because I’ve used the clause ‘of sorts,’ which can encompass any number of things and thus renders pretty much anything indisputable.

A curse on my imprecision]

A loosely related, barely talking, slightly dysfunctional, often in family court, kind of family; but still related nevertheless.

And like any extended family, ours is one within which there are some members whom you’d wish just weren’t in it at all, some whom you would wish would visit far more often, and some entirely much (if at all) less often.

Equally, there are those that you love, those you like, those to whom you are merely indifferent, and those towards whom you frankly only harbour ill-will and homicidal thoughts.

[as always, I name no names]

But, it is a family.

Look out for us soon on the Jeremy Kyle show.

Pub Within Pub...

Don't Make Me Come Down There

I’m actually furious. I’m actually totally and utterly bloody furious.

Yesterday I sat on a packed train in Liverpool St station for an hour on the hottest day of the year.

It was so hot that people were actually fainting and had to be taken off from the train.

And again this morning we were stuck outside of Bethnal Green for half an hour on an equally packed train on an only marginally less warm day of the year.

The problem, apparently, is that it’s too hot.

Yes, I said it’s too hot.

Which once again has caused overhead line problems at Bethnal Green.

For those of you who regularly use the Enfield Town line you’ll know that there are always overhead line problems at Bethnal Green, in both the winter and the summer.

Always.

So just to offer some random layperson’s advice to the strategic experts at Network Rail and National Express: In the winter it’s cold and in the summer it’s hot. Plan. Accordingly. Motherfuckers.  

We Must Have Taken A Wrong Turn #2

Below are the latest Google key word searches which have brought people to the Blog.

They both have their respective charms, but my favourite is the second.

Searck Keywords:
Blog struggling bar
Steve Perryman Suite

Websters

Those of us who have spent some time in the Taps have slowly become exposed to the strange idiomatic sub-language which many of the girls behind the bar regularly use. And so for the purposes of both showing off my newly attained knowledge and so that people can correct me where I have anything wrong, I share with you.

For instance:

Bear/or Bare – translation: lots of, many, multitudinous. Example: “there were bare men in Rattlers last night”. Translation: there were lots of men in Rattlers last night.

Fresh: - translation: good-looking/fit/quality. Example: “that man is fresh. Translation: that man is good-looking”.

[I have to admit that I don’t precisely understand what it means when fresh is used in the abstract, for example.

 Irena: Are you coming out tonight?

Jade: Yes.

 Irena: Great, me too.

Jade: That’s fresh].

Butters – translation: ugly. Example: “Urrgh, that man is butters”: Translation: urrgh, that man is not good-looking.

Long – translation: boring, tedious, lengthy. Example: “leave it, it’s long.” Translation: leave it, I can’t be bothered. Or, leave it. It will take too long.’

Dry – translation: boring, dull, tedious (normally used when talking about a person or an event). Example: “Rattlers was dry last night.” Translation: Rattlers was boring last night. Or, Example: “Richard is so dry.” Translation: “Richard is so boring.’

[It is quite easy to confuse Dry and Long, but you can see that they’re context and intonation dependent].

Fresh Pieces: translation: new good-looking men or women. Example: “there were bare Fresh Pieces in here last night.” Translation: there were lots of new good-looking men/women [delete as appropriate] in here last night.

[You will also note that in the last example I used both bare and fresh pieces in one sentence].

Crisp/Chris – translation: to look good/hot: Example, “I looked Crisp/Chris.’ Translation: I looked really good.

It is all a bit confusing and sometimes I feel a bit like I’m trying to communicate with Ewoks.

Annual Leave

I’ve booked Monday 4^th July and Friday 15^th July as Annual Leave.

Everyone please do the same. No time to explain[1]. Just do it

---

[1] !

Sometimes the truth hurts

As newly instructed I am going to give you my opinion on Richard’s blog ‘How Could you?’ – i.e. camaraderie between bar staff.

Firstly, the pub is not cheating on you Rich. You’re lucky enough to be in a middle ground where you can empathise with our sufferings on nights such as you mentioned, but do not have to actually endure the pain of the event. Mental busy nights like you mentioned nowadays are quite rare……and we are all thankful for that……as we are usually more than adequately staffed. However, when they do happen (and this is usually on a Saturday night because I am usually the one working) it does indeed feel like your fighting a battle.

Now there are different stages to the battle.

Stage 1 – the calm before the storm, a degree of happiness because the pub has eventually got a bit busier and you actually have something to make you busy rather than trying to make yourself look busy, or, as I do, chatting away carelessly to the members of the Steve Perryman suite.

Stage 2 – dismay, the realisation that it is now becoming too busy and the yearning for a return to the norm, that would be quiet so that you can continue your conversation with the members of the Steve Perryman suite.

Stage 3 – panic, you see the supplies are becoming limited (by this I mean glasses) and you realise that at some point soon someone is going to have to face the opposition (by opposition I do unfortunately mean the general public who are consuming alcohol at that time) head on in a battle to retrieve the said glasses.

Stage 4 – complete chaos, you begin to lose the will to live, you realise you haven’t had a break in well over an hour (that’s a serious issue) and you cannot even find a spare minute to complain to one of your comrades about the ridiculous nature of the opposition.

Stage 5 – victory, then almost as suddenly as it all began the battle appears to have been won. You stare down the bar to find no-one wanting a drink, shelves full of clean glasses and its at this point that you realise without your comrades you would have most definitely lost that battle.

Now, I think the reason why we feel this camaraderie is because when it becomes frantically busy you know that the only people that can help you are other bar-staff. Regardless of how much we love our regulars, you cannot help us at all during this crucial time of the night. You’re input is generally at the beginning of the night, for general social purposes, and at the end of the night and this is generally for entertainment purposes as we are sober and you’re well and truly not.

Quite simply I think if you have to endure a difficult, or sometimes horrific, period in your life (or shift as is the case here), I think it’s nice to share it with someone. You then have someone to enjoy the victory with, and to tell about your trials and tribulations during the epic event.

I also think that what draws the staff together when it is so busy is that, although we love our regulars very much (well some more than others), you do become the enemy. You are by no means the ‘drooling semi human feral scum’, but you are part of the opposition. I know this will make you sad Richard, but its true (Sorry).

However, this is why regulars have all the privileges that they do because although you do become the enemy at some points in the evening, you’re a nice enemy…….the one that will patiently wait for a drink, and say the precious words “When you’re ready” rather than “OI”…....

Congrats Richard!

Firstly, I would like to say congratulations on booking time off Richard......Its not that hard is it, but I am proud of you anyway. And now you've thrown a spanner in the works for me because I was not going to drink on Thursday as I'm working on Friday morning.......Oh how things can change!

Secondly, I am going to write an actual blog now......yes an ACTUAL blog!

Watch this space...

And That's How I Roll

From: Merilyn xxxxx - Director

 [mailto:@pct.nhs.uk]
Sent: 22 June 2011 05:30
To: Taps Richard
Cc: ; Henry, Txxxx - PCT (5C5)
Subject: Re: RP - AL

No problem.

Mx

From: Taps Richard
To: Merilyn xxxx - Director
Sent: Tue Jun 21 18:22:10 2011
Subject: RP - AL

Hi – can I please book this Friday the 24^th June as Annual Leave, please?

Taps  Richard

Everyday I'm Struggling

I’ve typed out my Annual Leave request e-mail.

It reads:

“Hi – can I please book this Friday the 24^th June as Annual Leave, please?”

Too many pleases?

My Struggle

No, don’t worry, I haven’t gone all Adolf Hitler on you.

[Although…”Come the rise of Super Taps we will annex G.Matthews and the Funeral Parlour by any means necessary to create greater living space for the people of the Taps Irish Bar! We will cleanse the Taps of all undesirable lesser people. We will not allow them to defile our sacred space with their genetic impurities. We will not let them in! We will put them out! Out! OUT!! Zeig Heil!]

As many of you know, I live afflicted by fear.

The other day I was seeking some advice from my manager with regard to an ongoing issue which I’ve been having with a Director.

Her advice was essentially that, ‘when you’re in the right [which I was] I had to be strong and assertive.’

To which I could only reply, ‘unfortunately I’m weak and fearful so, to be honest, this isn’t particularly useful advice is it.’

Now one of the ways in which my fear manifests itself is in my frankly ludicrous trepidation at asking for leave. Which is to say that I’m generally too afraid to ask for leave, and only ever finally get around to doing so when either Jade, Irena or Casey make me.

This is an ongoing issue and something which I’ve been struggling with for a while now.

Now admittedly this makes no sense. Everyone else in the team asks for leave. In fact I’m the only person with no leave booked for the rest of the year. Not a single solitary half day to my name. Our team leave calendar is stuck up on the wall and it looks like I’ve been really naughty or something and I’m not allowed to go out.

Anyway, I raise this because I’d quite like to take this Friday off as leave, but there’s a meeting on Friday (literally just half an hour or so) that I’ve been asked to go to, and I really want to say no, but, well, I live with fear.

I seek your advice and support, comrades.

Nothing to do with pubs but...

If you have a spare seven hours watch The Shadow Line.

It's a Cold Hard World Out There

I stopped at the Magpie Pub in London near Liverpool Street for a quick drink after work a couple of days ago, and as I stood at the bar I realised that I actually didn’t know how to get a beer. As I stood there dumb and mute, (while all around me people were coming and going getting served with little difficulty) I realised that I had no idea how to get served in a pub anymore. I was being bumped and pushed by people trying to get past me to get served, and there I stood on the verge of panic, eyes glistening with a sudden moisture (from my hay fever), out of my depth and teetering on the brink of full blown asphyxia inducing sobbing (also from my hay fever).

I just couldn’t understand why they hadn’t just come over and put a Kronenbourg in front of me. It was bewildering and frightening.

But you know Richard Taps. I held it together.

Barely.

But I did

(a single silvery tear running slowly down my cheek doesn’t count)

So I started up the rusty cob-webbed covered gears of my poor old brain to remember how to get served. I held my note in hand, caught the bar staff’s attention, nodded to acknowledge that they’d seen and noted me, and then patiently waited to be served.

Which I duly was. I ordered two pints and then gave the barmaid £6.60.

She looked down at it in her hand, slowly looked back up at me and gave me a look very similar to the Irena patented ‘looking at me like shit’ and asked ‘what’s this?’

Apparently it wasn’t £3.30 a pint.

I took the £6.60 back, gave her a tenner and told her to keep the change (of which there wasn’t that much) and shuffled away, shamed and embarrassed, vowing never to return.

And people wonder why I don’t want to leave the Taps?

Bars I am Jealous of #5

As Graeme might say, ooh la la

All You Need Is Love

There’s an old truism that goes, ‘there’s someone out there for everyone.’

Which I’ve always thought to be so much sentimental drivel.

Or at least it’s possible that there might be someone out there for everyone, but some people are such completely useless failures as human beings that the only people out there for them would be so disastrously awful themselves that quite likely neither of them could tolerate the sight or idea of one another.

But, as the Taps is often wont to do, that particular assumption has been turned inside out and spun on its head.

Dizzy then, I relate the following.

As I arrived at the Taps last night I was greeted by the peculiar sight of Adam and Colin tucked as far against the wall in the corner behind the hatch as they possibly could, and Daryl stood at the bar with a gapped toothed woman hanging off him, and Irena vehemently having a go at the woman for trying to chat up her husband.

Now in the unlikely event that Jude should be reading this, I have to point out that 1. The gapped toothed women was insane (and had a missing tooth at the front of her teeth) and Daryl was doing his very best to extricate himself from the situation and 2. Daryl absolutely isn’t involved in a bigamist marriage with yourself and Irena.

Anyway, you can quite see how this would be a completely strange scene to be greeted with at a half past seven on a Monday evening after a hard day at work. 

So Daryl managed  to get away from Miss Insano to go outside for a cigarette, and Irena continues her argument with the insane gapped toothed woman for a while, until when Daryl comes back we all join Colin and Adam huddled in the corner behind the hatch and leave gap tooth at the bar by herself.

And here I get to the romantic heart of the matter.

At this point a random bloke who had been sitting at a table watching all of this gets up and stands next to the woman and they get talking.

The entirety of their conversation being:

Gap tooth: ‘Where do you live?’

Geordie Man: ‘Ponders End.’

Gap tooth: ‘Me too. I’ve just ordered a cab. You look like a drinker – and I don’t mean that in a bad way – do you want to come home with me?’

Geordie Man: ‘Well I’ve just got this pint. How long can you wait?’

Gap tooth: Two minutes.’

Geordie Man: Alright, hang on.’

Now, romantic that I am, I resolutely choose to believe that one of those people didn’t end up strangled, chopped up into small pieces and fed to flee ridden cats. I choose to believe that the Taps brought two people together. I choose to believe that on a random night in Enfield, romance won out over cynicism and [possible] murder in Ponders End.

The Rise and Fall

Yesterday morning I had to go to a meeting on Commercial Road in Tower Hamlets (actually at the building I used to work at), and as I was walking from Shadwell (having gotten off the DLR) to the office at about 10.30am I passed a pub (the Hungerford Arms) which was open and had several people seated at the bar drinking.

And amongst other things I thought to myself how great would it be to be in the pub at 10.30am on such a nice day.

But, equally, I also thought to myself: Richard Taps, don’t even think about it fella. Not in this place.

As one online reviewer put it:

“This is a scary pub and I would not wish to be there alone particularly after benefit cheque cashing day. We went there for a few pints before hitting the Lahore Kebab restaurant (great) as it seemed to be the nearest pub. We felt we were in the mid west and the banjos would be coming out soon. Care do not sit on the seats; they have stains that you do not want to think about. The Hungerford Arms is the worst pub I have ever had to go in, I thought I was going to get attacked before I reached the bar. The Hungerford Arms is, in my opinion, full of scumbags. “

I’m sure that like me, most of you think that you can get a pretty good immediate feel for a pub – even just from walking past - and that’s precisely the impression I got.

And it’s really quite sad to see pubs go that way, but I can absolutely understand why it’s the way it is.

In the East End real locals pubs are almost entirely a thing of the past. On my journey into Liverpool Street in the morning, from Hackney Downwards onwards, you see closed pub after closed pub; and walking around Whitechapel, Mile End and Newham it’s even worse. All you see are beautiful old corner pub buildings which are now shops and restaurants, have just been boarded up and left for dead, or worse, are just piles of broken rubble.

These were places which were once the beating hearts of local communities. These were places just as dear to their regulars as the Taps is to us. Their friendships as lasting, their laughter as genuine, and their drinking as professional. They were places where people celebrated birthdays and christenings and weddings.

And now they’re gone.

And that’s mainly because of the vast change in the demographics of the local populations. I’ve really got no interest in arguing the relative merits of the causes and outcomes of those changes (which is to say that I have no interest in discussing it here. Come and see me in the Steve Perryman suite and we’ll have at it), except to recognise that they have been demographically and structurally vast and profound. It’s simply not a stretch to say that walking around Tower Hamlets you could just as easily be in Bangladesh or Somalia.

Which obviously are cultures and countries which generally don’t drink and which to whom the very concept of the pub as a community hub is an alien one.

[Which gives lie to the myth which Eastenders – the television programme that is – propagates that it’s any  reflection of any kind of modern East End life, rather than an overblown homily to something which disappeared 30 years ago]

I make no judgements. It just is what it is.

Which is why I understand why those local pubs in the East End (and to be clear I’m obviously not talking about Hoxton and Shoreditch – which in their own ways have to shoulder as much of the blame for the demise of East End pubs – as does demographic change) which are still just barely hanging on, are so aggressively insular, defensive, and well frankly, racist.

It’s not a good thing, but there is a kind of inevitability to it.

Anyway, that’s just something I’ve been thinking about.

We Must Have Taken A Wrong Turn

The Blogger dashboard (the piece of online software that we use to post) has a number of useful attendant functions beyond just posting and editing. Amongst those is its statistics tracker, which – as you might guess from the name – collects a number of useful statistics with regard to the number of people reading broken down by week, month and year, which sites they have been referred from, and my personal favourite: where they have used Google, what they’ve typed in to find themselves directed to the Unofficial Blog of the Taps Irishbar.

In the last week people have been directed to us by searching:

SEARCH KEYWORDS

Daryl Colin

Do Pyschopaths never blink

Irish wankers bar