Monopoly Board Pub Crawl Part II

9am Saturday the 25th of February. M-Day. I awaken in the same manner I had been all that week - coughing and spluttering. The British Winter had taken a big steaming turd on my health, and I had been sick all week with the flu. Though I was in the later stages of the virus and on the comeback trail, I was still feeling very ropey. But it couldn't be helped, if the crawl was going to be done it had to be today.

You see the Monopoly pub crawl is like getting a tatoo or having a threesome. A lot of people talk about it, but few get around to actually doing it.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the luxury of putting this on the "back burner". There was a chance that I had only four weeks left in London, and my crawl partner Chuck was only free that weekend.

So I dragged myself out of bed, grabbed a tissue and blew a Porn Star's carpet worth of mucous out my nose, showered and got dressed. Then I took 2 flu tablets, a Vitmain C tablet, 2 glasses of orange juice, stuffed my pockets with several print outs of directions and schedules and made my way to the first location - Marylebone Station.

I had arranged to meet Chuck at Marylebone at 10:45am. I had the bright idea that if we started at Marylebone, then took the Bakerloo line to Old Kent Road we could knock out the furthest Northern and Southern destinations in one fell swoop. One slight flaw in my plan - the Station's pub did not open until noon on weekends. We were going to have to find the next closest pub.

Chuck got himself a couple of bacon sandwiches at a local cafe. I declined having already eaten 2 cheeseburgers at the previous station (fuck Morgan Spurlock, if you're going to drink your body weight in booze you need some greasy blotting paper in your guts).

We found a substitute pub (The Globe) around the corner from the station and got our first drinks of the day. Chuck had the educated idea of drinking Bitters (in this case Courage Best Bitter) as it would be less gassy then spending a full day on Lager. We sat across from each other, wondering who looked the worst. Me with my flu, Chuck with a stinking hangover and 3 hours sleep, the battle wounds of a London Friday night work drinks session. We finished our half pints of Bitter and took notice of our surroundings.

It was barely 11:30am and already the pub was starting to fill up. We had forgotten to take in account that the 6 Nations was on this weekend, and that every second pub we were going to try and race through would be packed to the rafters with boozy rugby fans. Precious minutes were going to be lost fighting our way to the bars.

Searching for the new pub had lost us valueable time. It was the first stop and already we were half an hour behind schedule. Throw in 100 miles of travel, One English winter, one Flu, one hangover and several bathtubs worth of booze and we were looking at one fucking long day indeed.


Marylebone Station - The Globe
11:23 to 11:29

Tally so far:

2 Beers

1 pub down 25 to go.

Next: Old Kent Road and Beyond...