Vauxhall pubs

Saturday night, and the only sound to be heard is that of old men expiring into their pints. Nothing happens for a long time. In the saloon bar the occasional statue of a petrified drinker punctuates the shoddy decor, while out to the side we are alone, all alone, in a large and dismal room that looks embarrassed by its own crapness. We desperately cling on to a conversation but I begin to feel overwhelmed by the deathly stillness of the place. A glazed and hideous silence slides into my heart. A whole lot more nothing happens, followed by a particularly long spell of nothing. Time slows, and I lose the will to live. It's much like suspended animation in sci-fi movies, only with bad wallpaper rather than dry ice and glass pod-type things. And, unlike sci-fi films, when we finally escape, the world's still the same outside... It's a mystery how some pubs survive. Stuck on a back street miles from civilisation, Wyvils should have died years ago, particularly after its astonishing transformation from an old man's boozer to a failed trendy bar, in a district where trendy bars are as welcome as a dose of bird flu. And yet it still relentlessly opens, day after day, rows of plain tables sitting empty, bored barman parked reading the paper; waiting for a burst of Ennio Morricone and the entrance of Clint Eastwood or Lee van Cleef; anything to disturb the dust and the South London tumbleweed. Truly odd.

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