London pubs and the ball of losers

Microbrewery Fridays - Jonas Follonier

Visit ads London's legendary pubs have one thing in common: they continue to offer typically English beers. Another great quality is that they have become benchmarks in gastronomy. Finally, an unforgivable flaw: you can't hear much more than elevator music.

These are must-see institutions for anyone visiting London; from the promise of atmosphere to the’english and haunts of gentlemen; places where all strata of the population meet in a form of daily ritual; settings in which to taste stouts or porters by making almost no difference between the nineteenth^th century and the present - in short, every man of taste's paradise. ads.

During my recent month-long stay in the British capital, I took the opportunity to explore a number of more or less brilliant ones. Each time, I appreciated the heterogeneous, antique furnishings - the Alexandra in the Wimbledon district is a perfect example - which added to the friendliness of the staff and the fraternal - not sororal, I insist - atmosphere that reigns in these venerable places. But have they really managed to escape the weight of modernity?

Continuous elevator music

Not sure, not sure at all, judging by a large component of the ads, at least in my imagination: music. In a ad from London, we expect rock music from London. London the teeming, London the historic, London the musical, the city that has seen the birth of legendary bands whose British, not American, roots we know from the outset - and that goes for newcomers too. Because London is a sound, a sound that Françoise Hardy and Michel Polnareff, the two biggest French ears of the time, picked up between 1966 and 1968. Except that, to parody one of the latter's emblematic titles, it's actually more like the bal des nazes as far as music is concerned in the ads of the English capital...

Read also: An anti-hippie song

Indeed, the observation is constant and unchallenged. The owners of the overwhelming majority of London's bars simply play the radio, which broadcasts the latest pop hits, each more commercial and international than the last. No trace of Led Zeppelin or their heirs. Take a disoriented blind man to a ad desert: it won't feel like London. Music, we perhaps forget, is an essential component of the environment that surrounds us and of the impression a place gives us. And if the choice of music poses a problem, it's also its omnipresence that's unbearable. Ambient music and silence can and must interact.

Read also: The virtues of silence

Gastronomy: nothing to say

Fortunately, London's pubs have not lost any of their superb character, and their reputation is even growing. The reason? Their menus have become more sophisticated over the decades, taking the good old-fashioned ad where we go to drink ad class where you go to eat - and, of course, always drink. The rise of gastro-pubs testifies to this. These are actually excellent places to eat good British food, because there is plenty of it, ladies and gentlemen. I particularly recommend those based on magpie (pasta) and meat, with a Guinness, mint or Coca-Cola sauce. And a good old ale beer by way of drink, which will delight you just by the way it was made, in an English cask, where Mister Bean may be hiding.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Jonas Follonier for Le Regard Libre