Willow Walk, Victoria

So, tomparry claims he would have stayed "for ever" (sic), had he not had a prior engagement. I find this rather strange, as I too visited said 'pub' recently and am still recovering from the experience. I attended on a very hot summer's day, and was therefore initially relieved to find the pub, assuming that it would provide shelter from the intense heat of the day. However, the temperature inside appeared to be the equal of that outside, and so the unpleasant feelings of stickiness and dehydration persisted. Not that this dehydration would have been furthered by their draught beer, which was so watered down I expected to see the EU beach hygeine unit roll up and declare it safe to swim in.

This feeling of gloom was furthered when me and my co-drinker discovered that the computerised quiz machine was inexplicably refusing to take British legal tender, stubbornly defecating any coinage that we inserted. Clearly, then we were forced to converse normally, rather than debating how many UK number one singles Bruce Springsteen has had (zero), which exacerbated the stress of the visit even more.

The switch to bottled beer improved matters slightly, although upon receiving the drink the bartender attempted to pour it into a wine glass, which must have been a sorry attempt to produce a 'European' style atmosphere. On exploring this notion further I began to think that this wasn't the case, indeed, it is difficult to imagine you are drinking high quality German lager, served by a buxom Fraulein on the balcony of a Bavarian lodge, when you are being enveloped with recycled air, surrounded by ageing, pot-bellied office workers with balding pony-tails, and being coated in a fine layer of grease from the kitchen's deep fat fryer extraction machinery. I can only assume, therefore, that the glass was provided as a means of ending the torture, by simply smashing it on the table, slashing one's own carotids and screaming "never come here again, I have died for your sins!"

1 Jun 2005 11:54