Village Inn, Rayner’s Lane, Middlesex ( #August2016PubPerDay number 22)

I got to the Village Inn bar just after 9am and pulled off my backpack to retrieve some cash.  “Has he been running?” one of the fat blokes at the table behind me asked Pantomime-loud to indicate he wasn’t asking his drinking buddy but, rather, me.  I didn’t flinch and awaited my turn with the bartender who was pouring a double brandy back for another punter to accompany his pint of lager.  I love a Wetherspoons, me: not only do they refurbish and repurpose grand old buildings all over this grand old country but they serve cheap booze and do it earlier than most houses in the land.

 

I fetched my porter and the table in the window beckoned with “all the drunks are here now” but it wasn’t clear if that was an invitation, a territorial declaration, or acknowledgement of my presence.  So, I logged on to my email to make these few notes and look around the house.  The weird, solarized effect in the photos was unintentional but seem appropriate to the visit.  For instance, I noted that my old bartender, Jefe, was offering my other old bartender, George, a Meet Rack shirt (way to be, Jeff) so I offered up a Drunken Bunny shirt trade.  A sublime creäture I made pizzas around for a while at Fellini’s back in Atlanta, was retweeting about the Hideout’s (one of my favourite non-Blues Chicago bars) 20th anniversary.  Flashbacks, eh?

 

The bar itself is lovely (again, one of the things Wetherspoons gets right, despite their predatory acts here and there).  It is also, now, an entry on the August 2016 Pub Per Day Challenge.