Get 'em while they're fresh!

“Is there such a thing as too much of a good thing?” asked the wonderfully voiced Spine from Steam Powered Giraffe and to answer his question I would say, no.

So to that end, and after much badgering and personal requests I’ve decided to resurrect the London Pub Crawl Tour and carry on from where the Monopoly Tour left off.

Those faithful readers of the Playing Monopoly with the BGC will remember, hopefully with some sort of amusement (but probably not), the yearlong trundle around the Monopoly Board, taking in as many Cask Marque pubs as we could whilst visiting all the various property and other game squares.

And the point of this rather pointless task? Well, leaving aside the fact that it did get us out of the office and into something places just a tad more interesting, we were also following Cask Marque’s Cask Finder trail as we all (well some of us at least) tried to be crowned as Cask Marque Ambassadors.

Anyway, you need to read the first blog to see how we all got on but once this had finally finished there were a couple of forthcoming ideas muted around for a new tour, including playing Cluedo (how exactly that would work I still don’t know) or visiting some of the various blue plaques celebrating the great and the good that are littered around the streets of the capital.

But somehow none of these suggestions seemed quite right. But luckily inspiration wasn’t too far away as a superb idea was put forward by none other than one of the Monopoly Tourists, namely Big-J.

What he suggested was a similar tour round various locations, just like Monopoly, but this time following the children’s nursery rhyme “Oranges and Lemons”. For those who haven’t a clue what I’m going on about, and I was most surprised to discover that a heck of a lot of people really didn’t know this poem; you can discover a huge amount of information about the origins and the various versions here.

Big-J and I were only familiar with the 6 most common verses so we had thought that the tour might prove to be very short but the wiki page shows a much longer version and if you consider we can also “double up” on some of the locations as there’s some dispute as to which of London’s churches the rhyme refers to, there’s actually a total of at least 18 possible locations. So for those who want to plan their diaries the rhyme we’ll be following will this: 

Gay go up and gay go down,

To ring the bells of London town. 

Oranges and lemons,

Say the bells of St. Clements. 

Bull's eyes and targets,

Say the bells of St. Margret's. 

Brickbats and tiles,

Say the bells of St. Giles'. 

Halfpence and farthings,

Say the bells of St. Martin's. 

Pancakes and fritters,

Say the bells of St. Peter's. 

Two sticks and an apple,

Say the bells of Whitechapel. 

Pokers and tongs,

Say the bells of St. John's. 

Kettles and pans,

Say the bells of St. Ann's. 

Old Father Baldpate,

Say the slow bells of Aldgate. 

You owe me ten shillings,

Say the bells of St. Helen's. 

When will you pay me?

Say the bells of Old Bailey. 

When I grow rich,

Say the bells of Shoreditch. 

Pray when will that be?

Say the bells of Stepney. 

I do not know,

Says the great bell of Bow. 

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

Here comes a chopper to chop off your head. 

Chop chop chop chop

The last man's dead! 

For those who still haven’t got a clue what’s going on here’s the rules in much simpler format. 

·         We visit each of the churches mentioned in the rhyme.

·         BGC discovers at least 3 very interesting facts about the church.

·         BGC tells those facts to the rest of the tour.

·         The rest of the tour tell BGC to shut up and stop being boring.

·         We find some pubs near to the church.

·         We drink something. 

There is one final change to make clear, and I hope the good people at Cask Marque don’t strike me off their Xmas card list, but this time I’m not going to limit the tour to just Cask Marque pubs. Now let there be no misunderstanding, I still heartily endorse the Cask Marque aims and objectives but I did feel we sometimes found ourselves on a revolving carousel of Nicholson’s, Taylor Walker and Fuller’s pubs. This time I want to take in “the others” be they ale pubs, snazzy bars or horrible chain places with no redeeming features whatsoever. We may well revisit some old favourites as well and of course if there’s a new Cask Marque place to visit then, well it would be rude not to. 

So, it’s time to join hands, form a circle and begin our second childhoods. Things are going to get fruity!