A Love Letter to a West London Pub
The finest pub in the world lies between the West-London ley lines of Portobello Road and the Westway. Few other pubs can help you justify: spending 6 hours in A&E, losing your trousers and potentially contracting scabies. But once upon a time, this insight still lay ahead of me: when my sister and I embarked on a yuletide pilgrimage to The Cow.
9pm is the witching hour when pubs’ two great tribes come together. The incumbents are the hardened alcoholics who have been nursing pints of Guinness and eking out their last threads of Golden Virginia since 5.30pm. But at 8.45pm, the first svelte millennials enter the fray. If you ask them where they work, they will mumble something about ‘creative media’ before buying you a pint out of shame with a dab of a Monzo. It was the week before Christmas and dogs were abandoned on the carpet of Shrimps fur coats, patiently waiting for their owners to take that 32 year old, serial divorcee home so that they can actually get some sleep.
We arrived just after 9pm and no sooner had I sipped my first free pint (courtesy of a friend who was bartending) when anarchy broke loose…somewhere between my legs. The middle of the pub became a blur of pedicured paws, buffed claws and snapping jaws. Several of the suede brigade squealed. Some of the older crowd started cheering for a side. I’m fairly sure I saw a insta-famed fashionista instinctively reach for a steak knife.
But I was also dimly aware that my own dog was behind me and I didn’t want him to get bitten. So I got down on one knee and made a ‘long barrier’ across the aggressor, drawing on my minimal prep-school cricket training. Thirty seconds later order was restored. The offensive dog was recaptured by his owner and I stood up to reclaim my pint.
You can imagine my confusion when my friend subsequently greeted me with the news that I was bleeding from a gash in my inner thigh. I hadn’t felt anything and assumed my legs were protected by a pair of thick Dickies cargo trousers constructed from US military grade cotton. Well, I guess the North Koreans should trade in their ICBMs for a legion of labradoodles because the bastard had bitten through them.
Defying idiom, it turned out his bite was significantly worse than his bark. Quickly I was encouraged to remove the obsolete garment so the wound could be cleaned; and remembering that I was wearing a fine pair of SirPlus paisley boxers, I was happy to comply. I was then ushered to the men’s toilets where a first-aid trained bartender cleaned the bite with antiseptic wipes. All the while, thronged crowds emphasized how important it was to get the dog owner’s details in case the dog had any diseases. I don’t think anyone thought of warning the dog (on similar grounds) about my own ailments, so I can only hope that the poor chap is alright. The bartender also forgot to close the door of the cubicle which explained the reported sightings of a bartender kneeling at the crotch of a trouser-less student. Happily it’s a liberal pub and I’ve seen stranger things happen within its auspices. When a 30-year-old lady finally joined me in the cubicle with four shots of rum I was utterly unfazed.
Disappointingly, she introduced herself as the owner of the labradoodle and proceeded to proselytise me on the healing powers of Wray & Nephew (63% ABV). I later learnt that her confession was less than spontaneous: she had been caught trying to sneak out of the pub by wary Cow patrons and then frog-marched straight to the men’s loo. I asked for her contact details and she tapped her number into my phone, leaving her name as: “Natalie Bites”! Flirtatious or downright insensitive? I’ll never know. As soon as she successfully escaped the pub, the bartending medical authority suggested that drinking the shots would be more useful than pouring them over my thigh, so we shared them, after which he suggested that I go to A&E immediately.
My experience of late night A&E wards has increased significantly since that night but even then I knew that A&Es attract the worst sort of nightlife. So instead, I limped back into the bar to bathe in admiring smiles, comradely pats and a dangerous number of free drinks. According to some unwritten pub law (or fear of legal proceedings?) free drinks would magically appear every time I finished one. I had won the pub-goers lottery and was not prepared to throw away the winning ticket for a cameo on Casualty.
This explains why I can’t remember much of the following seven hours; but I am certain it involved a trip to the Globe. No, not the iconic Shakespearean theatre, but the cramped West London shebeen whose website describes itself (surely ironically?) as a “Legendary Nightclub”. Alas, the only nature that this Globe holds a mirror up to is drunk, sweaty and probably under-age.
I woke up the following morning next to my own 30-year-old divorcee and examined the bite. The bandage had fallen off, revealing that the initial wound had metamorphosed into a throbbing, darkening welt. In a hungover daze, we stumbled down Ladbroke Grove towards the hospital and pooled a mental list of infectious diseases I might have contracted in the last 9 hours. Rabies? Scabies? Sepsis? Tetanus? Chlamydia, again??
I hobbled into St Charles’ Hospital and filled out my details with an unimpressed registrar. In the waiting room I was met by A&E stalwarts from central (London) casting. The lulu-lemmoned yuppy whose achilles surrendered half-way through their mum’s bums and tums session. The burnt out, caffeine clutching cohabitors cradling a coughing baby. The crusty fellow in the corner who is either a very sound sleeper or soon to be declared dead. Given this fine cast of accidents and emergencies, I was not offended to be at the back of the queue but I was annoyed to have left my phone and book at home. This meant my sole entertainment for the following 6 hours were weather reports, Peppa Pig and intensely scrutinising the behavior of my purgatorial comrades.
The doctor dressed the wound and sent me off with a prescription. ‘No, you’re not meant to mix alcohol with antibiotics’ ‘But yes, you can get away with the odd drink’. Christmas is a holiday where avoiding alcohol is tantamount to blasphemy so I was grateful for her blessing.
A few days and a few drinks later, I decided to text ‘Natalie’ but agonised over what tone to take. I knew that the key to winning reparations would be presenting the case with a pseudo-legal rigour. So I meticulously photographed forensic evidence: gruesome wounds, ripped trousers and pharmacist receipts. But I also had to maintain a semblance of friendliness in case I bumped into her at the pub again. I think that the resultant effect is one of visceral passive aggression but I have attached a screenshot so that you, dear reader, can decide for yourself.
In any case, I woke up the next day to find £30 in my paypal account. To a student, £30 and an evening of unlimited alcohol in exchange for a small leggy love-bite is about as good as it gets. So if there is a noble moral to be drawn from this story, I don’t think I’ve found it. Every dog has its day?
