Review

Rebuilt in 1824 to commemorate the victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, The Victory Inn is named after Captain Hardy’s HMS Victory, the flagship of the British fleet and therefore the vessel on which the Admiral would have sailed. The admiral in this instance being a certain Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson. Why the pub was rebuilt (and renamed?) in 1824, 19 years after the Battle, is unclear – why the delay? Perhaps in 2022 there might be a pub or bar somewhere, that is rebuilt and renamed to commemorate the victory in Iraq!

A typical early 19th century pub with a tiled fireplace (definitely not circa 1826), an overkill of dark wood, mirrors, clocks, ship’s bells, and barrels enjoying a new lease of life as a table – and looking like R2D2’s new role as a beer receptacle.

It’s not clear what Admiral Horatio Nelson, Captain Thomas Hardy and their shipmates on HMS Victory would have made of the Old Skool Hip-Hop playing in their eponymous pub, but they would have agreed the pub is ideal for Fetishists. The objet d'art in The Victory Inn includes a framed collection of knots and a framed cat o'nine tails. Ironic, considering Nelson cared for his men, believed in fair treatment and resorted to harsh floggings as the very last resort. There is a small beer garden at the rear of the pub, although there isn’t room to swing a cat (o'nine tails)!

As to be expected, there’s an excess of Nelson and HMS Victory memorabilia and pictures, including an entire glass-fronted corner unit filled with HMS Victorys in a bottle, Nelson jugs and suchlike. A much clichéd painting is the Greenwich pensioner saluting the bust of Nelson, a copy of which hangs beside the bar; there are plenty of busts I would like to salute in The Victory Inn, and the Nelson-shaped flagons aren’t the only jugs to marvel over – the totty quota is high!

Anybody with half a brain knows how a bar’s hatch works: it’s hinged along one side, can be opened by lifting, and closed by dropping! It’s not rocket-science, as there are few technicalities involved and the likelihood of getting it wrong is negligible. Yet here, at The Victory Inn, the bleedin’ obvious needed stating at some point in history, as people as stupid as cross-eyed-poodles at a Mensa meeting obviously staffed the bar. On the bar, in marker, is a large ‘A’, and lo-and-behold, there’s also a large ‘A’ written on the hatch, with instructions of how both of the letters ‘A’ need to be joined together to close it!

Most men don’t have a clue what a Femidom is and assume it’s likely to catapult across the room during insertion or fall out of the body at inopportune moments, like a condom that falls out of a wallet at an ill-timed moment – meeting the prospective parents-in-law, for example. So standing at the rear portion of the bar in The Victory Inn, it’s disconcerting to have an unhindered view into the Ladies toilets, where there’s a Femidom machine on the wall. Even more alarming is to see an ugly woman buying one, especially if she’s been talking to you for the past 30 minutes; and like the letters on the bar hatch, it’s a worry when she comes back, looking determined, eyeing your crotch, and wielding the Femidom and a felt-tip pen!

Review by mr_psm