My local Irish boozer is a quiet, no-thrills establishment – and I love it. But my friend’s drink order made jaws drop
I love my local pub in west London. It’s very Irish, which is how I like my pubs. You can’t move for gastropubs round me, and while they have their place, I’ll take my very Irish local any day over any of them. Unless of course I want something more substantial to eat than Tayto crisps. It’s generally rather quiet in there, outside your rowdier weekend evenings, and quiet time is what I tend to want from a pub these days. There are a few screens showing various sports, but the volume is usually unobtrusively low. I love this place.
But last week something happened that may have damaged my standing in this establishment for ever. I popped in early on a Friday evening with some old friends, a couple about my age who were down from the West Midlands for the weekend. One half of this happy couple is a very enthusiastic drinker; the other hardly takes alcohol at all. My favourite bartender was on duty, a lovely woman from Dublin. I ordered a couple of pints of Guinness and asked my non-drinking friend if she would like her usual, a still mineral water. “No,” she said. “I’ll have half a Guinness shandy.”
