This was the one stage where we decided to walk it rather than wait for the bus, to allow a bit of breathing (or drinking) space later on in the evening. That meant having to cram two rounds – the coach station and the railway station – into just over an hour. So having spent a derisory amount of time in the Pool Shack, we had to spend an equally derisory amount of time in the next pub.
Anyone who meets anyone in a pub near Victoria station usually chooses the Shakespeare, which is right outside the front of the station, in the aptly named Terminus Place. However, having all been there before, we'd picked an alternative target: the Bag o' Nails on Buckingham Palace Road. But before we got there we were sidetracked by the King's Arms, the main attraction of which was a shorter walk by about sixty seconds.
The King's Arms is a pretty ordinary pub, but with a pretty extraordinary excess of urinal cubes in the toilets. I'm not sure why this qualifies as "dangerous", but that's clearly what we thought:
For once we managed to have a game on a fruit machine which was actually fruitful, netting an eight pound win on the Italian Job (which at the time seemed to be everywhere, and is the original machine for which The Man In The Pub will tell you that "you should do 3–2–1–Cancel, 2–3–1–Cancel, then hold what you want and it'll spin in"). Drinks-wise, I think we were all still safely on the session lagers except for Simon, who curiously decided to have a blue WKD at this point.
| Robert | 5 |
| Pad | 5.5 |
| Simon | 6.5 |
| Tim | 6.5 |
| Alan | 6 |
| Average | 5.9 |
Our overall verdict seems to have been that the King's Arms was very mediocre, and by this point we were craving a really decent boozer. Thankfully, our prayers were to be answered at the next stop.
Avid readers and omnibus enthusiasts are by now probably frustrated by the lack of any photographs of the Stationlink service itself, so here goes. This is one of our journey from Victoria Railway Station to Waterloo, featuring some unexplained hand signals from Tim and Al:
