Community Chest #1

When I initially thought about doing this game  I thought it might be an extra challenge to not do just the property squares but try to include the other squares, like the Electricity Company or The Jail also. What I hadn’t really thought about were the Chance and Community Chest squares.

Now to cover the Chance squares there’s plenty of scope for some sort of random pub destination decision making but on the other hand, the Community Chest? What does that even mean? This might prove more of a problem.

Well, and to spoil any anti-climax, in fact it didn’t turn out that way at all. A quick Google of the words “Community Chest London” produced a link to the Cripplegate Foundation which runs the “Islington Community Chest”. These good people have their offices at 76 Central Street, which is just north of Barbican tube station, a place I travel through every working day.

So thinking that the journey to this location would be a damn sight easier than the last one I thought a quick stop off on a Friday evening would be a good idea. At first things went well, a quick stroll up Old Street and the offices of the Cripplegate Foundation were found, right next door to one of the more energetic games of 5-a-side I’ve seen for quite a while.

The first card from the top of Community Chest deck.

It was then time to move onto the nearest Cask Marque pub which turned out to be another Weatherspoon’s, this time the rather oddly named Masque Haunt. A vast, soulless monstrosity of a corner pub this place was just where I didn’t want to be on a busy Friday evening. The service was fast and friendly and the range of 10 ales was by far superior than The Rockingham Arms (see Old Kent Road) but I came to the sudden crashing realisation that when on your own a full, crowded pub isn’t a good place to be. Some people can oh so easily strike up conversations with strangers, and whilst not a shy person, faced with pockets of well acquainted people I shrunk further into my shell. The pint of Adnams Gunhill was fine but I couldn’t get out of the place fast enough, so fast in fact I didn’t find the Cask Marque certificate even after a close scan of all the walls.

Someone talk to me!

Not wanting to completely waste the evening I made my way back to the tube via Bunhill Row knowing that another Cask Marque pub lay in this direction. Fuller’s Artillery Arms is another corner pub but couldn’t be more different than the Masque Haunt. Traditional, cosy and with a fantastic square bar plonked in the middle of the room, the teaming Friday night crowd were falling out of the door to drink along side the cemetery opposite. The Cask Marque certificate was propped on a table by the window and although I can claim to have stood manfully waiting to be served, I gave up and slunk away with a scan but not a drink drunk.

Must come back to this place - Must also take better photos!

Number of Cask Marque Pubs visited = 35

Target for next visit: Speak to someone! = 0

Apologies to Gash Man = No opportunity for knob gags

Next Stop = Whitechapel Road

Old Kent Road

Ask anyone to name a square on the Monopoly board and there’s a pretty good chance they’ll name the Old Kent Road, the very first square on the board and the one which yields the least amount of money when an opponent lands on it. It’s also the only property that lies south of the river Thames. In fact, it not only lies south of the river but in comparison to how the other properties are all clustered around the square mile, it lies a long bloody way south of the river! To make matters even worse, checking out the Cask Marque website it would seem that the nearest Cask Marque pub is the Kentish Drovers which is even further away, another kilometre or so south on Peckham High Street.

As any regular visitor to London knows the south isn’t served very well by the Underground with only a couple of the lines venturing under the river. The nearest station to the Old Kent Road is the Elephant and Castle and it was one Tuesday evening that I found myself wandering the labyrinth of the subway that weaves its merry way underneath the Elephant and Castle roundabout. Seriously, no matter how good your sense of direction you seem to pop up nowhere near where you were heading!

Pink Elephants but no Delirium Tremens.

Upon venturing above ground the first sight that greeted me seemed very familiar but was one I couldn’t out my finger from where I knew it. The sign said “The Charlie Chaplin” but it was almost as if I was seeing a photograph in real life, ah well perhaps it would come to me later on.

In order to get my bearings I checked the Cask Marque app and discovered that whilst the Kentish Drovers was near to the south end of the Old Kent Road, just off the Elephant and Castle roundabout was another pub, the Rockingham Arms which is about the same distance away from the Old Kent Road as the Kentish Drovers but this time from the north end. Deciding that this would be by far the more sensible of the two to visit I made a quick dash down the New Kent Road to the very start of the Old Kent Road, took a photo to prove I’d been there and then dashed back again to the Rockingham Arms.

If you look very closely the sign does say "Old Kent Road".....honest!

The Rockingham Arms is part of the Weatherspoon’s chain and whilst I have much respect for the great work they have done (good ranges of cask ales, fantastic value and keeping many a run down corner of the high street trading) they can also be awfully identical, impersonal and pretty bland. The Rockingham Arms was always going to have its work cut out anyway. Housed in what I’ve learnt from the Weatherspoon’s site was the former HQ for the Department of Heath and Social Security it looks like something that been transposed from 1970’s East Germany. This has to be one of the ugliest buildings ever. The large plate glass frontage has all the style and welcome of a carpet salesroom and the interior décor (which looks like a cross between a run down cinema and a run down amusement arcade) does nothing to improve this.

That said, it was clean and far from overcrowded although there was the perennial Wetherspoon’s clientele that seem to always be there no matter what Wetherspoon’s you visit. The range of beers was pretty basic with only Greene King Abbot Ale, Ruddles Best and London Pride on draught, and when you see London Pride being described as a Guest Beer (in London no less!) you do have question whether this pub needs to ask their supplier a question or two.  Service though was lightening fast, I reckon my meal came within 10 minutes and the pint of Ruddles Best was actually very nice, and a £1.85 a pint can you really complain?

Return to Stalag Luft III

 

Bar at the Rockingham Arms, Cask Marque certificate on the right.

Final word on the pub was a visit to the gents which felt like wandering the corridors of a cruise ship before you could do your business…………perhaps the former employees of the DHSS were only allowed limited comfort breaks?

Keep going for the loos............

With the proudly displayed Cask Marque certificate snapped I was on my way again, via the slow train from Waterloo to Reading which seems to stop at every village and hamlet on the way. If you’re ever on this train, check out the recorded announcer’s voice when he calls the station names. He obviously hates the journey to the next place, but loves arriving. “The next station will be Ascot” and the voice is all sad and depressed, whereas “This is Virginia Water” is yelled with a high rising inflection that would make an Aussie blush. Ah well, kept me awake……..just, and then I realised where I’d seen Chaplin’s Bar before! Page 72 of The Rough Pub Guide by Paul Moody and Robin Turner, which says it should have been pulled down in 2010. Perhaps the demolition crew are lost in the subway?

Number of Cask Marque Pubs visited = 34

Number of amusing people seen = 0

Next Stop = Community Chest?

Setting up and reading the rules.......

OK, I like drinking beer. I like drinking beer in pubs. And because I’m a bloke with a potential smattering of OCD, I like lists and collecting. How then to combine all of this.

Well, the good people at Cask Marque have made a start by launching their very own smart phone app called “Cask Finder”. This app allows users to locate nearby pubs which hold the Cask Marque accreditation and then upon visiting the pub, the user can “scan” the QR code on the pub’s certificate and log their visit with the Cask Marque database. Like all good “collection schemes” there are wonderful prizes to be had, for 25 visits you get a bottle opener, for 50 visits; a T-Shirt, but before you decry these prizes seemingly stolen from the set of Blankerty Blank, for 100 visits you become a Cask Marque Ambassador (worthy prize enough!) but you also receive a brewery visit.

Lucky enough to work in London, there are literally hundreds of Cask Marque accredited pubs located in the city, but having visited all the ones most local to where I work I needed a plan to search further afield to claim some more scans.

I’d heard about a trail around London which tries to take in a pub on every street that features on the Monopoly Board. There are some amusing web sites that describe various people’s attempts at doing this, which normally try to achieve this feat in one day. Most of these attempts exclude the Water Works, Electricity Company and the jail, but even so, with 26 stops along the way, this is not something for the faint hearted.

Thinking there would be some mileage in combining the two events, I wondered if I could also drink around the Monopoly board but find a Cask Marque pub as near as possible to the street or board feature (yes, lets try to include every square!). Obviously I wouldn’t be able to do my attempt in one day, but it would still be fun to have a direction in which to take my search for more Cask Marque scans.

So here we go, let’s lay out the board, choose our pieces (I’m the iron by the way so you can’t choose that!) count out the money and roll those dice……….in my rules we don’t need to go round once without making a purchase!