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Ruling Britannia XXIII
by Ian Taylor If you don’t like adult language and adult themes, don’t read this. It’s that simple. Ruling Britannia XXIII So Movies is coming out then. Can’t quite work up the enthusiasm for this one yet. Mind you this might be because I haven’t really got into Holodeck Adventures in a big way yet. After making a surge a couple of months ago, my collection of HA cards has levelled out at 3. Not looking like getting much bigger in the future either. I have spent about 5 years looking for a second CCG after Trek that is worthy of my time. Ironically, I think I have found it in Lord of the Rings and what it has taught me is that I really can’t afford to play 2 CCG’s at once. Therefore my Trek playing looks like it may be limited to sealed deck in the near future although I may also give online play a try. I was pleased to see Ruling America go up again in last months WNOHGB. As I said last month, this article mysteriously disappeared although I later found out this was due to a server crash. Also last month we had another article which now seems to have disappeared. This one was from one of the Colorado crew (I think) dissing Ruling America. Before we know it we will have a full scale article war especially as New Jersey players don’t seem to let old scores lie. In fact I received the following from regular RB ‘contributor’ John Corbett the other day. Lord of the Rings? That's were shitty Trek players go to die. That was the entire content of the email. Speaking of Lord of the Rings, I have continued my perpetual incompetence in recent weeks. At the London tournament last month I played a Gimli and Gandalf based deck with an Uruk’Hai minion side. Although I won 3 out of my 5 games I still managed to finish 7th out of 9 which just goes to show how grossly unfair this game is. DT and Howard still have their seedy little playtesting clique designed to show me that I am so crap at this game I am not even worthy to be a playtesting dummy, I still don’t know what half the cards do, my grasp of the rules is shaky at best, I’ve never won a tournament and I only have 1 ‘Valiant Man of the West’. My ability at Lord of the Rings is altogether sucky. I have had a lot of involvement this month with the old Warwick crew. Firstly, Noddy gave me the news that he was coming down to live in London. This can only be good news. The London crowd are getting a bit boring of late. They tend to find all manner of wonderful excuses to not come out drinking. Even Ringo is now only a semi-reliable drinking partner. Noddy would represent a big move towards the old school values of pulling, kebabs and forgetting most of Friday night. He is currently looking for a house in London Docklands near where he works although given the extortionate house prices there, another mad trek player house may not be out of the question some time in the future. My other link with the old school this month is that I had an afternoon drink with Martin Allen. Now Martin is famous, even among people he has never met. Scores of British players know ‘The Martin Allen Song’ and a lot of people really looked forward to our house warming party back in May just for the privilege of meeting ‘The Famous Martin Allen’. Now I’m not sure really why Martin decided to come to London for the day. Maybe to do a bit of shopping, maybe because Reading was dull or maybe just as an excuse to have a couple of beers. We met up at Bar Logic (it’s amazing how often this bar crops up in RB) and had a couple of pints of Stella before heading to Pizza Hut. After filling out guts with Pizza (and more Stella) we headed off down Oxford Street before being significantly distracted by Forbidden Planet. You can take the man out of the gaming scene but you can’t take the gaming scene out of the man. I then spent about 20 minutes trying to find a pub that had somehow since Christmas disappeared off the face of the earth. We eventually settled for another pub that was relatively featureless except for an extremely fit barmaid. Having had around 5 pints of lager by this stage we began an animated discussion about the virtues of looking at women. Martin, who claims his wandering days are over, is convinced that he now should not even be looking at women. I obviously disagreed. This argument continued on and off for the rest of the afternoon. Now it’s worth pointing out at this point that I had a date that evening (For the benefit of churchofbrad.com regulars, yes, the same one). As much fun as I was having, I decided that I would soon have to go home so I could get ready. However, without my consent, the alcohol in my body became capable of independent thought and decided for me that I had time for a few more beers if I went straight to the cinema from the bar. Despite the increasing number of attractive women filling up the bar (or possibly in Martin’s case because of it) we decided to wander down Holborn High Road and find another bar. Unfortunately, we forgot that there are no pubs to speak of along Holborn High Road and so we carried on towards Camden, which brought us to the Purple Turtle. It’s worth mentioning that at 6 o Clock the Turtle is pretty deserted. We wandered up to the balcony and I introduced Martin to the delights of Orange Shit. After a while 3 very fit Australian women joined us at the next table. This of course awakened the ‘looking at women’ conversation. We finished the jug of Orange shit and decided we had time for another beer. By this stage, the Australian women had somehow multiplied so there were now about 6 of them. This trend continued until eventually there were about 15 fit women walking around with stupid accents silently tempting me to stay in the Turtle for the rest of the night surrounded by fit antipodeans. With great regret I eventually left the pub with Martin’s assurance that ‘I probably wouldn’t have pulled any of them anyway.’ I turned up for my date slightly late wearing the same clothes I had been wearing all day and smelling of beer, the London Underground and probably of fit Australian women. Amazingly she still talks to me. The only thing I really have left to cover from last month is my birthday.
After consultation with all involved, it was agreed that we would try to
recreate the Victoria Line Challenge from last year. One drink in
every pub at each of the 16 stations on London Underground’s Victoria Line.
We made a few changes this time. Firstly we had a few more people
including my brother Dave who was the guest drinker for the day.
Dave is a navy boy who can certainly handle his drink, probably better
than me. A good person to have on the team. We also introduced
a more random element to the drinking. A deck of cards was made up
containing a number of different drinks and stuck to the back of Trek commons
(and some rares as well if the truth be known). At each pub, each
person had to draw a card randomly and drink whatever the card told them
to. Potentially more evil although did mean you had a break from
drinking 16 consecutive pints by drawing the occasional bottle or shot.
Anyway, here’s how it went.
Pub #1 – Brixton It was a pleasant morning in the crappy end of London when Colm, Ringo,
Dave and myself met at Brixton station. We were running about 30
minutes late which was bad news considering how close we came to timing
out last time. Despite our bad experience last time, we headed off
to the Weatherspoons pub near the station. Ringo suggested we drink
the beers as quickly as possible because he hates Brixton and this was
agreed on by everyone. Colm revealed that he was of ill health of
late and so would probably not complete the whole course. We made
the generous offer that he could try to eat 16 pies instead. This
was given due consideration. As planned, we finished the pints pretty
quickly before leaving the pub.
Pub #2 – Stockwell I will make it clear at this point that at this stage we were not determining
drinks randomly. We decided to get a solid base of pints inside of
us to line the stomach and try to wipe out sobriety as quickly as possible.
Lacking any credible alternative, we went to the same pub as last time.
To Dave’s delight, they were showing his beloved Arsenal FC on the TV in
the FA Cup game against Newcastle. However, determined not to get
too far behind schedule we dragged him out after Arsenal had just taken
a 1-0 lead.
Pub #3 – Vauxhall A quick conversation on the mobile confirmed that Noddy was on his way.
In contrast to last years debacle where we were unable to find a pub at
this station, we headed straight to the only straight pub in Vauxhall.
This pub was also showing the football and Arsenal were 2-0 up by the time
we got there. After just settling down to drink my pint, another
phone call from Noddy confirmed he was at the station and lost. After
10 minutes of gormless wandering around, I eventually found him and brought
him back to the pub. He decided to get started on the cards straight
away christening the pack by pulling a ‘Silly Bottle – Barman’s Choice’.
Dave decides that he is just going to drink Guinness for as long as possible
while the rest of us decide to move on to random drinking at the next pub.
Pub #4 – Pimlico We walked over Vauxhall Bridge and to our relief found ourselves north
of the river. Ringo and me kissed the ground in thanks before we
walked off and found a rather posh pub in Pimlico and dealt the cards.
Colm became the first (and I believe only) person to wimp out by refusing
his Double Jack Daniels and coke. We phone about 20 different people
asking if they want to join us later in the crawl and a few agree.
After finishing our drinks, we realise we are making pretty good time.
Pub #5 – Victoria To my astonishment, Ringo is starting to look pretty pissed as we enter
the second quarter of the challenge. On the way to the pub we manage
a fairly coherent verse of The Marcus Sheppard Song down the phone to Marcus.
For the first time, we go into a different pub to what we did on the previous
time around. I am pretty pissed off to pull a pint of Guinness as
my random drink. Get commiserations from everyone except Dave who
is already on his 5th pint of the stuff. On the way out I have my
first piss of the circuit, otherwise known as the ‘First of Many’
Pub #6 – Green Park Dave complains that we are walking between half the stations rather
than getting the tube, whinging git. This is even a rather scenic
route across Green Park walking by Buckingham Palace (this was before the
Queen Mum died by the way). Ringo decided to reinstate the controversial
game of ‘bump the tourist’ to the bar crawl. Nobody else is particularly
impressed but then again nobody else is as pissed as Ringo. Colm
is debating giving up, admitting he is not as hardcore as he used to be.
We get to the pub where the England V Wales rugby match is just starting.
Dave is forced to take a break from Guinness when Colm accidentally buys
him the wrong drink. We sing loudly to the national anthem before
watching England take a 10-0 lead (this took about 10 minutes) and then
left the pub with Dave doing another round of complaining because he wants
to watch the sport.
Pub #7 – Oxford Circus We arrive in Oxford Street to be greeted by the usual smell of dodgy
hotdogs, smog and sweaty tourists. We find our usual pub here, Bar
Logic (see, I told you it gets mentioned a lot). We spend most of
the time standing round the bar discussing Noddy’s accommodation plans
now that he will be moving to London. Ringo nearly chunders in the
middle of the bar but instead manages to fill his hands with puke before
heading off to the toilet. I have the not too bright idea of finishing
his pint while he is in the toilet (I had drawn 2 silly bottles on the
trot and was missing the taste of beer). When he gets back he bitches
about this all the way to the next pub.
Pub #8 – Warren Street I draw another ‘Silly Bottle – Barman’s Choice’ and Ringo starts whinging
that I am drinking too many silly bottles and not enough pints. Not
being too chuffed myself at this, I swap my bottle of foul tasting cranberry
Bacardi Breezer for his pint of lager which I enjoy immensely. Still
can’t really understand why Ringo is suffering so much in this challenge
when he kicked my arse in the last one. At this point we are joined
by DT who has decided to try his hand at the back 9 and fair play to him
for that. His first journey into the deck of chance makes him drink
Rum, which is apparently his least favourite drink. Shame!
Pub #9 – Euston ‘The Head of Steam’ where Ringo had a spectacular puke last time around
was our destination here once more. Dave took the opportunity to
find out how many points we had stuffed Wales by while DT complains again
about his pull from the deck, which was a pint of bitter. I point
out to him that he used to drink bitter all the time when we were back
at Warwick, which he concedes but claims he can’t drink that much anymore.
This starts an on/off conversation that lasts about 2 hours reminiscing
about the days when we both played for Warwick Wolves and had their drinking
circles every week. Various people showed scepticism regarding DT’s
ability to survive a drinking circle.
Pub #10 – Kings Cross After a walk up the road so short that even Dave couldn’t complain,
we arrived at the prostitution capital of London and went back to the Weatherspoons
pub where Ringo and I had had a very bad pint of Caffrey’s last time around.
Here the group split into 2 with people who wanted to watch the Rugby sitting
in one part of the pub and the rest of us sitting by the window.
Noddy becomes the first person to pull the rather lenient ‘Any Drink Of
Your Choice’ card and elects to go with aftershock. As he didn’t
specify which colour we decided to improvise and mix the two together creating
the brand new drink Purple Aftershock. Funnily enough, it tasted
nicer than either red or blue on their own. We left the pub feeling
we had achieved something.
Pub #11 – Highbury and Islington By this time, although still with plenty of time to go, we were pushing
on into the evening and dusk was drawing in. For the unenlightened,
Highbury and Islington station is just minutes away from the Arsenal Stadium
where both Arsenal and Newcastle fans were still drinking after the game.
Fortunately the Newcastle fans are a fairly friendly bunch and so there
was no trouble. At this point we were joined by the last of the stragglers,
Howard ‘Triple HK’ Kendrick who had just got back from Madrid and so could
only join us for the home stretch. Dave was now into double figures
on the pints of Guinness and showing no signs of slowing down.
Pub #12 – Finsbury Park Still close to the Arsenal ground, we managed to find an Irish pub where
the locals seemed to have more interest in Hurling than football (that’s
the sport Hurling not throwing up). I broke up another distressing
run of silly bottles with a nice refreshing pint of lager. Not much
to report from this pub except that we sat on a pool table and chilled.
Pub #13 – Seven Sisters It’s a long walk from Seven Sisters station to the nearest pub.
Ringo being so drunk by this stage that he fell over every 50 yards didn’t
help this. Normally this was achieved by attempting to hug someone
and not allowing properly for the forces of gravity, which meant that he
often took people with him. Only knowing 1 pub near Seven Sisters
we were quite nervous that Ringo wouldn’t be allowed in. Fortunately
we smuggled him in and sat him down in a quiet corner before the landlord
noticed.
Pub #14 – Tottenham Hale I only know 1 pub anywhere near Tottenham Hale and even that is a good
10-minute walk. Everyone was a quite pissed by this stage.
I nicked Ringo’s coat for no logical reason other than I was holding it
when he fell over. Dave started a long argument with DT over nothing
in particular even though they had only met a few hours before. I
managed to draw another pint of Guinness from the deck but by this point
I was beyond caring. Me, Dave, Noddy and Howard are just about still
capable of semi-intelligent conversation and even I kept bursting out laughing
for no reason.
Pub #15 – Blackhorse Road We were a bit nervous heading up to Tryst at Blackhorse Road because
this was the pub that had refused to serve Ringo and me last time we did
the crawl on account of the fact we were too drunk and Ringo was a lot
worse this time. We were allowed in however and Ringo disappeared
into the toilet for quite a while. The pub was a little bit to artsy
for me even in my drunken state and the metal chairs were uncomfortable.
We were way ahead of schedule though so we took our time before heading
along to the last pub.
Pub #16 – Walthamstow Central Our old stomping ground. It was only fitting that we should return
to our old haunt on the marketplace, Checkers. It was quite a long
walk that took us past a greengrocer where Dave managed to nick a melon.
What followed was a 5-minute game of toss the melon that was participated
in with vigour only achievable by very drunk people. Because of Dave’s
Rugby experience and my American Football skills we even managed to keep
the melon from hitting the ground for a large portion of the time.
Noddy however had other ideas and a wayward throw managed to send our favourite
plaything careering into someone’s garden smashing into pieces as it did
so. Still, it was good while it lasted. When we got to the
pub, they refused to serve Ringo because he was too drunk. Everyone
else got a drink and for the first time of the day I struggled a bit with
my pint. We had plenty of time however and I spent about an hour
finishing it off. In a very noble gesture, Noddy decided to drink
3 drinks (all out of the deck) to make up for the 2 he had missed at the
start of the day. In an extra heroic gesture he even mixed them together
(a double Tequila and a pint of lager if I recall). Hooray for Noddy!
For the record, Dave finished his 15th pint of Guinness with apparent ease.
Meanwhile, Ringo had disappeared and I was still wearing his coat.
We eventually found him walking down Walthamstow market with no sign that
he actually knew where he was going.
Pub #17 – Enfield Yes, I know Enfield is not on the Victoria line but after finishing
the challenge with so much time to spare, Dave, Noddy and I headed back
towards my place stopping at one more pub on the way. Noddy and I
managed to squeeze one more drink down and Dave had his second pint of
lager to go with his 15 Guinness’. Once again, I have to concede
victory. We headed home for pizza and bed although 17 drinks did
not stop us from enjoying a few episodes of Blackadder once we were home.
Thus ended the Victoria Line Challenge until the next time…
Hope you enjoyed that, we certainly did. Thanks to all involved
for making it a great day out. One more thing before I leave you
for this month that I have to share with you. One day last week,
for no reason at all, I decided to read through some of my old emails.
I am the kind of untidy person who still has every email he has ever sent
sitting in his Sent Items. I started to read them from day 1, which
for this computer is getting on for 3 years ago. What followed was
one of the most entertaining hours I have ever had. I would recommend
anyone to do this. Amongst other stuff, I found the forgotten verses
to ‘The Martin Allen Song’, which I had sent to Rik about 2 years previously.
They will serve their purpose as this months Song of the Month.
Name: The Martin Founder Song
The Famous Martin Founder kept his draw deck really small.
Please send me stuff. I like stuff… Ian Taylor
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