retiredmartin

May 2025. Fulham.

Putney Bridge looked rather marvellous last Monday night.

Perhaps we should get Ray Davies to write a song about it.

Mrs RM and I have long loved exploring London, but some parts of the capital have always seemed a bit short of recommendable pubs.

Most of Middlesex, Havering, Erith and Belvedere, and that bit of West London home to two top Premiership clubs.

I genuinely can’t name a GBG pub close to Chelsea, and into Fulham territory it would have always been the White Horse.

But that one’s slipped a bit, as Will Hawkes eloquently wrote recently.

Will recommended the (non GBG) Eight Bells as a good pre-football pub,

and since it obstructed my route back to Putney Bridge station (still no barriers working) I felt obliged to pop in.

What. A. Pub.

I often wonder how many really great pubs I’ve still never been to having ticked the Guide, and the Eight Bells tells me I may not have scratched the surface of pubby wonders.

In some ways it’s “all about the people, stupid”, a bloke my age (young) whooping with delight when “Complete Control” by The Clash.

“Takes me back to being sixteen“.  I tell him that must be nearly 20 years ago, as you do.

But that would sell the beer short, a chewy pint of Portobello Brown (NBSS 3.5).

Great seating, a bit of simple food trade on Monday night,

a bloke from Swansea (I discover) jumping about to the punk classics.

And on the table opposite, two carpenters from Walsall and Coventry down for their annual week setting up the Chelsea Flower Show.

And I get to chat to them all about life, over a great pint, in the greatest city in the world.

Ain’t pubs wonderful ?