BRAPA ... CHRISTMAS SPECIAL : UX, BUCKS & THE SEASONAL PUB INFLUX
Saturday 21st December 2024, 9:30am
Ho, ho, bloomin' ho! You find me deep in the London Underground, ready to embark on a trip all the way to end of the Metropolitan line at Uxbridge.
Quite why I'd booked a trip down to London just before Christmas I'm unsure, you'd have to ask Former Si, but I hoped everyone else had hammered 'Mad Friday' the previous night, and were too ill to infest pubs with their party nonsense today.
In Uxbridge, I catch a bus to Iver just over the border in Bucks. This is a statement of intent as Buckinghamshire will be one of my main 'counties in focus' for 2025 as I'm currently standing at a pathetic 49% completion.
Our first pub is on the main road, an early opener so says Facebook, always a bit squeaky-bum in these moments, can you really trust anything non-Spoons to be open before 12? (The answer is no).
But the cars outside and glowing lanterns and fairy lights suggest Red Lion, Iver (2880 / 5364) is indeed open, relief! Not only open but bloody packed. 10:50am and here they are, rows and rows of tables bedecked in their paper hats and dreadful knitwear. Too early for lunch. Christmas brunch? The staff are all dressed up, and look depressed A.F. which is quite hilarious. I remember back to 2017, the year I completed Bucks at Marlow Bottom, it is a slog but you CAN find humour in desolation if you search hard enough. Good beer & good pubs? Harder still! I'm served by an elf. I tell her she looks fabulous. In a tight Eastern European accent, she tells me she feels silly and self-conscious as she's only really dressed up for the kids, but the pub is nearly 100% adults. "As it should be!" I jump in. She doesn't get it. I take a pint of what turns out to be high quality tasty GK /Chef n Brewer winter fuel called Fireside to the furthest away table, and ring Mummy BRAPA for today's Hull City predictions, which this season has become 'how many are we going to lose by?' Santa totters out of the kitchen and blocks the staff bringing food out, one plate nearly goes flying. He's either been on the egg nog, or he's BoJo in disguise. Or both. The next bus is imminent. I'm glad to leave, but also I didn't hate it.
Back in the Ux (as I'm sure the locals call it), still before noon, my first tick is inevitably a 'Spoons. I'm hopefully their most significant visitor since the Detroit Villains in 2015 ....
Courtesy of Detroit Andy
My stark bald reality today
Good Yarn, Uxbridge (2881 / 5365) is blimmin' heaving. And they're all nervy, twitchy, unsettled, and look like baked potatoes. There's two young lads patiently waiting for breakfast on different tables with the same synchronised leg twitch. I don't know if the E numbers are high in Uxbridge, or they put something in the water, but this was vaguely maniacal. I do amazingly well just to get sat anywhere, every table is a mass of sticky breakfast plates. The staff battle hard to keep the pub from resembling the last breakfast on the Somme, but to little avail. I'd swerved Bateman's Rosy Nosey on the grounds of no LED flashing nose on the pump clip, nor a fluffy beard! Gotta be principled. Thankfully, York's Waggon & Horses would 'DO IT RIGHT' a week or so later but then, they are Bateman's owned. Instead I have Black Beauty from Vale, served by a black beauty, but #WokeSi2025 wasn't convinced this was a thought process he should be having. A peaty drink, but a grower. Carpet an alluring yet challenging 8/10, it seemed emblematic of the chaos. Once again, a pub I'm relieved to leave despite not doing anything wrong, in fact, it worked damn hard. But London in 'silly season', what did I expect today?
"Like a blood stained treble vs bass clef gang fight" Jim, Lancashire
In addition to my two remaining Uxbridge ticks, Hillingdon Hill's tick was walkable providing you aren't scared of a quick march. Best do it now before bladder gets any fuller. Ah, Fuller(s)!
When Fullers get it right, they really get it right, and I'm always rooting for them considering they brew my favourite beer of all, ESB (Everitt Simey Brapa) so I'm pleased to report pub of the day is Red Lion Hotel, Hillingdon Hill (2882 / 5366). Our genial host, London Zlatan, offers Pride, HSB or Pride. So I go for the middle one and by gum it is good. A baby ESB. Gorgeous wood panelling surrounds, under a shimmering low ceiling, plus nooks, crannies and side rooms. A rug can never beat a carpet, but it beats a wooden floor. 7/10. Cramlington man (though you'd never know from his accent) keeps apologising to his bored older friend on a series of minor misdemeanours involving fishing and tractors whilst they eat fish 'n chips. And I appreciate the calm before I'm thrust back into Uxbridge insanity. 'It's oh so quiet (until it goes mental)' sang Bjork, sort of, and you wouldn't argue with her. Just before I leave, a middle-aged chap enters "I say dear chap, I didn't perchance leave my spectacles in here last night did I? We were making rather merry!" It was the poshest Mad Friday fallout I've ever witnessed, even if I exaggerate. And yes, they were able to return them. Tally ho!
A scary hoodie guy at the bus stop (whatever happened to hugging them?) assures me that his App says the bus is two minutes away. It didn't lie, and soon I'm whizzed back into Uxxy for the first of my remaining two ticks.
From best pub of the day to the worst in one swift manoeuvre, at the General Elliott, Uxbridge (2883 / 5367). The pub itself was mediocre, the main issue I had was how bloody miserable the staff were and how they'd managed to make the magnificent Landlord Dark (formerly Ram Tam) taste like Timmy Taylor had farted in the cask, sealed it up and sent it to London. Reasons to be cheerful weren't immediately apparent but I find pub ticking is only a satisfying past time if you're a glass-half-full type of person (though I was glad when this particular glass was empty). Morph was on the TV, that perked me up. A deaf woman wandered around apologising to everyone for no reason - should introduce her to Mr Cramlington. I was able to feel less apologetic in smuggling my pork pie. And then the news came through that Hull City had won a game of football for the first time since 1st October! So I actually left reflecting perhaps the L**ds pub of the same name isn't actually better - just more 'lively'!
One more to go in Uxbridge before I had to get 'creative' re my sixth tick, and it was the pub Uxbridge deserved .....
Your archetypal stuffy sweaty boisterous low-beamed GK booze-hole which I associate with the home counties, Tring in particular, Three Tuns, Uxbridge (2884 / 5368) is the kinda gaff you simply cannot imagine entering at any time other than a Saturday afternoon with Gillette Soccer Saturday in full swing. I hover at the end of a rowdy bar scene, and I'm later told on TwXtter by 'European Bob' who was allegedly here, that I should've joined him, but as I'm not psychic, I didn't. I'm excited to see the LED nose lit up on Rockin' Rudolph (take that Good Yarn Rosy Nosy!) but someone shouts that it is temporarily off and I can't remember what I order instead in all the mayhem. A split-level layout adds to 'my enormous sense of well being' and ascending some steps, I employ Micropub rules and ask an old dude if I can share a table with him. He might've had a wife too, or he might've been a wife, but five strongish pints in, memory is already hazy. But I can remember that it was very convivial, and I suddenly remember I've been to Uxbridge before, to tick a pub called the Queen's Head, almost five years to the day, and it wasn't unlike this. Not in the GBG now, so I hope it still exists.
So, Uxxy done and it was time to get back on the Tube in a King's Crossy direction.
But I needed a sixth pub and although I had a few ideas flitting around my brain, I hadn't committed 100% to a final decision.
So I cross my legs and get as far as Finchley Road, find somewhere to wee in the terrifying O2 shopping centre, walk a couple of mins to a different Tube (something to do with Frogs) which gets me on the Overground to Gospel Oak.
The staff are young, wide-eyed and fluffy, like bush babies - not yet contaminated by the harsh realities of the world, never had a cross word from a badly behaved punter. It wasn't a harsh pub. Innocence exudes from every orifice, although even using the word orifice here would be unsavoury, perhaps carnal. Gipsy Queen, Gospel Oak (2885 / 5369) has a calm before the storm fluttery atmosphere. The only other customer seems hellbent on his BRAPA five minutes of fame. Says 'arite', then starts giving his poor innocent mutt some tough love, and plays up to that when he sees me taking photos. The alpha male bush baby pulls me a pint of 'Step into Christmas' by St Austell. Beer of the day! Black as night. I have imaginary Elton coming out of my ears, but it is a small price to pay. My main criticism of the pub is the almost total lack of seating in the front of the pub. I'm told this is because the Cantina band from Star Wars are on soon (though I'm later told their official name is the Figrin D'am and the Modal Nodes). Around the back, I find some comfy spacious booths, the smell of burnt pizza overwhelmingly 'craft London'. The band begin - I know this one! In fact, they only seem to have one song. This is my cue to leave, but beer wise at least this was redemption for my only other Gospel Oak experience, at what is probably the Old Oak where in 2008 I had one of the worst pints of Badger Tanglefoot in the history of the world.
I walk to Kentish Town West as it doesn't seem worth going back to Gospel Oak, realise it doesn't go direct to King's Cross which was a bit silly of me, and although I can't remember what I did next, it wasn't too difficult because I still had time for a festive Parcel Yard ESB!
As you can see, Ivor Panda didn't last the pace (he's not got Colin's bodyweight - not that I'm fat shaming the poor Cauliflower). A decent day, I'm tempted to say 'steady'.
Join me tomorrow as I now have a real determination to catch up on the blogging before my first BRAPA holiday of 2025 in early Feb.
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