Eight part harmony

So I did a few bits around the house then went up to London in the sunshine to meet one of my drinking groups, known affectionately as The Old Men at the Zoo, because we all worked or still work in that menagerie that is the NHS. I was far too early so ordered a non alcoholic beer to start. "I don’t know if we’ve got any" said the young barman. "I’ve only been in this job ten minutes. Literally." We found some Peroni Zero in a cold cabinet and I wished him lucky with the rest of his day.

The pub is in the shadow of The Shard between Borough Market and Guys Hospital. Good people watching. Quite a few men of a certain age like me who looked like they needed a stiff drink after seeing their doctor, some grey, some hobbling, some sad.

Had lunch with Mr M and later we were joined by Mr S, who struggled to find us despite being told to head for the famous tall building pictured here. Couldn’t see the tree for the woods. Beer and conversation both flowed equally liberally. Eventually Mr A joined us and we carried on in full flow until we decided that it wouldn’t be a pub crawl unless we visited two pubs. So we slipped around the corner to a very old coaching inn dating from 1672, an enormous cobbled yard and a massive timbered pub marking the spot from which horse and carriages would head south into Kent, Surrey and Sussex in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until overtaken by steam. Mr M then staggered off home to watch a very important play off game that his football team were participating in. We carried on until Mr S left to meet his daughter, something which rarely ends well as she has his enormous capacity for alcohol. Birds of a feather. Mr A and I then grabbed a pizza (it being national pizza day apparently) before walking back to Waterloo.

I got home without incident at about a quarter to ten then sat up drinking tea and talking with TSM until hitting the sack about eleven. 

Excellent day.