There has been no football for a while, as the pitches have been frozen, so I thought it would be nice to give you an account of the evening we spent in Cambridge celebrating Peter Lovell's birthday recently.
The day started rather early, with lunch at the Lion and Lamb. This is a pub with its limitations, but what it's good at, it does well. The most positive things about the pub are the wonderful large, heart attack inducing burgers, the excellent staff and the quality beer. There is a notable recent addition to the venue: an under inflated bouncy castle sat in the beer garden, which was covered in snow. This was most tempting, but if I'm honest, it looked a tad dangerous, even for the sober gentleman.
The banter was introductory at this stage, recalling names, fond memories of previous nights out, and a brief but excellent chat about military tactics, including the merits and reliability of using flaming pigs as a weapon.
We then toddled off to the White Horse, just across the road. This is one of those pubs that is a little desolate, with not a lot to commend it. To give you an idea of the character, if the cast of Shameless walked in and started smashing up the place mid afternoon on a Saturday, well, let's just say you wouldn't be entirely surprised. It has a playground, which presents a particularly sorry sight, not least as you know that drunkard parents may well have used it as a justification for staying for one more pint, whilst poor little johnny plays forlornly in the rain on the broken slide.
On a more positive note, very few people go to crap pubs, so it meant we had plenty of space to sprawl out into...conversation at this point, or "chat" varied between the merits of pub quiz machines, the dubious quality of pub snacks, the worry about the current recruitment dilemna facing Jagex FC, or my personal favourite, a discussion relating to what amusing variations of the word "magician" we could come up with. Socrates wouldn't have been impressed, but Socrates never spent Saturday afternoons in his local boozer putting the world to rights.
The dreaded thing then happened, the group on the pub crawl split. One group went, as planned to the Cambridge Blue. The other disappeared to the Alexandra Arms, for reasons which are not entirely clear.
At the Alexandra Arms, the group became a little more boisterous, scaring one of the regular's poor little puppies. The Alex is small, a corner pub that used to be a house, with a quirky character, nice beer and a good Sunday pub quiz. Conversation centred on who might live in the houses overlooking the beer garden, whether they were attractive, and would they welcome unexpected guests from the beer garden. A mystery bottle of green liquor appeared at some point, and was illegally consumed in the premises, before we journeyed to the Cambridge Blue. Jaegar something or other?
The Cambridge Blue is a wonderful pub, full of character, excellent ales, good staff and nice food. We largely took over the place. Conversations about Las Vegas holidays and eating steak at 5 in the morning, snow and how it brings the world to a grinding halt and manages to make even the most cheery of souls moan, how to travel the globe on the cheap, who was the worst person in WWII and why beer contains ground fish bladders, are those I recall most clearly and fondly. There was a mystery marquee erected at the rear of the pub which looked rather out of place, and one can only hope that no-one we know is getting married there. A personal highlight was my managing to secure the recruitment of two Americans for my beloved sport of cricket, a truly wonderful occurrence. Whether they will follow through remains to be seen, but goodness me I love seeing Americans swing a cricket bat first time. Whilst I've played with some excellent Americans, and one brilliant Canadian, over the years, the first time is a lot like Bambi on Ice.
After quite a lengthy session, with a few of our number looking worse for wear, we headed to the King Street Run. This is a rather interesting pub, the clientele favour darker clothes, and the pub decor complements this nicely. The staff are excellent, and they normally have a brilliant variety of beers on tap. Here, the previously cultured conversation and good natured tone of the evening diminished somewhat. A couple of people engaged in a unique game of pool, that involved neither the pool balls, nor the table, but most definitely did involve the pool cues. Also, some of the beer allegedly wasn't up to scratch, and in a gesture of disapproval, the beer was used as shampoo by the birthday boy.
The landlord disapproved, understandably (clearly he is a fan of traditional pool rules) and we were politely asked to leave. Our good friend Leeroy stepped in to act as a mediator at this point, to help avoid the situation escalating. Those of us who know Leeroy understand that this really isn't his core skill-set, but I witnessed it, and he did an admirable job of calming things down. Clearly fatherhood has mellowed him.
After this, we arrived at Vodka Revolution for the final stretch of the evening. Sadly, beyond this point, I can offer no further comment on the evening. It was dark, it was loud, conversation ended, and I put on my dad dancing shoes and shook my rather ample moneymaker, until the lights came on and the carriages were called to end a rather good evening.
Some of the details of the evening have been omitted, in the interests of preventing embarrassment, but hopefully you get the gist...
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