The Kings Arms, The Vale

Like a slug with salt poured onto it, Acton slowly and horribly slithers into nothingness. First the shops peter out, then the pubs turn into Polish discos. Female alcoholics with hideous scimitar-like teeth accost you and wail about social services and fellatio. The road becomes a wasteland, fringed by self-storage warehouses and business parks, and soon even the nutters grow scarce, defeated by the raging wind and the fact that the only available public transport terminates at Hayes Bypass. You have reached the heart of West London. You keep walking, reasoning that it can only get better. It doesn’t. You long for human contact, a face in a self-storage window, even a stray roaming nutter, but nothing happens. And then eventually: a pub, windows beaming out into the darkness, the whitewashed Edwardian baroque promising, well, humanity, if nothing else. So you go in, and it’s huge, traditional, wooden, endless table surfaces, old leather sofas, a big bar... and no people. Three blokes who look like pimps hurriedly finish their drinks and leave, and that’s it, you’re the only ones, bombarded by Scooter’s rendition of We Are the Champions echoing into the cavernous void. The Hayes Bypass suddenly seems very exciting indeed. This is what you get for visiting the middle of nowhere.

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