The Knights Templar, Chancery Lane

So what we're basically saying then is that the toilets are quite nice.

1 Apr 2008 17:32

Bar Form, Enfield Town

It's just all a bit barmy really.

(But barmy in a completely endearing way)

4 Sep 2007 14:34

The Picture Palace, Ponders End

I actually like the Picture Palace, if for no other reason than that it's the strangest damned pub I've ever been to.

It's like a sanitised, civilised, silent, de-vikingised Viking feasting hall.

It scares me a little.

It's a lovely building - an old cinema (hence the name)with a great high roof, white walls and obsessively neat rows and rows of tables and chairs with a long aisle running down the middle from the entrance to the bar.

And the place really is silent.

Like a church.

You can see people looking around nervously to make sure that they're not speaking too loudly.

This Palace literally could be anywhere in any time and any time. As soon as you go in there you loose all perspective. On everything.

You're haunted by the silence. Your thoughts disappear up into the rafters. You're enraptured by �2 bottles of Holsten Pills for hours on end.

Because there�s something hermetic and closed about the Palace

And then...

And then eventually you leave

And you step outside and you realise that this is the real world.

You're hit by the noise and the feel of the wind on your face and you realise that you might as well have just spent a couple of hours in the TARDIS.

Because there's something strange about the Palace.

Something unnatural.

And you swear you'll never go back again.

And for a few months you don't. For a few months you don't even think of the place.

But you always go back, because you realise that no matter how strange and unnatural it may be, it's a benign strangeness.

21 Jun 2007 15:31