A feast of flâneurie
On Sunday 14th May a crowd of fops once again converged on Jermyn Street for the, now annual, explosion of flâneurie—the chappish art of walking aimlessly simply to experience the city, seeing and being seen—organised by The Chap magazine.
I say "organised", but one of the big problems with this exercise is that it is by definition not planned, and therefore inevitably woefully organised; I'm not sure there is really a solution to that. As usual we began with a mob of photographers trying to take group shots in the confines of the mouth of Piccadilly Arcade, while Gustav Temple read another excerpt of Baulelaire, this time in a Pam Ayres accent, for the sake of variety. It can take a long time actually to start the flâning (and in fact Anton Krause got impatient and stomped off, to return with refreshing can of gin and tonic in hand).
In the end inertia was overcome and we started off. We made it as far as the end of Jermyn Street before grinding to a halt while we debated where to go, eventually trolling down Waterloo Place and on to the Mall for another attempt at a group photo, then on to Horse Guards Parade. There was a certain amount of stopping and starting while we waited for stragglers to catch up, though I think some inevitably got lost: this rather goes hand in hand with having no itinerary.
By this stage some were jonesing for a libation so we headed to the Ship and Shovell off Craven Street—only to find it closed (clearly not much demand for its services on a Sunday). Fortunately, by turning 180 degrees we were presented with the Sherlock Holmes pub, which was open although all six of its real ales were off, along with most of their keg beers and ciders. But Chaps are inventive in adversity and everyone found something satisfactory to sip. The Sherlock Holmes is located where Northumberland Street joins Northumberland Avenue, near Trafalgar Square, and formed an effective amphitheatre to display the dandies on patrol, as we were all loitering outside. At any given time a good dozen or so sightseers were standing filming or photographing us. If they were tourists in London then we could satisfy ourselves that we gave them a dose of precisely what they probably hoped to see—I can imagine them showing their friends and family these shots of typical English citizens…
Gustav later told me that he was having complaints about the ratio of flâning to drinking (from both angles), so after a pint we headed off again, this time tabbing all along the Strand and Fleet Street to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, some say the oldest pub in London. There is a sign outside declaring that it was rebuilt in 1667, but I was told that the basement bars, of which there are two and half levels, were untouched by the Great Fire and go back further than that. Again the staff clearly weren't expecting many customers and they opened up the lowest bar specially for us.
I sense that many were happy sitting in the windowless cellar bars, but a decision was made to do a bit more flâneurie and we shipped out, trekking eastwards past St Paul's and Bank, eventually making it to Prescott Street, near Tower Gateway DLR station. Our destination (and we did have one this time) was a members' club called Vout-O- Renee's, in the crypt under a Catholic church, which had agreed to host our end-of-flân knees-up. I think it's aimed at the creative community and the walls and ceiling are all painted with trompe l'oeil wood panels, garden scenes and blue skies. There was even a piano, though sadly (and perhaps surprisingly) no one in our group admitted to being able to play one. We arrived around 6pm and ales were supped, as were strange pink cocktails, and everyone seemed happy.
All in all an agreeable jolly, and a great way to meet new people who might be just the sort of types to take an interest in the New Sheridan Club. Next year I must remember to bring a lot more NSC calling cards as I ran our fairly early on.
You can see many photos from the event at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sheridanclub/albums/72177720308309956.
