After the Hawley Arms I took a stroll up towards Chalk Farm. Clare had already told me the Barfly was gone! Well, still open but a different name, maybe run by different people now, is called Camden Assembly instead. I was not planning to go in to a gig / club type event but thought I'd take a peek. Went past the Lock Tavern, that always used to be too busy / slow service so I didn't bother but went up further to The Enterprise. This was connected with Channelfly in the day, the owner / freeholder of it was the same person who owned the Barfly venue I think, we used to go in there a lot and Barfly have put on gigs there upstairs. It was dead inside, and the only real ale pump clips were turned round, no good beer! So straight out again, I didn't even stop for a cheeky use of their toilet.
Carried on past the old Channelfly offices, there's no sign we were ever there. There's not even the 109x number on the door any more but I think there must have been or our post would never have arrived... Also the Russian Tea Rooms next door has gone too. Always used to get coffee in there.
Other sights on Regents Park Road are the same, it's still unfeasibly posh. I was heading for The Queen's at the end of the road, and it did not disappoint. Still the same, still nice, nice beer, slightly quiet but sedate. A posh crowd, but not an overpriced pint. Used to spend a lot of time in here. Would have been WEIRD if any of my old friends had been in there, everyone moved away in different directions ages ago. It's fifteen years or more since we left the offices that that was the local for anyway.
I remember a few highlights from the pub, one thing was Tara Palmer Tomkinson which was spooky as it turns out. Another was spending all afternoon in there and eventually getting summoned back to the office and then sent home. A happy menory was sitting relaxing after work and deciding more or less spur of the moment to go and see The Darkness who were playing at Metro. A sign of the times that we could just decided within the hour to go to a gig, and have no trouble getting in, rather than booking a year in advance and paying hundreds of pounds to to the millenium enormo-dome. Kids today, they don't have it as easy as people make out.
Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in Hythe in Kent. Married to Clare and father to two, I'm a full stack web engineer, and I do mostly js / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. I like pubbing, running, eating, home-automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.