Cheers to a good local

"Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.

Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came.

You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same

You wanna be where everybody knows your name"

You’ve seen Cheers, right? It’s a pub where the regulars sort of have jobs but don’t, and Frasier pops in to moan about his wife, and that cowboy fella works there, and they all shout “NORM!” every time some guy (Norm) comes in. Wouldn’t it be great to have a place like that to rely on?

The Hanover Arms in Oval is an unlikely candidate. I’ve been going there for several years and everybody rarely knows my name. The design scheme is best described as sparse and brown, with a touch of glamour added by a few Victorian prams perched above the bar. The bar staff include a huge Alsatian which stands on its hind legs and plants its paws alongside the beer pumps. The garden comprises plastic furniture and foil ashtrays on the street outside, the only food on offer is crisps and nuts, and the regular clientele is quiet and ruddy-faced.

Proximity to the Oval means it has a few hugely lucrative days a year but otherwise it relies on casual drinkers drawn to its sports screens. And my friends and me. To be honest, it isn't uniformly popular even amongst my friends - the ones with long hair and skirts tend to not be so keen - but it does the job a good local should. It’s rarely too full, it’s good for a late pint and Jim the landlord and the regulars are affable. It has hosted three impromptu engagement parties so far (including mine), and their tolerance of even more over-entitled tosspot behaviour than usual on these occasions is always admirable.

The nearest competition for the Hanover has traditionally been the Greyhound, five doors and 500 years of evolution down the road. The sort of place that toothless customers queue up outside of well before lunchtime. But in the last week, a revolution has swept through Kennington Park Road with the closure of the Greyhound and the debut of the Brown Derby, aimed squarely at people whose facial hair is more sculpted-sideburns than bushy-white-tramp-beard, and whose tattoos are more Japanese-word-for-gents-toilet than done-in-prison-with-a-biro.

It’s been kitted out with tasteful lampshades, artfully distressed furniture, a strange Heath Robinson fan structure, gastropub food and - upsettingly - DJ decks. It’s all very chic, and having made a couple of reconnaissance trips in the last week I can report that the local glitterati are starting to take an interest.

Unfortunately, some of the old customers have not received the memo that their services are no longer required. I say unfortunately for their sake rather than mine - the old air of menace has evaporated in a puff of high-end disinfectant, and they now look distinctly miserable. I saw a couple last week sitting in baffled silence, staring at the antique globe where the fag machine used to be. It raises the question of what exactly a regular is being loyal to - the pub, the landlord, the other regulars? - and to what extent new owners should feel a sense of responsibility to people who may not have many other options.

I hope that the Hanover doesn't suffer from this. There’s a risk that the Greyhound scaries will transfer next door and change it for the worse, although I think Landlord Jim would take a stand to stop that happening. We won’t abandon it, even if more fickle types do. And if Jim were to make a dramatic change - a heavy metal theme, perhaps, or a techno and rubber vibe to lure in some passing Vauxhall bears - we will push off quietly and with dignity. Until then the Brown Derby will remain an occasional fling rather than a full-blown affair.  

A riot going on

Having spent last night listening to a continual wail of sirens and alarms, this morning on my walk to work through Oval, Kennington, Elephant & Castle and Borough there was no evidence of civil atrocities.  Not a surprise - the real local action last night was in Clapham Junction and Walworth Road.  But on Borough High Street there was a police van parked next to a coffee shop.  The rozzer in the passenger seat was fast asleep.  His colleague stood outside on the phone, rubbing his unshaven cheeks and looking haunted.  The two guys in the back were both staring blankly through the window.

They must have had a rotten night.  This video of Clapham Junction says it all.  I once visited the fancy dress shop there to hire a Henry VIII costume with a preposterous codpiece.  It was an old-school costume place: higgledy-piggledy rooms and a range of stock that showed the fickle nature of fancy dress trends, with Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mingling with Ali G and Austin Powers.  Last night it was burnt to a cinder, having first been looted for its masks.  The fire also destroyed the residential flats above and the record shop next door.

As I walked home last night the staff of Everfresh, my superb local corner shop on Brixton Road, were standing outside the shop, watching the street.  The nearest disturbance was a couple of miles away, but they were still visibly panicked, and rightly so.  If the idiot mob had (or do, tonight) come that way they may have destroyed on a whim their entire livelihood, a business to which they have devoted every day of every week for years.

That’s the absolute, overriding madness of this all.  It is local communities turning inwards and wrecking their own amenities and local economy.  The cackling lemmings streaming in and out of the smashed Debenhams, waving trainers and cheap perfume, have no agenda or cause.  They just want free stuff now, regardless of the cost in the end.

I have no idea what will happen tonight, and I think my part of South London probably has too few consumer goods shops to smash up to be too badly affected.  But I don't think that will be any comfort to the guys at Everfresh, and it certainly won’t be to the owner of the fancy dress shop.