Income Tax

Due to an extremely busy week I had to bring forward this week’s venture into the fantasy world where board games meet beer which is almost as pleasurable as my fantasy world where I can fly and x-ray specs actually work.

A boring Tuesday night wouldn’t on the face of it, seem to hold much incentive to join me for a drink, but you can imagine my pleasure when Spiky haired Ed jumped at the chance to delay his journey home. Perhaps it was the new found fame as star of this blog or maybe just the chance to listen to my dulcet tones for an hour or two…………who know? Who cares? It was certainly going to be better than talking to the walls.

The next square to be tackled is that most dreaded of ones, the £200 Income Tax fine, which usually gets you just as you pass GO. It didn’t take the imagination of an Archbishop to try to find an office of HMRC that would be a suitable venue and the ones just south of Blackfriars Bridge in Dorset House on Stamford Street fitted the bill nicely and also allowed me another foray south of the river.

Poor ITV has such bad breath the other companies won't go anywhere near him.

With the offices duly visited and photographed (the security guard looking most puzzled) a quick consultation with the Cask Marque app showed that the nearest Cask Marque accredited pub was the Fuller’s Pie and Ale house just at the end of the very same road.

Could I possibly get any worse at taking pictures?

The Mad Hatter Hotel is a very smart hostelry, with gleaming handpumps and highly polished wooden bar and a huge number of well turned out uniformed bar staff. The full range of Fuller’s ales seemed to be on and I chose the vastly underrated Chiswick Bitter, a very fine ale you unfortunately seldom see outside of the capital. Spiky haired Ed, after procrastinating for an age, plumped for a pint of Fuller’s Honeydew which came in a lovely stemmed branded glass. The attentive bar staff where more than happy to locate the Cask Marque certificate as it currently wasn’t being displayed due to a change of management and with the visit successfully captured we once more ventured out into the sunny but rainy evening.

Look ladies! It's Spiky haired Ed's shoulder!

Sensing that there was still plenty of moans and groans Spiky haired Ed needed to get off his strapping chest, I suggested we strike out back towards the Thames where there was another accredited Nicholson’s pub, The Doggets Coat and Badge (whose interesting name is fully explained on their website) which must have one of the primest of prime locations in central London. With Spiky haired Ed going for a pint of Blue Moon (just last week he was sucking on pints of Stella so we can see the signs of improvement) I chose the wonderful St Peter’s Mild, which certainly turned out to be the best pint I’ve had for quite a while. I think Spiky haired Ed’s Blue Moon was ok, although his exclamation upon finding the slice of orange in it was most amusing. “I don’t do food and drink! Well not at the same time anyway!”

View from a (Blackfriars) Bridge

So there we have it, possibly not the most exciting round so far, but there again this was meant to be Income Tax……………….and when has Tax ever been exciting?

Number of Cask Marque Pubs visited  = 39

Best Pubs and Best Beers so Far? = Quite possibly!

And how did the evening end? = Onion rings on Reading Station. AGAIN!

Next Stop =Kings Cross