WHITE HORSE
A pub where the interior decor is like a greenhouse with hanging succulents and skylights, lifting that heavy dingy pub atmosphere. You can breathe in here. The average age is 24, in fact it’s the most healthy and nonchalantly dishevelled crowd I’ve seen. Stylish ironic sports caps worn askew, and frayed backpacks that look like hand-me-downs from war veterans at Dunkirk. A vegan burger is over £10 and doesn’t come with chips - that are handcut by the way. The football is playing on one screen at the end of the room. It’s the England Vs. Colombia Round-16, I’m not very familiar with football but I’m here. Leaning across the bar with splayed elbows to cool down, at least I can see the ball. With my glasses on I can also see everyone else. Around a third of those watching care about the game, but the rest are hanging out with their tribe in a chill environment sipping on their locally brewed beers. Even in the height of summer dark ale is being supped. Once, the ball grazes the side of a goal post and skims off the pitch, people clap and give a single shout that feels like a pat on the back.
NAG’S HEAD
An England flag hangs under the telly. Tacked to the wood panelling with drawing pins, stamped in. The white of the St. George’s Cross is stained by nicotine and time. There's clenched fists and pint glasses filled with lager - lager - lager - you can even buy tinnies in here. The guy sat alone at the back with the sideburns and mullet is draining his can right now. He leers at the girls on my table like a maniac and grins with no frills and broken teeth. Everything is brown in colour, mauves and maroons seep through. Upholstery like the carpet of a forgotten ferry, docked in the shipyard since the late 1970’s. Around the island of tables in the middle of the pub are Great White Sharks. Big Fat Lads with Bald Heads. Bellies.
Gawan my Son
Not laaaaaaikely
Playin’ like bollocks
Take it daaaaaan tha liiiiiine
BOLLOCKS!
Keep ‘old of it son
Take your time, son
The match is being played over three screens. Every man is steaming, shouting, seething at all angles. I see spittle and raw joy, incensed blokes who look like they’re having the time of their lives but are about to explode. Slurs and You Wot!? Chucked at the Colombian shirt wearing cunt, perched like a pile of meat skewered to a stick on his stool. Jeering. Eruptions of laughter. You can’t take a joke?
It’s what we call an Old Man Pub but I feel more raw energy in here than a playground. A fruit machine flashes wildly against the wall. When Colombia scores the mood gets cut. Silence like a soldier got shot. The guy in orange hi-vis punches the door and walks out on to the street, where we go next.
It’s Extra Time as we walk the length of Peckham High Street. Every window, in every shop is playing the Game. Hairdressers, chicken shops, John the Unicorn, newsagents. We peer through panes of glass at the scores staying static. We walk on through the quiet and empty street. The summer heat hangs heavy with pressure over the tarmac, and the traffic lights change colour to no oncoming vehicles.
PECKHAM LEVELS
A converted car park with a good heavy-handed lick of paint, since I last saw it. I remember a bare building with you know those holes between the car park levels, between floor and ceiling. Because you know car parks are concrete slabs made for sheltering cars not people, though sometimes skaters use them and homeless people. Well let me tell you! Now there are windows! And fluorescent tinted tubes and industrial sized fairy lights, and wacky chairs and a working bar and proper toilets, the works. They’ve got a big screen playing the match and now it’s on to penalties. Groups of thirty year olds in tight polo shirts and arm bulges, wearing espadrilles, share a jug of beer and gesture with boyish excitement. Boho chic, tussled hair, the ambient mood-lighting is flushed with pink, setting off the sunset hues dissipating over the city scape outside and damn - this is so Instgrammable. England scores! The room erupts and hushes. Colombia misses. The room claps and hushes. The final kick is coming. The ball is soaring. England SCORES!!!!!!!!
Field Notes from an Anthropologist: There are three pubs in Peckham filled with three types of people. I’m part of it. The hipsters, working class, and yuppies. There are invisible barriers that exist between the pubs and their clientele but the footie breaks them down. Because when you are all sharing in one activity (you could call this common activity a ritual), you can be different but it’s okay because you are all doing the same thing.
