Happy Birthday to the Unofficial Blog of the Taps Irish Bar

Yay, us.

Dear Jade

Dear Jade,

In response to your last post, You Never Miss What You've Got Until It’s Gone, all I can say to you is that in all honesty, it only gets worse.

Well alright, that’s not entirely true.

It gets much, much worse.

Kind regards

Taps Richard

You never miss what you've got until it's gone

So, as everyone who reads this blog knows, I've started a new job and therefore I will only be working at Taps on the weekends. (Although in fact I am not working this weekend as I'm off to Kent for a few days).

Now, the perks of having a new job are obviously the fact that I get paid considerably more than I do at the pub and that I get to sit down all day......no running around, no lifting heavy boxes and no long winded conversations with irritating customers.

I thought that I would really appreciate these new perks for a substantial amount of time before the drain of a 9-5 began to drag me down. Turns out that I'm on day 6 of my new job and I already think the perks of a pub job are much better.

For instance the things are miss most are;

• Being able to get up at 10am if I’m working the dayshift.......or 5pm if I’m working the evening! (I really do like my sleep and I’m like a walking zombie now)


• Being able to get drunk on a Tuesday for no reason (I give Tuesday as an example, but I thoroughly enjoy randomly get drunk when everyone else cant but now I'm one of them people who I use to laugh at.....that’s not cool)


• Having interesting conversations (So far all the office talk revolves around work......which isn’t interesting......or peoples children and I don't know anyone well enough yet to care about there children. I can categorically say that there will be no conversations about whether wanker is more offensive than twat for instance)


• Being able to wear comfy clothes (I don't think they would appreciate my bleach stained combats here)


• Thursday nights (enough said)


• Having to be nice all the time......I am a nice person but I hate it when I have to be nice, I'd quite like to just be nice because I want to be.
  

I know that all of this will probably change and gradually I will begin to appreciate my new job but as it stands I MISS TAPS, I MISS THE BAR and I MISS MY TAPS FAMILY! (Don't worry I'm not actually crying or anything......just reminiscing).

That is all...

Excerpt 2

I clearly didn’t really think this out when I posted the last random excerpt. Just to say this excerpt is from some way before the last one.

------------------

“But you do?” Israel asked, smiling slightly and sipping from his glass, even though he did in fact agree with much that Calvin had said.

“Yes, Israel, in point of fact yes I do.”

“And are you going to enlighten us?”

“I very much doubt that you’d thank me for it.”

“Then why the slightly insane diatribe, Calvin?” Paul asked not without good humour, “I mean we’d normally just be talking about which is better, pork or chicken at this point.”

“Which is pork by the way.” Israel added.

  “An old bone of contention.” Adam dismissed, “But my point being, what on earth are you talking about man?”

“I believe it was in reference to my comment about how beautiful it is outside.” Verity spoke up.

“In point of fact, dear.” Daphne put in mildly, “I believe that you actually commented on how magical it is outside tonight.”

“True.” Verity allowed.

“And it was that assertion to which I was addressing myself.” Calvin said.

“With the whole magic and angels bit?” Israel asked.

“It’s far from being a bit, Israel.” Calvin smiled with just the slightest hint of irritation, “Very far indeed.”

“Then what, Calvin, is it” Israel, who had heard just about every kind of alcohol induced nonsense at one time or another, asked with a brittle smile.

“It was an observation of fact.”

“Of fact?”

“Yes, Israel” Calvin nodded, sipping from his glass, his dark calm eyes fixed on Israel, “of objective and unadulterated fact.”

“That we’re seeking wonders and magic?”

“Aren’t you?” He asked.

“Well sometimes when I’m on acid.” Darren, who’d had no interest in the conversation to lose in the first place, remarked. And instead was draining the last of the champagne straight from the bottle.

 Israel laughed, but didn’t take his eyes from Calvin who was watching him intently.

“Aren’t you, Israel?”

Israel thought about it for a second and then replied, “Well yes, in a sense, I suppose so. But only in so far as I’d also quite like to win the lottery. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a genetic imperative.”

“Then why is it you do what you do?”

“And what is it we’re doing?” Israel asked, a brittle smile on his face that didn’t reach his eyes, “Because I’m fairly sure that there’s not that much wonder to be found here.”

“No, but it’s the lack therein which is why you’re here.”

“Look mate,” Paul said from his stool, “all due respect to you for the drinks and all, but our reasons for being here are pretty different and varied, but what all of them do have in common is the fact that they’re none of your fucking business.”

Calvin merely nodded, entirely unperturbed by the sudden dark change in atmosphere, and then asked, “But what if I already know exactly why each and everyone of you is here? What, indeed, if it’s neither profound or even faintly interesting?”

“Mate, wind your fucking neck in.” Paul stood up from his stool.

 “Perhaps if you proved it to them, dear?” Daphne ghosted between them with heartbreaking grace and ease and rested her hand on Calvin’s arm.

And Israel’s heart froze with the sudden realisation that he had never wanted anything less in his whole life than to have it proven to him.

“Perhaps if you were to tell them all why they were here….or better yet, show them.”

“Show them?” Calvin asked.

“Yes, dear, show them.” Daphne replied, nodding her eyes at the wall behind him.

“As always, how clever you are my love.” Calvin leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek, “Let me show you – or rather, let me ask you a question.”

“Oh, do.” Verity, who had been inexplicably drawn to impending spectacular doom since she was a teenager, drawled.

“Let’s say shall we,” Calvin began, smiling faintly to himself at some secret shared only with himself and maybe the entire rest of the universe, “Let’s say that in around about…oh...1086ish, Enfield, or Enefelde as it was then, was the site of some rather interesting structures – in particular some connected with what is now and was also then St. Andrews Church.”

“Structures?” Israel asked quietly.

“Tunnels.” Calvin nodded, his eyes gleaming darkly, “Quite a lot of them as it happens. Now I know that most of you are aware that parts of St. Andrews Church have been around since well before 1086.”

“It’s mentioned in the Doomsday Book.” Mark and Israel, who’d both, though in different years, gone to the Grammar School attached to St. Andrews, nodded.

“Indeed.” Calvin smiled at them, “But do you know when St. Andrews Church was actually built?”

“Around the turn of the first millennium or so.” Israel looked at Mark for confirmation, who shrugged in return.

“Very good.” Calvin nodded, “So these tunnels of which I speak belonged to said thousand year old church, but had been built over by 1086.”

“So what happened to them?”

Calvin considered for a moment, “Well that’s the interesting part isn’t it – let’s just say that it was something bad. Something very, very bad, in point of fact.”

“Ok. Something very bad.” Israel rolled his eyes – though only half meant it.

Calvin ignored his tone and said, “Now then, let’s also say that given the importance of those structures certain groups have taken it upon themselves, for various reasons of their own, to preserve those tunnels.”

“Beneath Enfield Town?” Isbaella asked mockingly.

“Just so.” He nodded, “And that further, they built around Enfield certain hidden entrances to those tunnels.”

“Secret passageways?” Isabella laughed aloud, growing bored of the night now. Of the drink and the company. Not in love with alcohol as the rest of them were. That kind of love that was all encompassing and ultimately self destructive. The kind of love that would never stop and would only ever take and take until there was nothing left to give.

“Exactly that. Secret passageways.” Looking at them all now. All of them who - apart from Isabella - were silent. Deathly silent. Hanging on his every word, “One of which,” He walked slowly over to the wall behind them and after a moments careful examination rested his palm deliberately on it, “Happens to be exactly here.”

They starred at him.

“So my question, guys, is that this being the case, if I were to open it, would you go down?”

“If you were to open up a secret passageway in the wall of the pub that leads to thousand year old tunnels which were destroyed for very, very bad reasons would we go into it?” Isabella asked.

“That’s it exactly.”

“You’re telling us that behind that wall panel there’s a secret passageway?”

“Not at all, I’m just asking a question.” Calvin shrugged dismissively.

“Well then hypothetically, yes, why not?” Isabella replied.

“And if it weren’t a hypothetical?” He asked coolly.

“If there really was a secret passageway behind that wall; the wall which, by the way, backs on to Gregg’s The Bakers, you mean?” Isabella asked, “Leading perhaps to the lost treasure of the Three Cheese and Onion pasty?”

“Yes, ‘Bella. That’s what I’m asking you.”

“Not meaning any disrespect to you at all but frankly this is just stupid. Even their Bruce Lee and Mohammed Ali in a Cage-fight conversation makes more sense than this.”

“And you, Israel.” Calvin fixed his eyes on him, “Do you think it’s stupid?”

“I think that I also play the lottery, which is also stupid.” Israel replied non-committally.

“But you hope to win?”

“Of course.”

“And you also hope for wonders, no?”

Israel glanced over Calvin’s shoulder at Verity who merely shrugged back.

“I suppose that’s true.”

“And that, indeed, is why you’re all here.” He said, “Although not Isabella of course.” He nodded to her in acknowledgement.

Isabella mystified by the significance of all this because she already knew why they were here. They were here because they were drunks and losers. Though not actually in that order.

Excerpt

 “The guy’s laughing at you.” Isabella shook her head, “Right now, wherever he is, out there he’s laughing at you.”

And for some reason she was surprised to find that the thought of it upset her far more than she expected that it would. Because even though she knew what they were, when it came to it they were also her friends. Friends who over the last several years had done her innumerable small and large kindnesses, who had shared confidences, birthdays, weddings and funerals. Who had seen in Christmas Eve’s and Royal Weddings. Who, all said and done, were as much family as any group of strangers could be.

And more than anything else she was sad for them. Just hopelessly sad.

“That’s more than likely true sweetheart, but if miracles don’t happen on nights like these when will they?” Israel asked her.

“They never happen, Israel.” Isabella replied gently – and then sighed and shook her head, “Well go on then if you’re going to.”

“You want to do the honours Ver?” Israel asked her, because he knew that there was truth, and for that reason power, in Isabella’s words, and that though he was prepared to be complicit in this, he wasn’t yet willing to endure the shame of perpetrating it.

Verity looked at him, reading his thoughts as surely as though they were hers, and because she was better and braver than him, smiled brightly and said, “Sure, why not.”

Verity walked slowly forward to the wall, placed her hand on the exact point that Calvin had touched on his way out, and looked back over her shoulder at them all.

And even Isabella held her breath, though for reasons different to the others.

Hers’ not desperate and dark, but excited. Youthful and pure. Emotions so alien to theirs that she herself may as well have been from Mars as Enfield.

And then Verity pushed, one hand resting on the other, as hard as she could, on the wall panel. Pushed first with her arms, and then her shoulder and then her whole body.

Pushed....forward. A slow ancient groan. Slow and faint from the wall and then...CRASH.

Verity jumped backwards as the wall suddenly gave way in front of her in a sudden hysterical madness of noise, soot, dust and cobwebs streaming out in an impossible thick misty cloud which engulfed and covered her.

Wood from the panels tumbling down both into the darkness where the wall panels had once been and onto the floor of The Empress.

The once blessed Empress.

Isabella gasped in shock, her hand over her mouth, turning to look at Israel who stood numb with his glass in hand and his heart in his throat.

Paul stepped forward, grabbing Verity hard by the shoulders and pulling her away from the expanding cloud of stale, fetid dust and darkness, whispering as he did so, “Holy fucking shit.”

“Holy fucking shit.” He said again.

“What in the name of fuck?” Isabella took half a step forward and then stopped herself, “What the fuck have you done Verity.”

“What do you mean what have I done?” Verity stared opened mouthed at the open door in the wall. Absently scrambling in her pockets, pulling out her fags and lighting one with a shaky hand, impervious to the constraints of the smoking ban.

That and many other things.

Stood there, a pale black haired ghost covered in dust and cobwebs breathing smoke into the air starring into a black abyss.

“You’ve put a fucking hole in the wall is what you’ve done. A motherfucking hole. Mick’s going to fucking kill me.”

“You’re more worried by what Mick’s going to say than the fact that there’s a fucking secret passageway in your wall leading into the mother cunting ground?” Verity shot back in-between long, long drags.

Israel stepped forward, plucked Verity’s cigarette from her lips and took a long drag on it himself. Stepped forward over the long red planks of broken wood on the floor and edged towards the rough door shaped hole in the wall and looked down at four or five rough hewn stone steps disappearing down into total darkness.

“Holy shit.” He breathed, “Holy fucking shit.”

Would You Adam and Eve It?

It’s all relative when it comes to it, isn’t it?

Time that is.

[That’s about as profound as I get. Although it’s probably completely untrue; but hey, what the hell do I know?[1]]

I mean it’s a temporal concept which we all implicitly understand, don’t we? The way, for instance, that depending on the context, a year can sometimes seem like five minutes and at other times, five minutes can sometimes feel like a year.

And it’s been a year – give or take – since we started this Blog of ours.

This Blog which for all intents and purposes encompasses a single year in the life of the Taps.

And how quickly it is has gone – or at least that’s how it’s seemed to me (you see how the stuff about time and context is suddenly relevant and not just tedious filler?)

But it’s true isn’t it? How quickly time has passed. For me it’s practically flown by, no matter how many things may have happened in those 12 months – be that Jade getting her first job, Michelle and Casey graduating, Spurs’ Champions League run, the opening of the Kings Head, Irena’s various fresh pieces, Quiz Night, the London Riots, Ray going, Colin arriving, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Rome, or Sophie Macaroni no longer being my most deadly and cunning arch-nemesis yet.

It’s flown by.

12 months in a blur.

12 months in a good blur. 12 months in a blur I’d do again with no regrets.

They say that time flies in good company. And I'll attest to that.

They also say that a man is known by the company he keeps.

And for all their drinking, gambling, compulsive swimming, Celtic supporting, fresh piece collecting, international music starring, university going, house selling, day off taking, shot drinking, Roxanne/Red lighting, box set watching, karaoking ways, I'm proud to be known by it.  

---

[1] Profound but basically wrong in every way that it’s possible to be wrong:  – that pretty much sums up everything I say.

Oh My Goodness, Oh My Goodness.

Alright then you motley collection of perverted criminal ne’er do wells, grave robbing necrophiliacs, orang-utan romancers, and Estate Agents. It occurs to me that the Christmas season is almost upon us, and that being the case I’ve been thinking about what you can get me as a present this year, and well, this seemed to be the most appropriate idea

Apparently bottles are quite hard to come by these days, so it would probably be best to start looking now.

Good luck and thank you.

"Oh That's A Car Accident..."

The Rugby World Cup approaches... In that spirit, here is one fully grown man running full pelt into another. Also, it appears the chaps from the Fosters adverts commentate rugby when they aren't helping unimaginative men and former Neighbours starlets.

Pick a pub, any pub.

Batman posed an interesting (I realise this is an amusing misuse of the word) question in his last blog. After the Where’s Wally fiasco in the pub Tuesday night, I am sure everyone has now read it.

Well, Batman, people go to different pubs and try them to see what they’re like. Instead of simply going to the pub which is closest to their home, their work or the train station, people often venture out into the great unknown to see what delights might be held elsewhere. There are probably a few things that any regular drinker will be looking for when pondering whether they’ll be returning or not.


1. The general feel of the place – Any regular pub goer has the ability to the pretty much immediately ascertain whether the pub they have just entered will be good, fun, relaxing or an engaging place to drink. You’ll know, depending on your mood, how long you’ll be staying and if you’ll ever be returning well before your first drink is finished.

2. What’s on tap/optic – If the pub doesn’t have what you like to drink, it’s pretty much going to fall down at every other level. Once you’ve walked in and judged your book by it’s cover, the next port of call is most likely going to be what they can offer you from behind the bar.

3. The service – If you’ve found what you’re looking for, the way in which your ‘go to’ beverage is served and how the staff interacts with you will play an important part in your pub experience. If the beer is warm, flat or tasting of line cleaner for example, you’re not coming back. If you usually stand or sit at the bar and the bar staff are rude, you’re not coming back.

4. The pub’s regulars – This does have a close relationship with the general feel of the place, as the pub’s personality will often take on that of its most faithful customers. But the welcome, ambivalence, disdain or overall behaviour of the pub’s regulars will have a great impact on potential new drinkers. I do think this is seen every day in Taps with people who come in during the week never to be seen again. They are dismissed as tourists that don’t drink very often, but when you venture around town and see them regularly drinking elsewhere, you have to question, as Richard did, what stopped them returning. Loud and foul mouthed as some of us are, I can see this being a defining moment in many peoples’ decision of whether to return or escape unscathed.

5. Location – No matter how nice a pub may be, if it is too far out of your way it is unlikely to ever really become your local. Or rather, if it is your local, you are unlikely to ever really be as regular a customer as you would be at a pub closer to home. Knowing your pub is 486 steps from your door to theirs isn’t a necessity however, it just helps when you can’t see.

6. Price – Most regular drinkers have pretty much taken this out of their thinking when choosing a pub to drink in. It’s accepted that you will spend an obscene amount of money on destroying your liver every month and that Pot Noodle will be your Sunday lunch banquet. But there is a line and I think it falls about here after everything else.

7. Miscellaneous – Depending on who you are and what you expect from your pub experience, things like television screens/sky sports, juke boxes, pool tables, dart boards, strippers and food etc... will all play their part in your decision making. But I do feel these only come into play once you have pondered everything else previously mentioned.

I’m sure there will be other things that people consider when choosing their pub, but you people can stick that up, erm, in number 7.

Regular V. Random

The eternal question... Well okay, not really, but shhh, don’t tell anybody.

A short time ago, right here in this blog in fact, Richard posted something about a manual for Americans to become a regular in a local pub. Having read through it, most of the observations seem to hit the mark. There were a couple ‘try hard’ suggestions, but all in all, I don’t think most people would argue with the chronology and emphasis of behaviour to undertake.

However, having been a regular in one or two pubs over the years, I have often questioned, along with others no doubt, whether I’d be better off being a random. My usual conclusion is that being a regular has more upsides than downsides, but then I began to question why being a regular would ever have any downsides at all. You’d think a regular would simply be treated with the same politeness and cordiality afforded to any random customer, whilst also experiencing the benefits bestowed on them by virtue of their regulars status. A pub’s answer to the VIP lounge whenever you walk up to the bar. I would think that has been the case in every pub I have ever been considered a regular, except the one I now call my local.

Of course, being a regular isn’t always one way traffic. Like any pub, there are rules to abide by; and regular or not, adhering to these rules is simply something that makes you a normal person. But when you are a regular, there is often, and quite rightly, an expectation that since you have a longer understanding of these rules, that you adhere to them more closely than everyone else. For that understanding and acceptance, as a regular, you also get leeway to act in a certain way. Like a drunken fool... when, for example, it’s your birthday or Spurs have just been thrashed 5-1 by some foreigners masquerading as Mancunians. That’s self evident and quite normal.

What isn’t normal however, is the ostensible application of rules on regulars which only exist to suit the needs and desires of certain people at certain times, depending solely on their mood. That just makes for an annoying pub that less and less people tend to drink in as time goes by.

Anyway, I have been going to a random pub of late to escape the trappings of this ‘regulars’ treatment. Almost like a day off, a treat to myself to experience the delights of being a random. As they say, a change is as good as a holiday. Polite bar staff, pool tables, internet enabled juke box, sky sports... good times.

Alas, upon my last visit, my beer was waiting on the bar, ice cold and glistening, before I could even utter a word.

Oh well, time to find a new (random) pub.

I'm Batman

“This is the land of which I swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have caused you to see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”

I was in Stratford (really, really not one of my favourite places to be) yesterday for a meeting, and as I walked to the building where my meeting was being held I was struck by the fact that there were four or five (seemingly) nice (and fairly similar – as much as you can tell these things from just a quick glance) pubs in quite close proximity to one another; and it got me to wondering about how it is that people choose their locals in situations like that.

And by nice I mean that these were all proper pubs (rather than Chain pubs), the buildings were well maintained and slightly quirky, and that looking through the window there were fairly normal people sat at the bar (on bar stools) and the rest of the seating and tables looked fairly well done.

All by which I mean that if I worked/lived around there, these would all be pubs that I wouldn’t mind stopping in at for a drink [or eleven].  

Whereas, in Enfield Town we don’t really have issues of choice as such, in that The George is a Darwinian gladiators pit for the unemployed feral underclass; Bar Form is seemingly only open for a few minutes on the night of a half solar eclipse (and even then not if it’s a Tuesday); The Stag is a soulless...well it’s a soulless I don’t know what as nobody I know has ever been there, such that I’m beginning to wonder if it even exists; the Old Wheatsheaf is far away and up a hill; The Cricketers and Crown and Horseshoe far away and round a bend; the Moon Under Water is only for those actually round the bend – well them and out-door urinaters; The Wheatsheaf perfectly fine for what it is – a scene from Deliverance; and The Kings Head...

Well the Kings Head is the Kings Head.

Which is to say that if you’re a half normal person (in fact let’s say a quarter normal person) arriving to work or live in Town for the first time, you only really have two choices: The Taps or the Kings Head.

Which actually isn’t that hard of a choice depending on the kind of person you are.

The Kings Head is far more of an actual pub than the Taps (in fact there are those who dispute whether the Taps is even a pub – rather than a bar – at all. Those people are mental defectives and shouldn’t be listened to of course), and if that’s what floats your boat then I’d guess that’s where you’d end up.

Decision made; end of.

[That said, as I’ve described often and at dry length. There are many other things at which the Taps far excels]

But in Stratford – as I described, it seemed to me that there were almost half a dozen decent, proper pubs in close proximity to one another – all of which I’d be happy to stop and have a pint in.

So my question is, in that situation, how do you decide? What is it about a place which makes you think: yes, this is it, this will be my local; as opposed to, Good Lord no, not a chance in hell?

Is it the beer? The pretty/handsome barmaids/men? Is it Sky Sports? Indeed, is it the lack of Sky Sport?

So you tell me. Who are you kiddo? What brought you here? What made you stay? And promise me that you’ll never go.

Old Testament Shit

This pub is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
What do you mean, "biblical"?
What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Exactly.
Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
The dead rising from the grave!
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, Richard not in the pub two nights in a row... mass hysteria!