PUB REVIEW: THE WATERLOO

by Chris Hammond

EDINBURGH

War is hell so they say. But nobody ever tells you about the real curse of the battlefield, the deep wounds that never heal, the true scars left on the landscape . . . the military theme pub.

No I’m not writing about somewhere teaming with boozed up bare arsed squaddies, flaccid RAF layabouts and sexually deprived sailors; you can’t grudge them a pint and a night off making a royal twat of themselves, they’ve earned it more than any of us. I’m writing about the kind of place staffed by men who wouldn’t know a beer barrel from a gun barrel, the kind of place with tenuous links to great battalions or battles of the past, the sort of pub that looks like it’s innards have seen more action than Cromwell. I’m writing about places like The Waterloo just off Princes Street, Edinburgh.

Nestled just round from Leith Street (which happens to house the much more agreeable Black Bull), The Waterloo is an archaic tourist rammed skid mark on the underwear of the city. It’s rancid selection of beers (anyone for Tennants Ember? No?!), sterile soulless atmosphere, decaying wallpaper and crammed tinderstick like furniture makes a stay here about as comfortable, inviting and desirable as a hand job from Freddy Krueger. Here you can sit and listen to obese Americans pontificate on the merits of Burger King over Pizza Hut, enjoy children screaming and crying in the background whilst being unable to avoid eerily paper thin walls which leave every bowel movement in the infinitesimal pensioner crammed toilets completely audible.

Plastic soldiers from long since forgotten conflicts watch on as you ponder whether life slips away faster in here than it would have done on the eastern front circa 1945. It’s hard to tell really. Another pint of cyanide you say? Why the bloody hell not old boy!