Pancakes and Fritters say St Peter upon Cornhill

This week’s episode begins with a question……When is a paper clip not a paper clip? When it’s a tie clip of course, which as a joke doesn’t work at all but it seems to be a subject that Lisa, (aka Payroll’s version of Diana Dors) wouldn’t let go of and found immeasurably and quite unreasonably funny.

You can almost smell the swarveness.

The tie clip in question is this beautiful piece of male jewellery which my darling, and long suffering wife bought for my birthday the other week. I think it adds a certain “man about town” swarveness to my appearance which only one as finely moustachioed and I can carry off. Lisa on the other hand seems to think that I’d nicked a paper clip from work and was using it in a vain attempt to keep my tie from flying away, but there again this is a woman who actually wants to get rid of her “thigh gap” so what can she possibly know about looking good.

What she does know though is that the appalling Slug & Lettuce downstairs serves two-for-one cocktails at half five of an evening which is a much better place to wait for Spikey Haired Ed to finally finish work than hanging around the office’s cash machine like a load of delinquent teenagers.

Mickey seems to find Lisa's paper-clip jokes quite funny.....

So after the two-for-one cocktails were finished, or in the case of Natasha and Kevin, the four-for-two cocktails were finished, (and my insipid pint of Amstel) we wandered back to the offices to pick up Ed only to find his time keeping was as good as ever and he was nowhere to be seen. The rest of the tour set off for the short walk to Leadenhall Market, although by the way some of them were whinging about the less than 1 mile walk you’d think I’d asked them to hike the length of Hadrian’s Wall. I hung around like the world’s most unattractive rent boy and then gave up on the king of hair wax and marched off myself.

The bright lights of Leadenhall Market.

So as I make the 15 minute trip to Leadenhall Market I’d better explain what this week’s tour was all about and who had made it out for the evening. This week’s church was St Peter upon Cornhill which is located in the middle of a concrete jungle of office blocks and is only approachable through a rabbit warren of narrow alleyways. The church is just over the road from the well-known and previously mentioned Leadenhall Market which seems to crop up in nearly every film that features a scene in London. What Leadenhall Market does have, apart from filmability, is a few pubs dotted around its interior and it was to two of these that we planned to kick our evening off with.

Young's Lamb Tavern.

The first was Young’s Lamb Tavern and it was there that I met back up with Mickey, Munchkin Steve and the rest of the Payroll reprobates; Natasha, Kevin, Lisa and Pissed-Up Phil. Also meeting us there was Gemma fresh back from the arse-end of the world and accompanied by her non-boyfriend, a fine figure of a man called Sam. The final pieces of the jigsaw were Mr Clark, bravely coming back to the tour without Mr Cheeseman and only moments behind my arrival a flustered looking Spikey Haired Ed.

The Lamb Tavern is a lovely “ye olde world pub” which is well worth a visit especially as Young’s are also giving away free drink vouchers, many thanks to the eagle eyed Munchkin Steve for spotting these. The vouchers aren’t as good as the Fuller’s ones because the drinks range is limited but a free pint of Young’s Bitter should never be rejected. The pub is well known for the wrought iron spiral staircase, etched glass and the tiled mural of Sir Christopher Wren presenting his plans for the Monument to the Great Fire of London (hidden behind the door) is so good I forced everyone to take a look.

Lisa's paper-clip jokes as viewed through a pint of Young's Bitter.

It was here that Lisa launched here attack on my tie clip much to her own amusement. Admittedly my defence wasn’t too great; I tried to liken my tie-clip looking like a paper-clip to her bag looking like a bag and of course attacking a woman’s bag is tantamount to violent incest so this didn’t win me any points or favours. Luckily for the rest of the tour Lisa is more or less completely off her noggin on prescription drugs at the moment so mixing these with alcohol isn’t the best idea in the world. Showing a very old head on very young shoulders she decided to leave for home after the Lamb and so the tour was much quieter but all the more duller for her departure.

Morland Original. Exactly what it says on the clip.

As previously mentioned the next pub was at the other end of the market, this time a Greene King pub called The New Moon. Here we didn’t have any vouchers but we did get a very nice pint of Morland’s Original, well for me and Mr Clarke at least. We escaped the crush of the bar and the hordes of people who had decided to watch the Clegg vs Farage debate in the pub (Really?) and it was here that the final tourist of the night arrived and heralded a huge turning point in the life of the housewives answer to George Clooney. Spikey Haired Ed has, and this will come as a huge surprise to regular readers of the blog and a huge disappointment to the legion of teenage Jackie readers, been in a relationship for the past 18 months in one of the worst kept secrets ever. In an attempt to “go public” he brought along the delightful and minute Reena to savour the pleasures of the tour.

So once this shock was gotten over and once Gemma and Natasha had gagged down their delightful halves of Greene King Yardbird we moved on, which was just a case of crossing of Gracechurch Street and into what I understand to be the largest Wetherspoons in the country, The Crosse Keys. Many of us have been in this monstrous place before but we’ve never covered it on one of our tours and it’s well worth a visit just to take in the impressive size and extremely well done conversion that Wetherspoon’s did to turn this former bank into a very nice pub.

The beer range is extensive and the downside to this is that it’s difficult to see exactly what is on offer with the handpumps circled around the central bar. The flat screens which are used during beer festivals were all off so it was a bit of a case of ordering what could be seen directly in front of you. In an attempt to go for something different I plumped for pints of Köstritzer Black Lager which although extremely nice, at £4.75 a pint must be one of the most expensive pints in a Wetherspoon’s ever.

For some reason we clustered around the stairs to the toilets to shoot the breeze. Unfortunately between myself and Spikey Haired Ed the most interesting thing we can remember from this time was an umbrella falling on the floor. Hey, that’s the crazy life we lead!

When I had researched the pubs I’d discovered a “short cut” leading from the church to the back door of the Crosse Keys so led the troops out of the this exit for the short spin around the corner directly into the church yard. Of course I’d forgotten how like herding cats it is to try to get this unruly mob into any sort of order and needless to say by the time we’d covered the 10 yards or so, we’d lost half the people somewhere on route.

St Peter keeps a look out for the missing tourists.

Not wanting to make them all hang around like spare chimps at a tea party I did the church talk once only to have the lost souls finally appear at the end of the speech and so had to do the whole thing again. Luckily the talk was one of the shorter ones. St Peter upon Cornhill was a return to a Christopher Wren built church (see there was a reason I wanted you to see the tiles!) being another one which was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and then rebuilt shortly afterwards. It is currently not used for regular services but is an addition to nearby St Helens (to be covered in a later episode) and is used for study groups and youth clubs. It is, apparently, built on the highest point within the City of London and is mentioned by Dickens in his novel “Our Mutual Friend”……..is that enough? Right let’s get a drink.

Rumours that St Peter is the patron saint of basketball are get to be confirmed.

One of the nicest things about St Peter’s is that not only does it back onto the Crosse Keys but it also backs onto the final pub, another Fuller’s emporium (vouchers at the ready everyone) called The Counting House. This gorgeous place of glass and brass had many confused between this place and the Old Bank of England (covered in the Monopoly visit to Fleet Street) and seeing as they were both built in former banks.

The ceiling in The Counting House.

I got the vouchered round in for Mr Clark, Ed, the future Mrs Ed and a couple of others and although the effeminate Latino barman was all smiles and winks I’m sure he miscalculated one of the vouchers and we still ended up paying a tenner for one drink and some crisps. Still a pint of Fuller’s ESB for next to nothing is still a delight.

Mr Clark looking impressed at Phil's conversation techniques.

The final episodes of the evening before the tube journey with Mr Clark, apart from watching Pissed-Up Phil descend into a blathering mess of double gins and inappropriate sexual innuendoes were spotting Stretch Arm-Max, former colleague and one time Monopoly Tourist last seen somewhere around the environs of Liverpool Street Station. I was then subjected to thousands of Gemma’s holiday photos which were only broken up by snaps of her nephew and the most beautiful fringe in the southern hemisphere.

And on that dreamy note…………we’ll sign off. Cheers!

The dangers of the selfie.

Halfpence and farthings say St Martin Orgar.

Everyone will have experienced that occasion when you’ve planned a night out and in the lead up everyone else seems to be well up for a big exciting party. You’re looking forward to the main event and then when it finally comes along it seems to deflate like a soggy balloon and somehow all the big plans and big ideas don’t quite deliver what they seem to have promised.

And likewise of course, there’s that situation where you’re not particularly expecting a momentous evening and yet somehow it turns out to be one of those cracking nights out where everyone seems to have a whale of a time.

Guess where we're going today?

Quite why I’d thought this particular venture would be a damp squib I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps it was because key people from Payroll were still sunning on southern hemisphere weather and gorging themselves on New Zealand wine and Lord of Rings landscapes and perhaps it was because the IT department put in an appalling showing of personnel with only 3 fighting gladiators stepping forward. In many respects this should have always been viewed as a potential successful night because it was another tour that would take place very close to the office and that didn’t require a tube journey to get us to the first pub.

Could be near here........

The only complication was again around the actual leaving of the office but the wait for the Payroll sluggards, i.e. Brenda and Lucie, was made easier by retirement of the rest of us to the awful Slug & Lettuce beneath the office block for a pint of Freedom Organic Lager from the Freedom brewery.

If you look very carefully you can see the spikey hair of Spikey Haired Ed.

Half an hour later with everyone finally gathered together it was a gentle evening’s stroll in the cool spring sunshine down Upper Thames Street to the first pub, a Nicholson’s emporium called The Walrus and Carpenter. The pub features the Lewis Carroll dining room which just goes to prove that you really can take a theme just that little bit too far.

The Walrus and Carpenter. And Brenda's red coat.

In all reality though it’s actually a very nice pub in a rather identikit Nicholson’s brass and etched glass kind of way. There was a fair old crowd both in and outside the pub but we squeezed in and managed to lay claim to a corner table underneath the wall mounted TV which was playing a European football match that no-one was watching.

Mags steals some Oatmeal Stout and then goes back to wine.

The beer selection was good, much better in fact that the selection of the beer drinkers, as it was only Brenda and me who were partaking of the ales this evening. First on the line for us was the Oatmeal Stout from Broughton Brewery, which although smooth and tasty could have done with a bit more pep in it. The rest of the night’s tourist were making do with a variety of lagers, (Spikey Haired Ed & Phil) vodka fun drinks (Natasha and Kevin) and white wine (Lucie and Mags).

After a little while and a little detour to the wrong pub, love’s young dreams turned up after lining their stomachs at a well known chain of burger joints. If one was counting these things, one might say this is coming a bit of a habit. James joined the lager drinkers and Lisa joined those sipping the white wine.

You can smell the chicken nuggets from here.

Their late arrival meant that our departure from the pub was slightly disjointed but with a set of good directions and promises of meeting up with us in a short while, 6 of use set off for the journey to the underground promise of the Porter’s Lodge.

Yes, I know I said 6, but I'm taking a phone call and Mag's is taking a phone call.

I’d stumbled on this place during a lunchtime break and unless you were looking for the place you’d probably miss the single A-board sign outside and the short flight of stairs down to the bar. The pub does seem to be quite well known on the darts scene though, with 8 professional boards dotted around the room. The obvious advantage of such a lesser known place of course is the amount of people in there, and there were only a couple of handfuls of darts teams on the various boards which meant we could easy get served at the bar.

Brenda and I had pints of Greene Kings London Glory and when this tasted better than the Oatmeal Stout you know how out of condition the former beer must have been. Lucie had another white wine which she described as “rough” and Kevin chose a pint of some standard cider or other (which apparently was also pretty ropey) but the bar was well equipped enough to serve Mags’s Disaronno and cranberry (?) The young guns eventually arrived and made use of the electronic darts game which the bar was generous enough to allow people to play for free.

Finally once Jocky Wilson (Ed) and Eric Bristow (James) had finished it was then time for the night’s educational piece and we made our way up Martin Lane to the blue plaque that denotes where the church once stood. The church of St Martin Orgar was the closest to the Great Fire of London and needless to say was therefore destroyed in the fire. The tower and bell did survive the blaze and for a while was used by French Huguenots as the rest of the parish was transferred to nearby St Clement's. The tower that can be seen today isn’t the original and has never been consecrated and used for religious purposes. Unfortunately the church gardens are also private and closed to the public which meant the best we could do was a gurning photo taken by the plaque.

How come Phil is always in the centre of these group shots?

The next pub was the one in terms of beer that I was most looking forward to. The Pelt Trader is one of the new breeds of “craft” beer pubs and although I object to this pointless term and everything that it denotes in terms of hipster faddishness, if they had an extensive and interesting beer range then what would I have to complain about?

Outside the Pelt Trader.

Well quite a lot as it turns out. Firstly, upon rounding the corner from Canon Street station we could see how full the place was, with crowds of young hipsters spilling onto the pavement outside the pub. I hope to dear God that they were attracted there by the beer and not the architectural merits of the pub which are zero. It’s almost like the owners have simply rented a large storage area from the station itself and then just plonked a horseshoe shaped bar inside. There’s no furniture to speak of and there’s not even really a proper bar as all the beers are served from taps jutting out of the back wall with slices of chalked slate to denote what particular brew is inside.

To be fair the beer range was substantive and very very reasonably priced but the pint of Grain Porter from Grain Brewery was limp to say the least. Again a good bit of conditioning wouldn’t have gone a miss and I wonder had this been served via hand pump would that have given it the life it sadly needed. The lager drinkers had the choice of the well known König Pils which we found out to James’s disgust, does not make a good shandy, or something more exciting like Ed who went for a Köstritzer Dark Lager. Even Kevin pushed the boat out with a real cider from Hogan's which he said was much better than the rough stuff in the Porter’s Lodge.

James enjoying his manly pint of "beer".

We took the drinks outside and tried to join the hip and trendy drinkers but perhaps my hip and trendy days are over as I for one found myself missing a table and chair and perhaps a picture of fox hunting or a busty barmaid. Even Brenda didn’t finish her pint of Adnams and we all agreed that for our purposes anyway this sort of pub isn’t what the doctor ordered.

The final point was now in sight being just the other side of Upper Thames Street down to the banks of the Thames. This was The Banker from Fuller’s and once again we had the lovely advantage of some free vouchers from the Fuller’s website. The pub was busy but not overcrowded and our lovely barmaid, later discovered to be named Daisy, bravely took the wide variety of orders along with the vouchers. Brenda and I had a pint of the sickly sweet Fruli strawberry beer and to be honest the rest of the orders are now forgotten apart from Mags who wanted some boneless chicken (?) – Look, I don’t make this up you know.

We were then introduced to Justina, the bar manager whose name appeared on the bottom of each and every voucher. She jokingly claimed that she’d personally signed every one and sent the emails out herself earlier in the day.

A few of us took our drinks outside and although it was dark and chilly now, the patio heater did a fine job of letting us sit on the banks of the Thames enjoying the fine night. Because of the vouchers the tour whip allowed for the purchase of a second round and I finished the evening with a pint of Fuller’s Spring Sprinter whilst Brenda and another half of the Fruli, again what the others were on by this time of a ever more increasing hazy night was anyone’s guess, but whatever they were drinking it seemed to do the trick as I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many of the tour so worse for drink as on this night.

But in a way that’s the wrong way to describe it because everyone wasn’t worse for drink, they were better for it as the talk became looser and personalities become more open. At least half a dozen time someone said something that had me cracked up in laughter and I must have said “I’ll remember that for the blog” on more than one occasions and yet I’ve gone and forgotten nearly everything……….nearly, Lisa, not quite everything ;-)

So all in all it ended up being a right old cracking evening and the warm welcome from Justina and the rest of the Banker crew made it a fitting end. And I guess that’s the secret of pubs and why they’ll never completely go out of fashion. Places like the Pelt Trader can come and no doubt after making the best of whatever fashion they’re taking advantage of, they’ll go again, but traditional pubs, like the Banker will be around for quite considerably longer.