Sunday, December 17, 2006

The Black Swan

I recently mentioned, over on Froogville, that I once used to play on a team in the local Oxford quiz league for a pub called 'The Black Swan'.

I don't think I'd discovered it (or dared to go in, if I had - it's in one of the dodgier areas of town, way out East, on one of the little streets linking the Iffley and Cowley Roads) during my student days, but when I was living in Oxford again in the early '90s, a friend who lived nearby (and was already established on the quiz team there) introduced me to it. It was, in fact, my occasional commenter, The British Cowboy.

I think I went along the first time as a one-off substitute on the quiz team, but they were - for some reason - basically a player short at that point, with the landlady's daughter often serving as a reluctant makeweight. Or else Glen, the landlady's huge and genial Jamaican friend, who was generally happier with the role of quizmaster (his heavy accent did occasionally give us something of an unfair advantage in home matches). I didn't feel I made that much of a contribution: The Cowboy is a far more earnest quizzer than me, and our fourth member (the honour of being 'the first member' of course went to the long-time team captain, although his main contribution to the cause was the use of his car when going to away matches.... and an occasional bit of specialist knowledge of horse-racing) was Roger the Oracle, a man who seemed to know everything about everything (this is the chap who would read dictionaries and encyclopedias over a pint in the Oxford Union bar). No, I tell a lie there. I think The Cowboy had already departed for America by this point; I believe it must have been our pal James (a.k.a. 'Statto' - i.e., a statistics freak, a repository of obscure facts and figures) who brought me aboard.

My 'specialities' were literature and cinema (also surprisingly good on old pop music, although I have really stopped taking any interest in most new stuff since the awful synthy decade of the '80s). Literature tended not to come up that much, but for several months the quiz invariably ended with a round of questions about classic films - so, if the scores were close, I would often bear the responsibility of securing victory.... after two hours of doing nothing more than eat the complimentary sandwiches and quaff pints. Oh yes, it's a surprisingly tactical 'sport'!

What a fine place The Swan was back then! A real Irish pub in the heart of England - the kind of place where they take 2 or 3 minutes to pour your Guinness, but it's really good Guinness. Always a meat raffle and an extended 'happy hour' on Sundays. Always a 'private party' on St Pat's. Often a 'lock-in' after hours on any of the other days of the year. The atmosphere of the place was entirely down to the benign, maternal presence of its charming and generous landlady, Eileen Doyle; when she went back to 'the old country' a few years ago, its character quite changed. Ah well, we had a few golden years.

Amongst its other idiosyncatic delights were that it still had a real jukebox - one of those wonderful old devices that actually selects your chosen 45rpm vinyl record from a stack and puts it on a turntable to play, visible behind a glass panel in the middle of the huge machine. I could watch that for hours - it's like staring into a log fire. CD-based (and now, I suppose, the wretched MP3 - is it all about 'convenience' these days? Does no-one ever mind that the sound quality is atrocious??) may offer huge playlists, but the overall experience isn't nearly as satisfying. And the selection was still pretty wide on this machine - and far more quirkily diverse than you usually find. Eileen's own taste, I suppose. Lots of almost-forgotten classics from the '50s and '60s; in fact, lots of the singles my parents had (They were desperately untrendy, my parents: they disapproved of The Beatles! Although Simon & Garfunkel had somehow found their way into their record collection....), and which had thus first inspired my love of music (even as a very young child, I used to spend hours listening to their collection on their vintage 'radiogram'). My particular favourites were Roger Miller's 'King Of The Road' (my personal "No. 1" from those far-off childhood days: I wonder how much the attitudes in that song may have shaped the course of my life subsequently? "I'm a 'man of means' by no means - just king of the road.")
and Perez Prado's deliciously 'drunken' instrumental 'Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White'. My pal The Bookseller (who, after duly serving a brief apprenticeship as the emergency substitute, became a mainstay of the quiz team after The Cowboy's departure for the States.... or was it after James's departure for London? My brain grows foggy....) favoured 'If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?' (I think he's tried out that line many times in his life, without a single success.) [I eventually got around to doing a post of YouTube clips of these highlights of the Swan's jukebox.]

Also, by some strange quirk of fate (perhaps no more than the circumstance of Eileen's friendship with Glen - who was himself the landlord of a pub, although he seemed to spend all his time in The Swan rather than at his own establishment), the place had become an Irish-Jamaican pub - a unique phenomenon so far in my experience, but a very appealing one. The two cultures marry remarkably well: both, after all, are islands; both have a rich musical tradition; both have a reputation for taking an unhurried approach to life and being fond of a party; both have a deep fondness for Guinness. It's almost a surprise that the two peoples don't mingle more often. There's certainly some good craic when they do.


Yes, we had some great times there. For a while, it was very close to becoming that elusive Grail, my lifelong quest: The Perfect Pub. It didn't quite achieve that pinnacle because it lacked something in character (largely down to the spartan interior decoration) and atmosphere, the custom being very thin other than on 'special occasion' nights. Some of those 'special occasions', though, rank among the best nights of my life. Thank you, Eileen.

3 comments:

The British Cowboy said...

I believe I introduced you as a substitute, and you became regular after I departed for shores Satanic. Or maybe it was before that, and when James left for London.

There is the possibility for confusion here. Eileen steadfastly called me James, and after I had been there a few months, it was deemed no longer polite to correct her.

Where I differ from you, though, is that the spartan interior increased the attractiveness of the place to me.

Did you ever go to Glen's pub? I remember a night up there with Roger in his Univ sweatshirt, The Bookseller, behaving as you might expect, and James (wearing stripey shirt of course). The pub was The Blackbird, not a typical place for that group to be hanging out.

Anonymous said...

Hey there, Cowboy, hadn't heard from you in a while.

Yes, I do get a little confused at this point as to who left when. I recall that - for some reason or another - both you and James played on the Black Swan team, but NEVER at the same time. Why on earth would that have been? Or is it just my faulty memory again?

I generally like a no-frills approach to bar decor, but I think the Swan took it to extremes: it was a bit like being inside a garage or a barracks. Actually, I think the worst problem was the harsh lighting; I like a bit of cosseting gloom in my bars. If you've got that, it doesn't matter what the f*** is on the walls.

Yes, I did go out to The Blackbird once (easily identifiable from the burned-out Sierra smoking out front.... well, I jest, but not much: it had become even rougher by the mid-90s. I can't imagine how James and Roger even survived the journey out there!). Only once. Glen was a jovial host, but it really is a bit of a dive.

The British Cowboy said...

James and I were on the same team there for at least a year, if not three. Your alcohol sodden mind is confusing you.

Do you remember the first year that we played there, before Roger was in the team, when I think we roped you in to play a few games as sub. Frank, the ex-cop, modern race horse part owner, and future captain, for it was he, was on the team, but not as captain. The captain was a NALGO (or was it UNISON by then) official named Neil, who, because of the Young Ones, is forever in my memory as Neil, Neil, Glockenspeil (or Neil, Neil, Orange Peel) depending on my mood. That was the start of the whole downward spiral, and then Neil had a falling out with Frank/Eileen, and Frank became skipper, we recruited Roger, and soon it became the Roger vs Bilson league.