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Driving up to the Sunday afternoon concert at the posh Cadogan Hall in Belgravia, this was never going to involve a beery adventure, but there was time for a bit of lunch and a beer.
Belgravia seems to have one or two decent looking pubs of the old street corner variety, probably harking back to an age before the neighbourhood was taken over by residents who can afford the multi- million pound properties.
Arriving just after midday, the promised opening time, the first pub we tried was the Fox and Hounds (a Youngs pub). The pub was there alright, but it appeared that no-one was at home or at least they didn’t want to open to serve anyone a beer. There were two other blokes who seemed to be touring the local pubs also waiting in hopeful anticipation of opening time.
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| The Duke of Wellington on the clean streets of Belgravia.... (image google maps street view) |
We left them to it as we didn’t have a lot of time to wait in hope and anticipation. We quickly moved on to the Duke of Wellington and this was definitely open and already quite busy when we arrived. There were other groups of concert goers present, easily identifiable because they were a) over 40, and b) wearing their original Genesis T shirts.
Surprisingly given the area, there was also a mix of working class folk as well as posh folk though it was obvious which category applied to the group of besuited chaps stood outside drinking glasses of wine.
The Duke of Wellington is a lovely example of an London urban pub with a single room wrapping around a central bar. It’s a Shepherd Neame pub and as the Spitfire was off, it was a choice of Master Brew bitter or Whitstable Bay pale ale.
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| Master Brew - Faversham’s finest |
Both were good and as luck would have it we didn’t need a re-mortgage to pay for them at £4 a pint.
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| Nice bar but worn glasses and table - very pseudo posh-working class... |
There was a lot of banter from locals and excited concert goers. I didn’t pick up anything specific, but I imagine the latter were reminiscing about the heydays of Genesis and how nice it is to have a similar sounding prog rock band like Big Big Train, now that Genesis are claiming their pensions.
The Leeds/Sheffield Wednesday game was on the TV in the corner. Things weren’t going too well for Leeds, though no-one seemed to care, and most probably hadn’t even heard of Yorkshire in this Belgravia watering hole.
So after a beer or two and a simple but tasty pub platter for lunch, it was off to the concert. In the Cadogan entrance hall area, in addition to sales of BBT albums and memorabilia, there was a pop up bar selling (predictably) Fullers London Pride. Nowt wrong with that, but fearing concert venue beer prices might bankrupt us, we passed on that one....
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| Wassail King, hear us sing.....c’mon sing it...Wassaaaaaaaaail..... |
Great concert though......
....if you haven’t heard BBT, their You Tube site's here...
https://www.youtube.com/user/EngElecRecordings
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| BBT banging out 'Judas Unrepentant' for similarly unrepentant (though appreciative) greying and balding Genesis fans |
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