Note the absence of "in" before "the". There will be a time for that - coinciding with the closing ceremony, approximately - but this is a tribute to the institution itself, the public house.
Despite our shared heritage, somewhere along the lineNew Zealand veered away from the ethos of a shared dwelling to booze barns and bars.
It's a shame. A good pub can offer a comforting embrace.
It's a place where you can swap your tales of the day, complain about your boss/ editor/ butler and have a bit of a graze.
The fact you're doing it with a pint of best bitter in your hand is almost incidental.
Diarist Samuel Pepys believed the public house was the heart of England and while it might now be truer of smaller towns and communities, there is still an element of it in London, (although they're under serious attack from bland chain bars full of blinking lights and tinny music).
But research suggests the good days are numbered.
While there are 52,000 pubs in Great Britain, two are closing every day. At this rate, by the year 2083, there will not be a pub in the land.
Within a 1km radius of our hotel there are more watering holes than we could have hoped to visit if the Olympics went for a month, so you can see why some might be struggling. There is market saturation, so to speak.
Some of them look dreadful, but Mabel's Tavern of Mabledon Place was winking at us from the moment we checked in. It has served well as an unofficial war room.
A good range of pub nosh - avoid the nachos though - is complemented by a range of cask ales from the Shepherd Neame brewery. Make mine a Bishop's Finger, please.
