I have a pal, Tim Goldie, who is a good pal despite being an improvising drummer. He can probably play solid Simple Minds-esque beats, too, but I've never seen him do it. Anyway, we were supposed to meet up last night, and short of anything to do I stupidly rang up Time Out Guides to see if any pubs still needed reviewing. Of course, they did. Pubs always seem to need reviewing. I was given the names of 4 more Marylebone boozers (if you think I'm running out of words for “pub” on this journal, imagine the nightmare I'm having trying to review them) and I set out from work, looking forward to discussing makes of hi-hat with Tim, despite having done no prior research. At which point he rings me and blows me out. OK, he was ill, but nevertheless I felt a bit deflated.

Hanging around in Mornington Crescent, I spy in her yellow coat. She agrees to accompany me to the first pub, the name of which I forget but the location of which is just off Portland Place, near the BBC. En route we called who is at a loose end. He comes there too. I then get a call from Deirdre, who has been blown out herself, is at Oxford Circus and looking for some pub action. Leo received a text from , with a view to hooking up later in the evening. By now I'm beginning to feel like the Pied Piper.

By the time we hit the last pub, the miniscule and extremely “local” Beehive not far from Edgware Road, the party was 7 strong, Deirdre having departed simply because she had to get up to go to Norwich in the morning. I'd have been tempted to keep going and just try and blot out any idea of Norwich at all. She handed the baton over to highly amusing friend and Spanish translator Jo, who put it in her bag for safe keeping.

We were not received with the most cradling and nurturing of welcomes at the Beehive, for a number of reasons:

1) had in tow with her two boys, one of which was her boyfriend but both of whom would have required ID in order to get so much as a pint of milk out of the bar staff

2) and Jo were gutturally comparing Portguese accents at high volumes, showering each other with enough saliva to seal the UK's annual output of Basildon Bond envelopes

3) My balance, and thus my general appearance had been severely compromised by several pints of real ale (research purposes) including something misleadingly labelled “Double Chocolate Stout”; nice stuff, but let's say if you poured it over a slice of chocolate cake you'd have have ruined the cake

4) looked, as ever, quite beautiful but the pub's list of officially sanctioned shirtwear did not extend to embracing Leo's grey military number with red trim, which he bought at an Archway charity shop, to which there is attached an anecdote that I can't remember

In fact, is the king of the spoken anecdote. Even the most mundane stories can come alive in his capable hands, with huge, sweeping gestures, a range of finely tuned accents (not always applicable to the anecdote but skilfully interpolated nonetheless) and facial engagement with his listeners, by which I mean he looks at you, he doesn't try to kiss you. Usually.

I felt quite pleased with myself as I trotted onto the Bakerloo line at 11.30, and was reminded of the quite incredibly bad mid-80s hit “Something Out Of Nothing”. It was ostensibly sung by the characters Sharon and Kelvin from Eastenders, but was credited to their real names, Letitia Dean and Paul Medford. Silly people. Did they not realise that 18 years later that their past would come back to haunt them, here, on an obscure corner of t'internet?