The Sail Loft

For my new year’s resolution, I have decided to go to pubs in London that are dog-friendly. It’s not really a resolution and more of a fun task I’m going to tick off whenever I feel like it. However, to make it a bit more like a game with rules, I’ve made a Google map with lots of dog-friendly pubs pinpointed. When I visit a pub I like I turn the pin into a heart. If I don’t like it then the pin gets deleted. Also, I’ll try and do a little review of the pubs that I heart.

Starting with this one that I visited today in Greenwich called The Sail Loft

Rating: 4 Paws out of 4*

Definitely dog-friendly! The sweet staff asked me whether I’d like a water bowl upon entrance. I said, yes please and they whipped one out and placed it under my table for ROLO in a shot. Great dog-service.

You get a splendid view of the River Thames. There are enormous windows with lots of natural light filtering in, you can even see the spikes of the Millennium Dome (do people still call it that? The O2 sounds so boring) across the river.

The décor is very appealing. Wicker baskets hanging for the ceiling reminiscent of lobster pots. The pub is spacious with a mezzanine. Importantly – it’s not echoey, so the sound of screaming kids don’t bounce back at you harshly. They’re child-friendly as well as dog-friendly. I watched well-dressed families with prams swan through the downstairs pub with ease.

Top marks for cleanliness – I smiled at a lad spraying and wiping down tables as punters left. The bathrooms are big and have cool faucets, they’re made of re-furbished pipes and have a pressure valve handle instead of taps. 

I ordered a shandy lager and automatically it came with Peroni. Fancy. I could read a book quite comfortably in the ambience of this light and modern pub. It’s also five minutes from the Thames Clipper boat service, which takes me home. Perfect.

*because dogs have four paws. Four is the highest rating.

Southwark Cathedral

I’m thinking back to my first jab. Such are life events these days: weddings, funerals, first and second jabs. I’d booked mine at London Bridge Guy’s Hospital. My best friend Will (of the same age and near enough postcode) was also getting his vaccination the same morning as me, so we’d decided to meet up for a drink on the Southbank afterwards.

I got out of Guy’s Hospital earlier than Will, so I walked over to Borough Market. I didn’t fancy a delicious, overpriced coffee just yet. I strolled on over cobbled streets, under damp arches, smelling the faint ammonia and salt-breeze wafting off the Thames. 

I arrived at a lovely old building with sandy-coloured stone walls crumbling at the edges. Bright in the soft daylight, not like the muddied grey of elsewhere reminding me of a limp sponge. I made my way to the entrance. Southwark Cathedral. I had never been inside. 

I bowed my head automatically when I went through the doors. I notice I do that when I enter sacred spaces – has it been ingrained in me from Shinto shrines and the general bowing culture of Japan? You bow to show respect and humility. And I am humbled by ancient lore and spiritual sediment left behind. Old places filled with meaning is what I’m about.

The inside of the cathedral looked shiny. The stained-glass windows were clear and new, not even crazed. The stone floor tiles were smooth and uncracked, however, there was a weightiness in the alcoves. For such a large space it felt like the air was closed-off, as if we were in a vacuum. 

I checked my phone for messages from Will, but my signal had dropped. I padded around the perimeter taking in the high-relief engravings, plaques mentioning recent war, late kings, old territories. I wish I knew what stories the stained-glass windows told. 

I had walked to the very end of the chapel; if this had been a ship I would’ve been at the helm. A tannoy-speaker switched on and a woman’s voice broke the silence. ‘Hello. I am the Reverend of Southwark Cathedral. I will now say a prayer. If you can, please take a moment to stand or sit for contemplation.’

There were some empty chapel chairs in my vicinity, so I shuffled towards one and took a lonesome seat. Looming above me was one enormous stained-glass window tinted in deep blue hues, cherry reds and shafts of marigold yellow.

She spoke of wishing to curtail the virus. She spoke of wanting the vaccine to work and giving people the security, they so needed. She asked us to remember those left behind and to hope for better days. 

I was staring up at this colourful vibrant light streaming through the glass and I cried. I sniffled at the beauty of the way. I had been grieving my mother’s death all this time inside my head, I knew about it, thoughts constantly whirring whilst sitting at work, staring at screens, clicking irrevocably. All I required was a few stolen minutes, the kind of clarity you get when you smoke a cigarette. Surprisingly, this had not happened until I was sat in a church caught in a prayer.  

It might have clicked then, that what I wanted was a reason to move my body without my brain having to think. I wanted to give the relationship with my mother some breathing room. A pilgrimage. Treading a path often tread would give me a way out – an excuse! 

(I mean I deleted Instagram, as if that required any excuse although someone did ask, ‘why did you delete Insta?’ ‘too much rubbish to scroll through’. I don’t have the emotional energy for that, I’ve lost my mother, I cannot stomach seeing your focaccia.)

The prayers were over. I was given back to myself. I stood up and felt like I should bow but I didn’t and ambled through the cloisters. I checked my phone: two missed calls from Will. I went out past the Gift Shop to return the calls. ‘Where are you? I’m out of the hospital.’ ‘Cool, I’m at Southwark Cathedral. Come find me.’

Epilogue: Tomorrow, Saturday 21st August 2021, I am setting off on my pilgrimage. Me, my dog and two good friends will start from Southwark Cathedral and walk for ten days to Canterbury Cathedral. To be continued. 

 

Thames River Time

When we started walking the sun was up. I got us toasted sandwiches from the main coffee shop in the town centre. There’s something provincial about Woolwich and I want to be part of it. I’m gazing across the central square – while I wait for my coffee – that got done up for the Olympics, a forum with a huge television screen overlooking the concrete steps, where people are sitting. A child is creeping up behind pigeons, afraid he might actually catch one, so changes tact mid-way and runs at them screaming. Two women are chatting over a bag of corn snacks. Tracksuit bottom boy strides by flaunting a Gucci strap-bag on his hip.

You can glimpse all the movement of Woolwich, in one swoop of the eyes because of this central square. I’ve never really noticed it before because London doesn’t have town squares – apart from Trafalgar – the levelling of everyone on the same plain, people passing from side to side, like a game of tennis.

We walk towards the Thames. There is a farmer’s market in the new Woolwich Arsenal development, lined with stalls with striped tarpaulin roofs. People milling about with their dogs on leashes and holding coffee in cardboard cups; it’s not too crowded and could easily be pleasant. I notice more dogs away from the town centre, where all the city commuters live. The price of coffee steadily rises with each step you take towards the river.

There are so many un-built, part-filled flats on the riverside. There is a water-feature that’s worthy of any contemporary housing development - invisible spouts spurt water up and down in time to silent music. At night they light up in fuchsia glows, to give it an East Asian shopping mall feel. Kitsch and modern, also a deterrent for crime and rough sleepers, to cover a whole area with colourful water. Two big Alsatians play-fight amongst the spritz and look like they’re enjoying it.

If you keep walking the Thames footpath stops and you have to skirt around a warehouse complex. We made the wrong turning and found a climbing wall at a dead end. A woman in skin-tight leggings re-directs us and on the way out, we step into a gallery being set up for two artists. I'm won over by their mixed-media art – acrylic paint sandwiched between two sheets of Perspex then hung from a wooden frame by thick chains. Black ink applied with a palette knife over powdery Instagram filter backgrounds. The artists were setting up their Dark Silo exhibition, wearing pandemic face shields. One of them looked like David Hockney crossed with Garth from Wayne’s World.

The sky is filled with drizzle. We press on through streets flanked by enormous boarded-up warehouses and dilapidated civic buildings, and on to the Thames Barriers. The barriers were built in the 1970’s with an intended life-span of up to 2030. That’s only ten years from now. I wonder what the people who constructed the Thames Barriers thought life would be like today. It was a time of retro-futurism and Star Wars and that sci-fi ideal is definitely reflected in the giant curved stainless-steel structures, rising up from the riverbed like the optimistic past, which I have little connection to except through the nostalgia effect.

It’s properly raining now and we’re almost at Greenwich. There's a well-situated pub in between called the Anchor & Hope, where we stop off to have a half-pint and shandy. Music plays from a jukebox. Next to the pub is a seafood van with W-I-N-K-L-E-S painted on the side in royal blue, in old-style signage lettering. The catchy pop-beat of Maria by Blondie pulsates through the pub. Outside on the grey horizon, I can see the strange shape of the Millennium Dome with its toothpick yellow stilts, piercing up through the ground. 

The Thames is a good place to walk, it's like moving through vignettes of bygone eras, and it’s nice to forget sometimes what the day is like.