The Waste Land: An EOTL micro-project

[David Wright]

After my move back to Glasgow last autumn to enter fatherhood, it seemed as if my EOTL days were over.  However, a brief visit to London offered the perfect opportunity to resurrect the project, albeit briefly.  (I must thank my wife, Eleanor, for granting me two days free of paternal responsibility).

Having visited all EOTL stations and officially completed the project, Dave and I were forced to think outside the EOTL box. We had to agree on a journey which would, at least, respect the essence of the project.  A trip on the recently constructed Emirates Air Line, a cable car line running over the Thames between Greenwich Peninsula and Royal Docks appealed to us both.  The two-station line does appear on the current underground map and it’s a bit out of town so we decided it kind of honoured the EOTL tradition, if not the constitutional minutiae.

I had arranged to meet Dave in the Pilot Inn, seemingly the only pub on the Greenwich Peninsula.  I exited North Greenwich station, confident that the way to the pub would be immediately apparent.  However, this twisting stretch of the Thames confuses ones sense of geography.  I approached a group of Cockney taxi drivers at a nearby rank for assistance.

‘Just keep on straight up that path, mate.  You can’t miss it.  Just keep going straight.’

I started up the straight path.  A few seconds later,

‘Oi, mate!’  A younger driver is beckoning me back to the rank.  ‘You just wanna keep to the path and go straight.  Can’t miss it, mate.  Straight ahead.’

I started up the straight path again, this time with a confident spring in my step.

The area is home to the O2 Arena, an array of multi-coloured glass and steel boxes and a stretch of manicured, geometric green space.  The Pilot Inn is situated at the end of a row of traditional terraced houses, a bizarre anachronism in this futuristic, faintly Ballardian landscape.  I found Dave relaxing in the rather attractive beer garden.  (I was thrilled when Dave informed me a few days later that the beer garden would become the Wheelchair Basketball Arena for the duration of the Paralympic Games).

After a quick pint and an excellent steak and ale pie, we headed off to the nearby Emirates Greenwich Peninsula station.  I was delighted to find that the station’s design respects London Underground’s historic love affair with modernism – an elegant, airy construction with convex facade.  We ascend over the Thames as the sun goes down.  Upstream and downstream, the views are beautiful.  The lights on the runway of City Airport twinkle in the dusk.  All too quickly, we descend into the Royal Docks station which is of a similar design to its southern counterpart.

The realisation that neither of us recall the name of the pub in which we planned to spend the second part of our evening does nothing to dampen our spirits.  We know it’s located in a nearby housing scheme in Canning Town.  Surely a pub described by one reviewer as a ‘total dive for old men and tarts’ where ‘the younger punters and the barmaids were doing drugs’ will be familiar to any passing local.  The first person we ask for directions does not fill us with confidence.

‘A pub?  No pubs round here, mate.  They closed down years ago, the lot of them.  This place is a wasteland’.

The second local responds similarly.  We’re not getting a strong sense of community pride.  Eventually, we are directed to a high street of sorts.  There’s an off licence, a bookies, a Chinese takeaway.  Still no sign of a pub, though.  After a few more fruitless enquiries, one gentleman suggests there may be ‘something’ in the basement of the hotel across the street.  We decide to investigate.  It turns out the basement of the hotel houses what can only be described as a pub.  A terrible pub in a terrible location, but a pub all the same.  We pity the tourists who have suffered the misfortune of booking into this establishment for a romantic city break.

After buying our drinks, we explore the beer garden.  It will surely beat the desperately bland interior.  Not so.  The beer garden is, in fact, a car park with some wooden furniture placed around its perimeter.  We have found EOTL’s worst pub.  After a single pint, we order a taxi.  We head into the City to meet up with Dave’s wife, Judith, who is enjoying drinks with her ‘Champagne Club’ friends.  I learn that the Club is an informal gathering founded a few months ago to promote friendly chat and respectable drunkenness, an idea close to the hearts of EOTLers everywhere.

[David Scott]

Kind of. Judith's triathlon on Sunday is in that area so we were trying to match up her transition points with qulity drinking venues. We'll have a few jars at the Custom House between swim and cycle ride I think.

[David Wright]

If you didn't go back specifically to find the Total Dive for Old Men and Tarts, I can only assume you went back to enjoy a drink in the Custom House Hotel car park.

[David Scott]

Judith and I went back (not specifically for this purpose) a few days later and still failed to find the Total Dive for Old Men ad Tarts. I can only assume that it's a sham put up on FancyAPint by some tease who wants to mess with poor feckless EOTLers.