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VERSION:2.1
N:The Pride of Spitalfields
FN:The Pride of Spitalfields
TEL;WORK;VOICE:020 7247 8933
ADR;WORK:;;3 Heneage Street;E1 5LJ
URL:
NOTE:Time warp! I was only seven when the 1970s imploded in a brown hairy haze, so the only 70s London pubs I know are the one's I've seen either on TV (most notably in 'The Sweeney') or in films (Hitchcock's 'Frenzy', Carry On films, 'Withnail and I' etc). What I deduced from these was that 1970s pubs were full of old people, market traders and off-duty policemen drinking bitter that smelled of old socks. Pubs were Not Glamorous, they weren't fun, it was just part of life, like having to eat or go to the toilet. As soon as I stepped through the door of 'The Pride of Spitalfields' I knew I'd found a portal through time, and more specifically, back to 1976. Old people, market traders and off-duty policemen squeezed themselves in huge family groups about the tables, while the less stout and more mad stood by the bar, staring at ranks of bitter that very probably smelled of old socks, if anything could be smelled above the WMD-style toxic fog of cigar and cigarette smoke rolling voluptuously across the bar. Everything was brown and defiantly Not Glamorous, everyone seemed to know each other, sinister elevations of Hawksmoor's scary nearby church leered from the walls in lieu of decorations. Young people tried to get to the bar and were rebuffed by a sturdy crowd of tweed jacket-wearing regulars. Once I got served, I found a table in the brown wooden annexe, and was immediately hemmed in by a huge crowd of cheery, gregarious regulars who seemed to swallow up the entire volume of the room. I seemed to slip further into the 70s as free roast potatoes were dished up to every table, and suddenly I was lost in a dizzy free-fall of images: meat and two veg, oil crisis, glam-rock, hairy sideboards, On The Buses, 'ooh missus' smut, Robin Asquith and Sid James. My only way out was to stare at the TV, which by some device was transmitting pictures from the future. I discovered with horror that in 2004 we would not be wearing silver shoulder pads and driving floating cars, no cellophane monsters had yet attacked the moon, we would still be in the middle of an oil crisis and America would once again be involved in a dodgy war somewhere on the other side of the globe. It looked rubbish. I think I'll stay in 1976.
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