Headlining Fleet Street: That Friday Feeling (a pint thereof)

Oh my god. It's been a mad couple of weeks, which seem to have been spent mostly on trains. Let me take you back to the beginning. I've been keeping it all up to date in fragments but it's not been presentable(-ish) until now.

Hastily sketched out on Friday 23rd September- No sign of fainting girl- for those the missed it, my moment of shining glory can be found here. Should have seized the moment and ridden the rescuer vibe when I could, I fear. Onto the actual role- good God it's boring. Banks are not my cup of tea, it seems, but I can swallow any bitter medicine should it make me better or get me money, to extend the metaphor. This won't do either, so I think the days of my time there are numbered. A job, anything involving money, is needed over an internship at the moment, methinks.

Written in first free moment since then-
As mentioned above, this internship isn't entirely what I thought I'd be doing. I suppose nothing ever is, especially when working for free. Still, I'm going to have to see how it goes because I'm sat in the corner, lugging a computer in and out every day when they have company laptops, changing digits in word documents. I'm a record keeper, sort of, but it's more like data input. About banks and the American lending situation sending everything up shit creek.

Like most workers, then, I was in a pretty desperate mood to get my drink on on the Friday. So it was just as well I'd arranged just that- a good old fashioned series of pints with a mate from uni. Step up to the plate, Rob Higson, and take a bow. We met in The Hole in the Wall, a cracking establishment built into the arches under the bridge at Waterloo Station. I'd been there once before, when meeting Mr Higson for a drink before we shuffled to the IMAX to use my free ticket and plus1 to see Inception before it was released at a press screening. That was during the last internship I subjected myself to, last year, so it seemed a pretty fitting place to start. It's got character, and really decently priced beer given that it's next to Waterloo Station.

From there we shuffled on to The Anchor and Hope, which neither of us had been in before. It's covered in signed photos of actresses and actors inside, and after a bit of research that's because a lot of them apparently go in there, a lot. It's nice in there, a real dark wood and bar stools kind of place, with pretty good beer on. A bit more costly than the Hole in The Wall, though, and being Friday it was full of people who'd just finished work.

We then took the perhaps unwise decision to go to The Crown, a British pub done up like an American grill. It's a weird mix, with light wood furnishings and Poles behind the bar, serving buffalo wings and British ale, and unfortunately it doesn't quite work. It was reasonably busy, but that might have been because people needed their drinks. It was Friday, after all, and it was nowhere near "bustling".

Which can also be said for The Stage Door, right behind the actual Stage Door of the Old Vic. However, it was nice in there. Dark wood again, really dim light, and it looked almost exactly like The Winchester from Shaun of the Dead from outside. The barman was great, the beer was great and even though it was only about a fifth full (if that) it felt like a good place to sit and have a good few drinks.

The Fire Station, our last stop, was not so empty. We'd passed it on the way to The Crown, and passed on it as it was heaving out of the door. The bouncer had looked at us a bit shiftily, and we weren't sure, as Rob put it, we "looked cool enough". But in the end we breezed right through to the bar, got a couple of pints in, and Rob threw in chips for good measure. The restaurant section was empty, but the bar was packed. The one thing that really bugged me was the place didn't seem to know what it wanted to be called- Fire Station or Fire House. The uniforms and signs all said different things.

Now, I should probably mention that having had no money for a while I hadn't been to the pub in a good few weeks. It was only when I was sat on the train home from Kings Cross that I realised how out of practice I was. Nine pints + no dinner wouldn't normally have slaughtered me. It did, however, and I had to be up early the next day to do everything I'd meant to do that week before heading to Manchester.

Also saw the Wellington, which I'm told is great pub but was clearly too good with the locals for us to get into as it was heaving, and what Rob tells me is the latest in swanky chic restaurants, Imbibe, which was absolutely empty when we wandered past, and the sign for which apparently read Bar Restaurant Garden, but looked like it had been designed by someone squinting and then manufactured by seismograph.

I found myself continuing the aforementioned Friday feeling, oddly, on the next Monday (when, I'm told, you should be fresh-faced and sharp), as the commute took a downward turn as I was homeward bound. A cracking weekend where I hadn't actually got any rest had occurred between severe pintage (elaborated on here). I was therefore shattered and therefore not happy when the train stopped just as we were accelerating out of Kings Cross.

Turned out a "signal failure" across all signals from Finsbury Park resulted in being sat on a train going nowhere after about thirty seconds of movement. Cue everyone grumbling, and the fifteen percent of us who weren't on the phone when they got on the train reaching for them. It was like a call centre or something. But I got some writing done in the old Moleskin. Looked like a pretentious knob, but there you are.