A Tale of Two Cities

Three men in a pub. That could have been almost any midweek evening during my four years in London.

Many of them were spent in a famous old establishment; parts of which survived the Great Fire and in which literary greats such as Dickens, Tennyson and Twain also took refuge from the city's frosty winter nights.

That was the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, tucked away just off Fleet Street on Wine Office Court. It's a prince among pubs; spoilt only by its favourable mentions in every guide book ever purchased by a London-bound American tourist.

Thankfully, they tend only to visit during daylight hours and, should you be in a windowless pub in the middle of a work day, are certainly no higher than third on your list of problems.

Three men in Balmain's Unity Hall Hotel was an altogether different situation.

For a start, it's awful. By day a haven for middle-aged and elderly horse racing types; by night a venue for cover bands brought up on a strict diet of Cold Chisel.

But what separated it more from the Cheshire Cheese on Saturday afternoon was the topic of conversation. Boris and Ken are things of the past. So it seems is watching sport. Here we were talking about potty training and lamenting the convenient absorbency of the disposable nappy and the laziness it can too easily instill in parent and child alike.

My how the drunken have fallen.

The reality is that this will one day become a very important issue. And, with my companions being the respective guardians of children aged three and four, I really should have been taking notes.

To be honest, that wasn't really necessary. The lads made it sound as simple as picking a few weeks during the holidays, stocking up on undies and getting your wife to do as many of the hard yards as possible.

Simple in its planning if not in its execution.

Then again, who knows? Maybe it is. Thankfully, I have a year or so before I find out.