Now your probably thinking Reading in the South East of England is the least likely place for a good St Patrick’s Day celebration, but your wrong. This Tuesday Reading’s pubs and it’s inhabitants did the Irish proud.
I'll have a pint of the black stuff please
In search of the perfect St Patrick’s Day craic, the drinksin crew put on their shamrock socks and went on a mid-week quest. First stop The Lyndhurst on Queens Road. We arrived at about 6:30 and took rest at one of the nicely candlelit wooden tables. The pub was busy in an after-work mellow way with a mixture of regular IT after-workers and hungry bookish third year students. The smell of good food was overwhelming and the low level Irish folk music, half-drunk Guiness glasses dotted around the place and Potato Champ on the Specials Menu gave the sense of a subtle nod to The Green Isle festivities without being crass. The Lyndhurst under it’s new management is going from strength to strength and it seems The Warwick with it’s far eastern influence is likely to set the same kind of pace.
After a quick drink we headed across to the area of Jackson’s Corner where the mood was decidedly sombre and quiet. Worried that we may be missing out on the action we decided to skip a drink in the relatively new bar Copa (good for free wi-fi by the way) and go in the obvious direction of O’Neils by the Town Hall.
Now I’d expected there would be a few more people than usual in town but seeing O’Neils even from the distance we could see it was absolutely heaving with people in silly hats. We even had to queue before eventually being allowed to get in on the action. Behind the bar the staff were suitably fancy dressed up and the Guiness was well and truly flowing. The live band in the corner pulled quite a crowd and you could tell that there was going to be more than one IT bod asleep at their desk following morning.
O'Neils Pub, Reading
Enjoying the craic at O'Neils, Reading
Guiness Extra Cold and Extra Cool
After a few pints of the Black Stuff and uplifted by the festive mood, we decided to head for one last drink in Reading’s famous beardy pub The Hobgoblin and beardy it was but in a good way. Long live The Hobgoblin and all it’s beer mats and beards and boffins and beer. I did have to laugh when I spotted the poster in the toilet though, great message but slightly incongruous setting being at The Hob, couldn’t imagine any of them gentlemanly fellows in the bar being described in this way.
For all you men reading this blog, this is the kind of stuff us girls see when we go into the toilet so if you ever notice us acting a little odd post-toilet break this may be why. Well that and the fact that we’ve just caught sight of ourselves in the mirror and are worried our bum looks big.
Funny toilet poster
