Part Three Of Three
Outside of the over-charging Boleyn’s Hotel my time in Staines was actually quite enjoyable. Once unpacked and having a chance to relax for an hour, I headed out taking photos round the town, famous as the fictional home of Sasha Baron Cohen character Ali G (The Staines Massive) and the genuine place where Linoleum (Lino) was invented. It is a pleasant but fairly basic residential town, though with a lovely Riviera atmosphere along the river bank itself.
I got lots of pub and pub sign photos and drank in a few bars including The Last Hop Café Bar (which promised live music most weekends but cancelled it this night for coverage of the Euros football tournament. I also had a beer and a very nice burger in The Swan (where I had tried to get accommodation only to find it fully booked). After the long complicated adventures of the early part of the day I was unusually asleep before midnight back at Boleyn’s.
Saturday 22nd June.
Post disappointing breakfast I headed to The Bell pub nearby for the AGM of the Inn Sign Society, meeting some members outside as we waited for them to open and let us in to a very nice bar, bearing more art relating to birds like ducks and herons than bells. Service was excellent and they provided a fabulous buffet too (with enough food left over to enable me and other guests to take some away with us).
The meeting itself went smoothly with a moving moment of silence for recently deceased members, much praise for the hard working volunteer committee members, suggestions for further developments of the group website and branching into other social media activity. I was able to thank members who have sent photos to my imminent book on ‘Pub Signs’ due to officially launch on July 15th. I did have a limited number of advance copies with me at the event to display and sold them to members attending.
Now it was time for my gruelling return journey home, much a reversal of my trip to Staines, bus to Slough, combinations of train and underground hopping to Euston, where the 6pm train for Preston was delayed for 30 minutes. I was too tired to walk across town to the buses so I got a taxi home, arriving just after 9pm.
A complex corkscrewing adventure, with ups and downs – accommodation nightmares a tough journey but so much fun in the town as well as the wonderful Inn Sign Society AGM. Hopefully getting to future society events will be less stressful.
Thank you to all at the Inn Sign Society, and various bars I went to in Staines and Wraysbury.
Other notes. Slough is an ordinary but hardly horrible town, so I am very much with Ricky Gervais’s David Brent conclusion that John Betjeman’s poem calling for Slough to be nuked is grossly unjust (though hardly to be taken seriously). Much of the Underground is horribly inconvenient where escalators give way to stairs (thanks to passengers who sometimes assisted me getting my case up and down stairs). The exception is the new and beautifully designed Elizabeth Line, with safe safety doors lining the track and the trains able to pull in to align their doors right to the sliding doors as they open, avoiding the usual cattle stampedes for boarding services, often with no time for passengers to get off first.
Links – The Office scene deconstructing John Betjeman’s Slough poem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQOJoGx3QyQ
The Inn Sign Society https://innsignsociety.com/
My Book page on Amberley Books. (Pre-order before 15th July 2024 for a modest discount. https://www.amberley-books.com/coming-soon/9781398115729-pub-signs.html
This Review – Links
Part One https://arthurchappell.wordpress.com/2024/06/23/visiting-staines-on-thames-21st-and-22nd-june-2024/
Part Two https://arthurchappell.wordpress.com/2024/06/23/3058/
Arthur Chappell
Staines, Slough, Surrey, Berkshire, London, Underground, Inn Sign Society, pubs, pub signs, Hotels,
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