I posted ages ago about what pub crawling is supposed to be about, it’s basic rules, why it is not healthy and also and more relevant, why it is such a good fun, so I’ll go straight to the point: 10 pubs, 10 pints, 5 hours. Friends, at least one (if so, preferably a good one): lock, stock & barrel. Saturday, January 30th, Reading.
The night before: Monks Retreat, O’Neills, After Dark and Déjà vu. Great fun, a million aftershock shots (more or less), beer and a stamp on your wrist.
Pre-Crawl: up and running, the first half Fosters of the day: just what you need to get nice and easy into the required mood. This one was in The Turks. Apparently one of the oldest pubs in Reading, it is quite a funny one: divided in two halves, the closest one to the main door is really cozy, with all these leather sofas, a chimney, the Victorian decoration and all the classics a boozer like that is supposed to have. The other half is more a sports bar, with its plasma TVs, its lack of character and – you got it – its football. Not memorable, but good enough for a promising start.
Food dose: Pizza Express. Another half of Peroni, but, on the top of that, nothing relevant to say about the place, neither in the positive or the negative side: I’m quite sure you’ve been in the sort of place before. Just Okish.
Pint 1 (Fosters): The Retreat. I already posted about this incredible pub (ages ago, before I moved to London, when I still posted in Spanish), so I won’t repeat here how good it is, and how fond both Gilberto (my crawling mate) and myself of the place we are. In a nutshell: we were alone there, meaning ALONE, with a jukebox that played Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen (twice), Queen and The Cream. I don’t think I’ve felt much better than at that time in a long long time (right, maybe last Sunday – cheeky bastard, don’t remind me that one!)
Pint 2 (Becks): The Lyndhurst. This is a nice gastropub with a really friendly barman… it wouldn’t bring me big memories if it weren’t for that night Richard sung and kissed that Spanglish folk singer – a big classic in crawling history. A bit pricey (3.10 in Reading is a bit too much), but relaxing environment altogether. No jukebox, though.
Pint 3 (Tuborg): Back of Beyond. One of my favourite pubs in Reading, and by a mile the best Wetherspoons in town. Cheap, they keep it simple and they keep it right: another 30 minutes of good conversation, and the first symptoms of crawling starting to be noticeable. Nothing worrisome so far. So far.
Pint 4 (Becks): The Warwick. A former traditional pub, for some reason it became a Thai pub at some point. Quite pointless, I have to say: it has lost most of its charming. Still, not that we care too much at that point.
Not sure if I’m missing a pub at this point. Maybe Gilbert, if he reads the post, may help!
Pint 5 (I think it is the 5th, Fosters): Cooper Arms. You cannot have a proper binge without some hooligans and a proper brawl or two. In this case, it was a group of BNP members (or something like that – you don’t wear skinhead clothes and a boxing tattoo with St George flag for nothing) against a group of Welsh… when we started to realize what was going on the empty pint glasses started to fly (one just 5 cm far away from my head), the knuckles started to find noses on their way, and the big arseholes started to crash pints to use them as cutting stuff. I have not ever seen anything of the like, even close to this. Obviously, we ran as fast as we could, not without waiting in the door checking how a group of yobs destroy a pub… really depressing, really, but a part of the local folklore as well.
BTW, apparently it is not the first thing something like this happens... they will not see me around over there.
Pint 6 and 7 (Tuborg and Fosters), plus a vodka redbull: Monks Retreat. Another Weatherspoon pub, not as quiet and nice as Back of Beyond (it actually stinks sometimes), but with a much nicer dose of chicks and teenagers warming the night up. We had a couple of random conversations with a friend of Gilbert who rang some friends as she was a bit scared about what may be coming up – no big reason to be worried, after the fight we were quite sobered up.
Pint 8 (Becks): The Bugle. For me, the discovery of the night. A little pub hidden in the middle of Friar Street (one of Reading’s main high streets), almost everybody inside was in the bad side of the thirties, quite drunk, but really friendly all of them. Really tatty pub with a lovely jukebox, with a guy aged over 70 playing the same Rolling Stone’s song once and another again… until we got control of it. Not that I remember all of them, but Pearl Jam and ACDC sounded for sure there
After that we tried to get into a pub where all our friends were – we weren’t allowed in, so I won’t even mention its name. Just on our defence: we weren’t really that drunk, we were really friendly with the bouncer (he also was, really), and the pub didn’t look like such a good place.
Pints 9 and 10 (Red Guinness): at O’neills, the only place in Reading where Red Guinness and terrible music meet each other. We met Cris, Olga, Raquel and some other friends over there and we stayed for a long time, really not sure how long, but long for sure. Anyway, after the 10 pints threshold it is not a pub crawl anymore, so better stop the tale here… just to say it was again Déjà vu Club where we finished the night, but you may better ask someone else for details about it.
Brilliant weekend in Reading, as usual – courtesy of old and new friends, and of course, of everlasting Gilberto. Counting the days down…
