The Lion sleeps tonight

Pub no. 240. The Lion.

The Golden Lion, then the King's Cross Social Club (which I'm sure wasn't a social club at all...) and then back to the Lion. But in all that time I never managed to venture in. The last couple of times I went there as Lion it was closed. Once for that most annoying of things that a pub can do - "closed for a private party".

Now I believe it's closed for good. "Closed for private residences" you could say. Too bad.

Great West-End Railway

Pub 239. The Railway, 16th November 2013.

Run by The Original Pub company, the Railway is just like 100s of other pubs in London.

Busy, loud, rugby on, youths starting a Saturday night with a drink, grown-ups finishing their shopping with a drink. Decent ale though, and the unoriginal food you can think of - the "hand-battered cod" they seem rather proud of though. Probably worked out it's not worth investing in a machine to dip their defrosted cod fillets into a tray of factory-produced batter mix.

But round these parts of the Borough you're grateful for what you can get.

Czech mate

Pub 238. The Czech & Slovak Bar 16th November 2013.

 Hiding away behind a big hedge is a pub for our Czechoslovakian brethren. Or Czech & Slovak as we must now call them. I always assumed they didn't get on, but here they all are in a pub specially for them. An odd pub, feeling like a house converted to a hotel and then converted to a social club, but I suppose a 'pub' it is, in practice.

Clearly the only English chap in here, it was none the less very calm, relaxed and friendly - as far as I could tell.  The one nice thing is that although two rooms full of people chatted intently around their tables with funny looking food, and a telly was on, you could hear yourself perfectly. Why? No intrusive jukebox and good old wallpaper and carpet. English landlords take note...

Lilly the drink

Pub 237. The Lillie Langtry, 16th November 2013.

A pub with a flat-roof, even though the roof is perhaps 8 or 10 floors above the pub, but it's still a flat-roofed pub so we know what we're going to get. And we get just that, so like it or lump it. Loud music, plenty of sports, no ale and local locals all having a good time at just after 4pm.

The main problem with a pub like this is that you don't half feel conspicuous taking photos, and my bloody camera-phone reverted to it's often annoying habit of putting the flash on, and the problem with this is with the flash on my camera-phone produces photos that are almost totally black.
I'm sure I caught the eyes of the two chaps behind the bar, so I supped my lager and left.

Some notes of possible interest from the internet:

"Kilburn’s residents will also be pleased to see that while the pub has undergone an amazing transformation, the old pub sign remains – a reminder of the origins of its controversial name.
Originally the Princess of Wales, the pub was renamed the Lillie Langtry in 1969 after the site was redeveloped. In Victorian times, Lillie Langtry was the mistress of the Prince of Wales and, as the NW6-blogger Ben Fordham puts it, it was a case of “down with the nation’s princess and up with the local mistress”.
In 2007, the pub changed its name back to the Cricketers, but the old Lillie Langtry pub sign stayed.
"


So there you go. Definitely called the Lillie Langtry now though.