BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:The Bloomsbury Tavern
FN:The Bloomsbury Tavern
TEL;WORK;VOICE:020 7379 9811
ADR;WORK:;;236 Shaftesbury Avenue;WC2H 8EG
URL:
NOTE:The most difficult thing about not being a believer is that you have to give up hell. There's nothing more delicious than mentally condemning someone to an eternity of pain and torture in the flames of the underworld, because they are Wrong and you are Right. Sitting in this pub, I was suddenly pitched into a moment of pseudo-religious self-righteousness in which I felt we should all be dragged down into hell, every man woman and child. Over-population, environmental degradation, human and animal exploitations and genocides; it seemed to me just then that we're all guilty of fiddling with ourselves as the world burns, self-indulgently parcelling out the blame left, right and centre without ever stopping to take responsibility ourselves and do something to stop it. The solutions to our problems are very simple, after all. The will's lacking, that's all. It's no good just to say that this is the way of human nature and we can't do anything about the way we act - that doesn't ever make it right. We all deserve to burn in hell, if only there was one, and that really should be an end to the debate. The last time I felt like this it was caused by the TV show 'Celebrity Sleepover', and I've never watched TV since. The perpetrator this time? As I looked up from my pint across the old and noble avenues of Bloomsbury, I saw a man riding down the street on a Segway Human Transporter. For those fortunate enough to never have heard of this pointless invention, the SHT is a two-wheeled transportation device not dissimilar to a muddled-up scooter, feted by such luminaries as Steve Jobs (who in his role as head of Apple has overseen the production of 'visionary' computers that variously look like boiled sweets, christmas puddings and wads of chewing gum, and that are as about as useful as the aforementioned in the workplace) as being the vehicle that would change human life, and that is apparently impossible to fall off (although that didn't stop George W Bush). This particular SHT was being piloted by a kerazzee man in a suit, looking rather like a more juvenile Timmy Mallet, red tie flapping as he desperately looked all about him to see who was watching him and his mad stunts in quest of a personality. It was a moment so awful that I just wanted the whole world to be swallowed up by the burning realm of the Fallen One. One third of the planet's population do not have adequate clean drinking water and face a constant daily struggle to put enough food on the table, they face class and caste discrimination and cannot afford healthcare or to send their children to school, and meanwhile our friend here scoots through Bloomsbury on his completely pointless $5000 curio, all in order to bolster something he hasn't got and never will have. I know George W Bush is already trying his hardest to bring down Western Civilisation, but I think it's time we all pitched in too. The alternatives - of burning in hell, or dying of embarrassment as the rest of the world laughs on - are just too awful to bear. Oh, and there's the little matter of the pub. It's small, fairly traditional and okay. Not open Sundays. The world should have ended, but hey...
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