Bar billiards - The Glasshouse Stores, Soho

Stonch and his pals like a game of bar billiards. Forget pool or snooker - I've got the hand-to-eye coordination of a blind chimp, and my uselessness on the sports field applies equally on the green baize. I never thought I'd find a game I'd be able to play in the pub without hopelessly embarassing myself, but find it I did.

Late in my final summer as a student, in the run-up to the dreaded finals year, myself and my flatmate went on a week-long binge. We were depressed at the prospect of having to "revise" things we'd never learned in the first place, and decided to drown our sorrows for a whole seven days. This led to us exploring every nook and cranny of Oxford's better pubs, and the discovery of bar billiards tables in The Royal Oak (42 Woodstock Rd, Oxford, OX2 6HT, Tel: 01865 310187) and The Angel and Greyhound (30 St. Clements Street, Oxford, OX4 1AB, Tel: 01865 242660). We managed to get barred from the latter (for swearing, I seem to remember), but The Royal Oak was more accommodating. By the end of the week we'd become experts at the game, and hustled a few twenty quid notes from junior doctors working at the Radcliffe Infirmary across the road. The hospital is now closed, and I've heard the pub has been insensitively refurbed beyond recognition.

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In a nutshell, bar billiards is a cue sport in which 2+ players take turns to take shots from the D at the near end of the table, the objective being to pot balls in the holes dotted around the table. Each hole has a number of points between 10 and 200 allotted to it, with double that score being awarded if you manage to sink the one red ball. To complicate matters, there are three skittles on the table - knocking over one of the whites loses you all points scored on that turn, whereas disturbing the black wipes out your entire score from the game. A timer ticks away from the moment you put a coin in the slot and release the balls, and after about 15 minutes time-out results in a bar inside the table dropping down, trapping any balls potted from that moment on. Because all shots are taken from one end of the table, the game can be tucked away in the corner of any pub. The main advantage of billiards is that almost anyone can have a bash - the rules are simple, and the number of holes produces an element of randomness which means a first-time player can often clean up.

Keeping up the bar billiards habit has proven difficult. This game, imported to Britain from Belgium in the 30s, has declined in popularity over the years and is now found only in a handful of traditionally-minded boozers. Thankfully, the kind of pub that has a table is precisely the kind highly likely to keep a good pint of ale too, meaning that a session on the billiards is usually accompanied by a good session on the beers too. If you want to try the game in London, there are only a very few places with a table. These include fabulous free house The Pembury Tavern in Hackney (90 Amhurst Road, E8 1JH, Tel: 020 8986 8597), a relatively pain-free trip from the city centre on a number of bus routes. If that's too much trouble, there's only one Central London pub to head to, and that's The Glasshouse Stores in Soho (55 Brewer St, W1F 9UN, Tel: 020 7287 5278). We were there last night, after visiting a few choice pubs in Kensington and before a late one at Thirst on Greek Street.
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This Tardis-like Samuel Smith's house, like many of that brewery's London houses, combines a wonderfully preserved/restored traditional interior with a depressing lack of cask ale. Nevertheless, their Pure Brewed Lager is perhaps the best homegrown pint of fizzy yellow swill on offer in Britain, the Wheat Beer is palatable and some of their bottled beers are half-decent. I just about survived on a couple of bottles of Oatmeal Stout, and the lads were perfectly happy on the lager. The billiards table is tucked away right at the back, and although it's a slightly wobbly table, it's well situated in the comfortable lounge, away from the crush of the narrow front bar. The Cellar Bar downstairs also looked nice, but we were here for. Clio Jon showed a disconcerting ability to come away with scores of several hundred from a single turn. James unsportingly transferred his pool skills to the table, actually taking measured shots rather than just whacking the balls up the table and hoping for the best like the rest of us.
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Thanks to its bar billiards table, The Glasshouse Stores may become a regular haunt for us, where otherwise it would just be another anonymous boozer. Its proximity to the mucky book shops of Brewer Street just adds to the appeal.
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Cheers.

Information:

1. Pubs (or indeed mad, obsessive individuals) can purchase reconditioned 1930s bar billiards tables from Masters Traditional Games.
2. There's an attempt at a list of pubs with bar billiards tables online here. It seems to been updated relatively recently (the Pembury Tavern in Hackney is listed, a pub that only opened in 2006), but certainly isn't complete. For example, it doesn't list either of the pubs in St Albans with tables. We visited one, The Goat, on our St Albans pub crawl last month which you can read about here. If you know of any pubs with bar billiards tables that aren't listed, please leave a comment below with details.
3. There's a short review of The Glasshouse Stores on Fancyapint.com. Disturbingly, when googling the pub I discovered that the London fan club for Prince met up there last month.
4. The Pembury Tavern in Hackney has a website, and is definitely worth a visit. This spacious pub offers both bar billiards and pool, but the real ales and fantastic food are the main attraction. Expect to read more about the Pembury here soon.