The crawl got off to a fine start: we all managed to meet at 11.00 outside the Feathers in Linhope Street, which is one of various pubs claiming to be London's smallest. The photography also got off to a fine start, with Pad's thumb taking a prominent role.
The only problem with our meticulously prepared plan was that the Feathers was clearly shut. And it was clearly not about to open in the next hour, which meant a hasty walk to the first pub we could think of: the nearby Gloucester Arms, on the corner of Ivor Place and Gloucester Place.
Most of us had been there before, I think, and it's a reasonably nice pub in a fairly quiet part of Marylebone (though I'm not sure there are any loud parts). On its sign, the Gloucester Arms claims to be a "traditional Victorian local", but I don't recall seeing any enormous beards, or urchins with coal-dust on their faces. We occupied a small room at the back containing a switched-off TV. Here's what we thought of it:
Although perfectly amiable, we ticked "Ignorant" because (and I quote my scrawled comment) the staff "didn't know what Leicestershire was". I can't remember why the subject of Leicestershire came up, but for any international (or ignorant) readers who are themselves unsure, I can confirm that Leicestershire is a county in England.
Pub geography aside, we collectively thought the Gloucester Arms was okay:
| Robert | 6 |
| Pad | 7 |
| Simon | 7 |
| Tim | 6 |
| Alan | 6 |
| Average | 6.4 |
After a quick and unsuccessful gamble on the Italian Job fruit machine, we headed back to Marylebone station. On the way, we passed the excellent Middle Eastern restaurant called Ali Baba, where I once sent the waitress into a rage by deliberately mispronouncing the bean-based delicacy called Foul (saying it as "fowl" rather than "fool"). To commemorate this incident, we stopped for a picture of me pointing at the dish in question:
Eventually we made it to the Stationlink bus stop outside the front of the station, and after a short wait the bus arrived on time. The clockwise version was bus number SL1, whereas the anti-clockwise version was SL2 – which meant we spent a good five minutes talking about how we were on a ragga tip. Sadly, however, the bus numbering has since changed, so that they are now the rather less memorable 205 and 705. They're not even strictly circular routes now, but at least it looks like they run a lot more frequently.