All Change for London Circle?

London fans may be on the move again

Fans at the regular first Thursday of the month London pub meeting were surprised to hear that Kev, the landlord, may be on the move. He's hoping to move to the Florence Nightingale, a larger pub round the corner, with more space and a better function room. And he wants the first Thursday meetings to go with him.

The meeting has been at the Jubilee Tavern in York Road, Waterloo, for several years, and fans have become attached to the cheap food, shabby furniture, and colourful locals. But the Jubilee is a small pub; nice in the summer, when people can spill out onto the pavement, but not so good in the winter, when you freeze outside and bake inside.

Reactions to a possible move have been mixed - on the one hand, it would be nice to have a bigger pub, and it's good to be welcomed guests of a landlord who understands us. But the Florence Nightingale isn't quite so convenient for the mainline station, and moving pubs is always traumatic for the "London Circle", which is one of the world's largest fan groups, and which has continued meeting, with no noticable organisation whatsoever, since the last days of the Raj.

A field trip to the Florence Nightingale on some other Thursday is planned, but, unsurprisingly, there are no clear plans for a move. The best reason for a move I've heard so far is the theory that it would be rather splendid to all move without telling Maureen, so she returns from her TAFF trip to find the Jubilee deserted.

Ironically, fandom might have discovered the Florence Nightingale years ago. A planned BSFA booking for the Florence Nightingale was bounced at short notice, with the suggestion that they 'try the pub down the road'. The pub down the road turned out to be the Jubilee, and the rest is history.

-- Alison Scott

03 Oct 1998