The Bull is dead

...long live The Bull.

We'd heard for some time that our old local, The Bull, had gone downhill lately. We'd noticed it ourselves the last few times we were there before we moved away. And now it is gone forever. Its empty shell stands on the corner of St John Street and Wynatt Street, EC1, covered in scaffolding, with a new nameplate - the Queen's Head or something equally generic - glaring out from underneath.

For some it was nothing more than a run-of-the-mill student pub, with overpriced lager and stale peanuts. For me it was.... well, a run-of-the-mill student pub, but one that you could enter at any given moment and be guaranteed to run into someone you knew, a place where the staff not only recognised you but would tell you if your friends weren't there, so you could go looking for them somewhere else. The scene of many a late-night socialist slanging match. A stopping-off point on the way back home from the market, and the site of one of the most memorable private parties I've been to.

So farewell, then, The Bull.
You were the lounge of my loungeless flat.
But I've since had better pints
at Filthy MacNasty's.