Call me Gaza.

I write as a weegie (- Lanarkshire akshully - so ? a wessie is probably a better description) - recently moved to Edinburgh because he just couldn’t take the early morning M8-speedway anymore. In my first couple of weeks here I have been taking the opportunity to socialise with my edbrg workmates and so on, hence my friendship with Pam (- who kindly invited me to write this review), who I worked with when she was also a wage-slave at GCSE-Macaroni. I didn’t think we'd hit it off since I’m a sellic-man and she’s a Jambo, but she has almost totally destroyed my preconceived notions about the Hearts i.e. Huns who cant afford the train fare. A hoary old cliché sure enuff, but one taken seriously by us Wessies.

Last Wednesday we hit the Old Town to take in a couple of pubs, these were the Worlds End, the Mitre and the Royal Mile. It disny matter since no wessies will be looking at a Jambo fan-site, but ... gulp! I like Edinburgh. And I like its Pubs - they have the kind of ambiance I like - dark wood, nooks and crannies, and Good Beer. This last consideration is very important ... Because Glasgow’s’ Pub scene is more fragmented - there are various types that don’t overlap - e.g. youngsters pubs, old men’s’ pub, pre-club bars, posing joints, and scarily, sectarian pubs (mostly on London Rd - you know the kind of place - they have The Sash on the jukebox) - it can be hard to actually get a good pint, or find anywhere that believes in the concept of choice (- try the West End if you’re desperate). You can then understand how happy I felt when I saw the Deuchars IPA on draught - the golden nectar. I was in a state of shock when the Caledonian Brewery burned down last October, I can tell you - and I’m not exactly the type that cried when Bambis’ mother died.

The facts: IPA and a Miller Draught £4.02 - not cheap but OK I suppose. We sat in a quiet corner having a laff with just a few students around - a bearded ponytail bloke and a lassie with 'Saffron' hair colouring.

Then the Cave Dwellers arrived. In anthropological terms I would have classified them as - drunken-schemie-gluesniffing-whitetrash; the two blokes looked like Mickey Rourke in 'Barfly', one of their burdz was a real slack-eyed junkie-princess and then there was this other one, an enormous sow-like creature that couldnay hold a conversation at less than 100dB, usually on some subject like:

' ... and YOU drank all the f*ckin WIIIIIIINE, ya bass ..'

Really loud and coarse.

Pam and I tried to 'carry on as if they weren’t there', but, we all know that never works ...

anyway, the last straw was when Sow-Woman decided to announce to everyone that she wisnae wearing a bra - this didn’t surprise me since her

tits were practically banging off her knees, and that’s when we decided to leave to the more genteel surroundings of the Mitre. I don’t think any bra would have helped her - we're talking girders here to support that kind of mass.

- Talk about 'stuff you don’t want to know' ...

I’m embarrassed to say this but the Sow had one of those nasty roughasf*ck-buckfast-tastic 'Weegie accents'. It seems my beloved Glasgow is a net exporter of head-cases.

We moved to the Mitre.

I walked past this place - deliberately - last Friday coz there was this nasty looking bouncer on the door - something like the Kray Twins more mental older brother who they don’t like to talk about since he scares them so much - but it was obviously his night to stay in his kennel and crunch on his winalot, and so we breezed in.

It was very nice inside, a long bar, good light, airy, food thru the back, and again a selection of beers and - the best thing of all was the chairs - soft and comfy - just like you were sitting in someone’s living room. I kept half-expecting my auntie to come in with my Tea.

BUT: IPA and a Miller Draught = £4.50 - which is a bit inflated for a 50yard walk. Again, it was quite empty apart from a couple of students, a bloke, and a girl obsessively playing with her hair.

We had to go back to the Worlds End to get Pam's hubby Murray who was meeting us after his football game, but ‘They’ were still there - lurching to and from the bar like the balls in a pinball machine. Lost in their intoxication.

The last pub we visited was the Royal Mile which I can't remember much about coz I was pissed. But ... it seemed all right.

Gaza

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