London Bloggers new venue, competition and pubs

I’m looking forward to the London Bloggers meetup tonight at a new venue near Blackfriars Bridge. Organiser Andy Bargery says there will be “plenty of space and cracking views over the Thames” which sounds good.

With it being a larger venue, I noticed on the meetup site that there are still two places left at the time of writing, which would be unusual this close to the event normally. So the London bloggers group is slowly developing into an enjoyably friendly and interesting regular event, with occasional sponsorship, some presentations and now even a competion with a great prize. It’s a trip on an Airship no less., something I’ve always fancied but unfortunately the deadline has passed – doh!

Actually one of the reasons I missed the date was because entry to the London Bloggers competition was by writing about your local pub and why it’s so good. Where I happen to live, all the local pubs are pretty dire right now so it’s hard to find inspiration on that particular topic. Local pubs are an important community resource in smaller towns, village and city centres as well but in London they tend to be more like retail outlets which happen to sell some drinks or else shabby old buildings with few customers where the manager is just keeping things ticking over. So we tend to have to get on a bus or train to visit a pub which we’d want to be in and that actually sells something we want to drink, and if you’ve taken transport to go out of your own borough then that hardly counts as local does it.

Even if I’d decided to write about say the George at Wanstead, which was lovely and cool inside on the hottest day of the year and sells Westons Old Rosie and Organic Vintage ciders on draught, I’d have had to mention the funny group of old men who hang around on weekday afternoons, the Friday night meat market, the gauntlet of smokers crowding the entrance and the highly strained relations between bar and kitchen staff which ought to put you off eating anything that comes out of there.