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Browncoats and Madness - Inexorably Linked
amusedA last minute decision and a cheap train ticket saw me heading for London this weekend. There was a charity screening of Serenity, and a few of my friends were going, one of them offering a settee for the night and the promise of beer. What transpired was like an episode of Eerie, Indiana, one of the funniest, and weirdest weekends I’ve had in a long time. Read on if you dare….
8.45 : On the rail replacement bus to Crewe where I had to catch the London train at 10.50. What time did I get to Crewe? 9.30. Why do National Rail Enquiries mock me so? Who can tell. Anyhow, that gave me time for a McDonald’s breakfast and the cure for a massive hangover – curse you free gallery opening wine!
At 1.30pm I finally arrived and headed for Tooting Bec to meet my friends Clarry, Dev and Kay. Euston to Tooting Bec on the northern line is a 40 minute journey with no changes, so when I emerged at TB I got a raft of text messages which had been denied to me underground. One said ‘Go to Borough, not Tooting Bec’, so I had to go back the way I came for about half an hour. Oh, BTW I only got a travelcard for zones one and two, and Tooting Bec is in zone 3, so I had to plead ignorance in my best northern accent “By heck our kid, me whippet told me I’d buggered up wit’ magic underground train!”.
Anyway, back I go to Borough. My phone battery is going and there’s no sign of Clarry. I text him : nothing. I call : no answer. I suddenly realise that I have no idea where this screening is, I nearly have no phone battery and I don’t know his number, so there I am desperately scribbling his number onto the back of a bus ticket when I spot a guy in a Browncoat t-shirt. I ask if he’s going to the screening, which of course he is, and we head off down the street looking for the Roxy bar and cinema. (We passed it twice before we noticed it, as the screening was clearly a secret and shouldn’t have been advertised in the window lest strangers tried to get in.)
Inside I thank the t-shirt Gods for directing me to Ian (for this is the Browncoat’s name), and greet my mate Wendy. Still no sign of Clarry but whilst I’m at the bar ordering a £3.40 pint of bitter (God bless London!) from the world’s most laconic barman, he wanders in with Dev and Kay, not surprised to see me already there.
The place is packed with Browncoats, and some uneasy drag-alongs. The screening was great and I actually teared up for the first time since I originally saw the film back in April 2005. Some of the people there hadn’t seen it before, it was strange to see them jump and laugh at things which I’d seen about 100 times. After the madness that was an anarchic trivia quiz and some singing (don’t ask) we went to a Chinese to line our stomachs and then jumped a bus to South London, where we were meant to be meeting our friends Karen and Louie at a bar called South London Pacific.
On the way we received word that neither seats nor conversation were to be had at SLP so we decided to jib it and go to the nearest pub. The nearest pub just so happened to have rhino and elephant heads above the door, and because it was a last minute decision and we didn’t have to tell anyone where we were, none us looked at the pub name. I have googled it desperately today but can’t find any trace, it’s like Narnia. Apparently it used to be called The Hoops but I can’t find anything about it, even when you do add the search terms ‘rhino’, ‘elephant’ and ‘head’.
So in we go, seven of us, and the barman looks mighty pleased. As we’re ordering we notice that there’s washing hanging up on the fruit machines. When questioned he acted like it was the most normal thing possible, to have your smalls hanging up in your place of work. He served me a Fosters, in the can, and this when I realised we might not be in Kansas anymore. I wanted a vodka and coke, he said he was going to get it from the cellar but he clearly went to Costcutters over the road. Then he came out with the gem “Do you like puppies?” Now, your mother tells you never to get excited and say yes when someone asks you this question, but my mother wasn’t there, so I got excited and said yes. He disappears into the back and comes out with two Rottweiller puppies, I would guess about two months old, and hands them over the bar to me and Karen. So there are, drinking in the world’s weirdest pub where you get a free dog with every drink, and I haven’t got my podcast recorder with me. Gutted.
The night only got stranger as it went on, a Norwegian student called IngrJohanna introduced herself and sat talking to us, the puppies played and the plasmas had some weird soft porn on them. In the toilets there was a toothbrush and toothpaste, and IngrJohanna told us she was living upstairs, though by the looks of it a few people were living downstairs as well.
The next day, I got a text confirming what we thought, that this was a squatted pub. It was also awesome. An absolute indictment of the plan plan plan nonsense that accompanies most peoples’ weekends. The best stories and the most fun comes from ‘going northerly when the wind blows North’, to paraphrase Captain Malcolm Reynolds. That’s how you end up sitting with a Costcutters vodka and a Rottweiller puppy at 1am in a pub with no license, laughing your tits off with some of the most awesome people you’ve ever known.
Elsewhere in DS Land
I am now connected to the internet with Animal Crossing.
I LOVE Supernatural. "Ghostfacers on three!"
At the Biennial opening in Liverpool I had this picture taken.
Elsewhere in DS Land
I am now connected to the internet with Animal Crossing.
I LOVE Supernatural. "Ghostfacers on three!"
At the Biennial opening in Liverpool I had this picture taken.
artistic
irritated