Loud and Lairy London Weekender
Embracing GB spirit with Olympic-level drinking and a friend-filled weekend, south of the River
Headphones in, drink in hand, I got on the train from Windsor to Waterloo at about 5pm on Friday, 27th July 2012. After years of armchair anarchy and whinging about ‘the cost to the taxpayer’ and the ‘hundred possible better uses for the Olympic site’ - not to mention the ‘you won’t get me near London during that fortnight’ - I had shelved my shop-bought cynicism and was heading straight for the action. I’ve never been one for shying away from the centre of the party after all.
The run-up to my first London weekend since January started peacefully: I spent the first 24hours painting a fence for my Dad, eating curry and drinking way too much Pimm’s – all pretty rowdy stuff for Windsor. It was all a part of my own ceremony- the steady consumption and enjoyment of all things British after some time away. Though this year, the need was stronger than usual.
Since my return from the continent, the Union Jack bunting hanging everywhere, the wet roads, the music in the streets and (mostly) the cloudy cider had started to instil in me a level of lairy Englishness I didn’t know I had. My other half is Australian after all – this combination usually results in a sometimes conflicting but nonetheless balanced inner voice. But I sensed that nothing could keep my British half down that day. I was a train ride away from it all – I had to be a part of it. I had to tie me kangaroo down. I wanted to revel in the kind of rowdy I knew was brewing inside. The British kind of rowdy. The best kind. There was only one place I could do that: Brixton.
I met my brother outside Victoria. The roads were steamy and the rush-hour crowd had a spring in its step. One look at my brother’s face told me that he had caught the bug too – so all we needed to do was to grab some food and find the right pub.
After a really great pizza in Brixton Village from a bar called The Agile Rabbit (the walls are illustrated with pairs of chalk bunnies doing what bunnies do best) we headed for The Dog Star on Coldharbour Lane. My brother tells me this bar can be hit and miss – apparently it can change from engagingly atmospheric into crime scene in the space of a few hours. I didn’t want to alarm him by saying that that sounded bloomin’ perfect.
The tables were full, so we stood under the big screen, pints in hand, and watched everything kick off. A mouthy girl at the next table was already shouting and singing. I grinned. The streets outside were empty and a great roar rose from the crowd in the pub as everything on the screen came together. This was it: after seven years of speculation, anticipation, doubts, fears, dismissals – we, us, London, were on show for the world to see. I had recently been missing the friends, food, sun and sea of the Med, but in that moment, I couldn’t have been happier to be home.
As the action unfolded it became very clear that this was something special. This wasn’t like the passive way we let millions of tourists traipse undisturbed through London each year: selling them shortbread tins shaped like phone boxes and serving them warm lager and greasy, overpriced food. It wasn’t the Dick Van Dyke or the Renee Zellweger Bridget Jones we allow people to hold synonymous with our culture. We were showing the world our London, our city; and beyond that, our country, as we know it. The terraced streets and the tower blocks, the cultures and the languages – the working, throbbing, modern, international city we as Londoners get up to every day: not the Instagram image or the pamphlet for the sightseeing bus. It was the dainty view of Jane Austen’s England, brutally torn apart by the dark, satanic mills. The ordinary man working together, forging the Olympic games. We were standing up, very un-Britishly, to say ‘OiOi! Look at us! This is what we are!” Something I don’t think we are usually very good at.
The spirit and collective mentality seemed to render us all completely cynicism-free. It was incredible to see what and who earnt such big cheers during the opening ceremony. The Queen on the screen – who knew a pub full of people my age would ever make so much genuine noise for that moment? The appearance of Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean – who has surely only made us groan for the past 20years as the rest of the world has lapped him up – made me jump up and down on the spot with glee. The pub erupted in song when the Artic Monkeys played set, yet fell into reverent silence for Kenneth Branagh. We cheered for J.K Rowling and danced like lunatics for Dizzee Rascal. All stuff we’d thought we’d grown bored of or outgrown united us all into a giant, sweating, cheering, beer-spilling mass of Britons. It was all (minus Macca) exactly as I had wanted it to be: swaying, arm in arm with my brother – then dancing through the rest of the night as the coverage ended and pub turned to club.
My Friday quickly ran into Saturday as I headed for (via a friend’s birthday BBQ in Twickenham – oh, Red Stripe, juicy burgers and paper plates how I have missed you) Peckham, and a rendezvous with more friends. We all met at the incredibly well-hidden Bar Story, a large glorified shack under the railway at Peckham Rye. Here all the tables are made from old crates and breezeblocks. There are loose wires and graffiti-covered improvised walls, pot plants and corrugated metal – yet the bar made top-draw cocktails by the looks of things (we had bottled cider instead), and the lowliest snack was a board of olives, pita and hummus. That’s London for you.
On we went around the corner to Rye Lane, where the eagle-eyed will spot the entrance to the summer pop-up bar Frank’s Café – up several flights of stairs at the top of a multi-storey car park. The view across London was stellar: golden in the fading light and soundtracked by three hundred-odd drinker’s voices and the sounds of the traffic below. I bumped into a couple more friends there: one of whom was an old Uni friend swamped behind the 5-deep crowd at the bar. I left him to it. That night was certainly the smallest London had ever felt.
On we went again. The festival atmosphere in the streets had carried from the night before, and crowds of Team GB supporters flooded in and out of the Underground like the lyrics to a song we all know about Waterloo at sunset. We parked ourselves in The Greyhound, an Irish pub, also in Peckham. And when I say Irish, I don’t mean an O’Neills with Guinness merchandise everywhere. I mean a properly, ethnic Irish pub full of extended families and more characters than you could poke a stick at. All inviting, all funny, all strong-voiced and all very, very drunk.
So we sat there, singing and smoking ourselves hoarse, drinking and havering deep into Sunday morning. I spent the next day clutching my head, huffing at traffic and crowds and grumbling at the price of my bacon butty, and the unmitigated misery of my flabby, watery coffee. But you take the rough with the smooth. That after all, is what being British is.
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