Literary Pub Crawl

Paul and I went up to London Bridge for a drink after work on Wednesday. We turned right when we came out of the station this time and worked our way east along the river and then back again as follows:

The Copperage (48-50 Tooley Street, SE1 2SZ)
The Horniman (Hay's Galleria, Tooley St, SE1 2HU)
Dean Swift (32 Lanfone Street, SE1 2LX)
Anchor Tap (28, Horselydown Lane, Bermondsey, SE1 2LN)
Elusive Camel (186, Tooley St, SE1 2TZ)
Bunch of Grapes ( 2, St. Thomas St, SE1 9RS)

The Dean Swift has large framed photos of Robert Maxwell and Richard Nixon on the wall. "Ho, ho. Very satirical."

Near St. Saviour's Dock, we stumbled - I think that is the operative word - upon "Jacob's Island" in which Bill Sikes meets his nasty end in Oliver Twist. So Dublin is not the only place for a literary pub crawl.

Here is Dickens' description of the area:

"... crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem to be too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud and threatening to fall into it - as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations, every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage: all these ornament the banks of Jacob's Island."

And to think you imagined we were out having fun. Speaking of fun, due to some last minute cancellations and rearrangements in the giddy social whirl, there seems every danger that tonight I might be exposed to:

Solo banjo chaos, featuring original material and the works of The Ramones, The Clash, a 19th Century romantic Spanish song and a Gaelic rendition of a Roy Orbison classic.

Pray for me.