In 1989 I made the decision to leave my home town and head for the smoke. The Boro was dead. All of the local industries were being closed or run down. Shipbuilding all but dissapeared and Steel, Chemicals and local government decimated. Working in a government Job Centre was really depressing. There were no jobs to be had. A local supermarket advertised for a part time trolley attendant and we got 3,000 applications. Time for a change. I applied for a transfer to Dept of Employment Overseas Labour Service in London. They did Work permits for overseas workers. I always loved London so it was a no brainer. The advertisement also said the Dept was relocating to Sheffield (cradle of The Anglogalician in the not too distant future but in a galaxy far, far away) in a few years with the clincher being they would pay all expenses to live in London and for the move to Sheffield. I had a little house in Boro bought from my sister for £19,000. As it happened my sister had moved to Sheffield to do Teacher training and she recommended the City to me. I had only been to Sheffield twice, to see Eric Clapton at City Hall and Bruce Springsteen at Bramall Lane but a few Boro lads had moved there. More of that later.
I had always loved London and had been a regular visitor for as long as I can remember. In my first job with Ministry of Defence I spent two weeks on a training course in Holburn and was introduced to one of my favourite pubs, the Museum Tavern opposite the British Museum. I also went in the Princess Louise which is still pretty much unchanged apart from a brief disastrous period when the were taken over by Vaux Brewery. I had been to the Vaux brewery tap in Sunderland and the Beer didn't travel well more than a few hundred yards! They now sell Sam Smiths so as well as being a great historical boozer, it's cheap. Anyway I went for the job interview to the office in Tothill Street, close to Westminster Cathedral and Parliament Square. They told me next day that I should start work the following Monday. I let a friend of mine stay in my house rent free until I decided to sell and with a suitcase and a bag full of C90 music tapes I headed South. For the first month I stayed with my mate Jim and his wife who was an old friend too in Putney. For that month I went to the pub every night and at weekends. It was exhausting but great fun. Our main drinking hole was the Half Moon at Putney, a famous music pub with bands on most nights. You could regularly see, or hear practicing from the bar to the music room, Steve Marriot and the Packet of Three, Dr Feelgood, Roy Harper plus many touring US blues and Country bands. You could also get a canny pint of Fullers with the Brewery being nearby in Chiswick.
After a month of terrible hangovers and standing on a crowded tube from Putney to St James Park I decided in the interests of my liver to move closer to the office in Westminster. I settled on a Bed n Breakfast Hotel in a street round the corner from Victoria Coach Station. I got a good deal 9n rent as I was staying long term and it was 15/20 minutes walk to the office. Even with a Hang over that was possible, hurrah. The next couple of months were spent getting to know the area around Westminster. Every day we would finish work at 5 then cross the road to another Government building Steel House then up to the 5th floor where there was.... a bar! Yes a proper bar looking like the snug of your local but subsidised by Government so cheap ale too. Fantastic. Problem was the building closed at 7.30 when you were kicked out onto the street. No problem though as there were several excellent pubs in close proximity. The nearest were the Feathers and Two Chairmen, then the Buckingham Arms, which was and still is a Youngs brewery pub so served excellent beer. With the Palace of Westminster being close it was a regular occurance to see the occasional Govt Minister or MP boozing away instead of running the country. Bastards. The closest pub to Parliament is the Red Lion and it's always full of MPs pissing it up while watching the Parliament channel on TV and running across the road the The Houses of Parliament when the Division Bell rang for a vote. They soon came back to the pub. Bastards. Anyway we soon expanded our pub radat to Victoria and Pimlico. London is weird in that in amongst the properties owned by millionaires and Russian Oligarchs their are "council estates" where the ordinary people live. Pimlico was one, which meant it could get rough. Like Boro full of Cockneys.
In one incident we made the mistake of beating the locals at darts and pool on thier own Manor so it got a bit minty and we were surrounded by a gand of knuckle scraping neanderthals intent on harm. We were saved when the Police arrived to escorts us safely from the pub as we sang Yorkshire, Yorkshire triumphantly. We never went back to that pub. One great pub we discovered was the Grafton on Sutton Ground, off Victoria Street. It had been a regular for British comedy legends The Goons, Peter Sellars, Spike Milliga, Harry Seacombe and Micheal Benteen who practised thier way out routines in an upstairs room. They were a great inspiration to Monty Python and they liked a pint. I found drinking in London was very different to up North, apart from the price! In Boro you always went home after work, had your tea, then went back out to the pub. In London as most people couldn't afford to live in the City they lived miles out of town. So they went to the pub after work until around 9.00pm when they got the tube home. So the pubs were packed from 5 to 9 when they would empty out. I of course could stay out until closing time it was only about 20 minutes walk to my Hotel. Even so one night I stopped for a piss climbing the fence into St James Park where I fell asleep on a park bench. Good job it was summer. So that went on Monday to Friday but on Saturday I would meet up with Putney Jim (he was actually from Huddersfield and a rabid Terriers fan) and we would explore the lengths and depths of the capital. We always ended up in a pub for the footie results at 5 though. We also went to a few games at Arsenal, Chelsea and Fulham and ad Huddersfield Town were struggling at the time we visited Barnet, Brentford, Aldershot and Watford too. On one of our first jaunts we followed the river from the North side from St Paul's to Greenwich stopping at a few famous boozers along the way including the Ship inn and the Prospect of Whitby which is viable from the river and on its Dock they used to hang pirates. Given the prices in the pub they should have hung the landlord. This was the start of my two year stay in Capital City. For more shenanigans wait for the next instalment coming soon.
