Falling Down the Thames Blog 13, 11th June 2014
Thames Pubs
For reasons that they won’t explain to me, my publishers make a big deal out of the fact that I like to drink beer. They feel the need to point this out on the dust jackets of my books. Book reviews have described me as “hard-drinking.” I even received a fan letter from a reader who claimed that she feared for my liver.
There is a big difference between a drinker and a drunkard, and let me reassure you that I am the former. I love life. I like beer. I like real ale. I hate cold carbonated cat pee.
I also like good pubs. They are a place to assemble, and to celebrate the glory of the day just passed. My number one, all-time favourite pub is the Three Judges on Dumbarton Road in the West End of Glasgow, Scotland. The Three Judges has all of the features that I look for in a pub. It has a constantly changing assortment of real ales on tap, and at a reasonable price. They don’t play recorded music, and although there is a television mounted on the wall, in the fifteen months that I lived in Glasgow, I never saw it turned on. And, best of all, the Three Judges staff never seemed to mind when I nursed a pint for a couple of hours while editing my writing on my laptop.
And when Krista and I are Falling Down the Thames, I plan to lead her into an assortment of pubs. In terms of beer, Krista is still a beginner, and so I will always order two different beers, let her taste both, and then let her have whichever she likes better. A scholar and a gentleman.
In order to make a significant positive contribution to the lives of people living in southern England, I feel that Krista and I should construct a list of the best pubs along the Thames. Perhaps a top-ten list would work well. Rate the beer, the service and the ambience, and then report.
The good people of Britain’s Ordnance Survey have done such an incredibly thorough job of creating their maps, that small blue icons in the shape of beer glasses indicate the positions of pubs. This creates a problem, because if Krista and I apply our two-kilometre rule to our beer-seeking activities, we would probably find that there are thousands of pubs along the River Thames and the south shore of the Thames Estuary.
As a result, I have decided to narrow the parameters a bit. If patrons can see the Thames River from the grounds of a pub, then Krista and I will consider sampling its wares. If not, the pub will have to find free publicity elsewhere. Curiously, this will probably exclude The Thames Head Inn in Kemble because the head of the Thames is about 500 metres away.
And if you have any thoughts about great pubs that Krista and I may wish to visit, please write to let us know.
- Glen
Photo credits: The Three Judges, Glasgow - www.scoopergen.co.uk; List of real ales at the Three Judges – 4.bp.blogspot.com