#brianspub

After breakfast, we did more investigating on the ability to ship a lion skin and other animal products back to England. After a lot of searching, we decided to call HM Revenue & Customs. Somehow, on the first try, we managed to get through to the right guy. He guided us to a government website which had a lot of information on importing animal products and import taxes. Apparently the most relevant ‘commodity code’ is for “raw furskins (including heads, tails, paws and other pieces or cuttings)”. We are overwhelmed by the bureaucracy on this.

J had another doctor’s visit today, so she left S at a ‘local’ pub. We didn’t realise just how local it was. It is called Brian’s pub. It is an extreme dive pub with only three lagers on draft. It still allows smoking indoors, even though this is illegal in South Africa, and even has ash trays on the bar. The clientele is so rough they even have a Millwall football club flag on the wall. For those of you who don’t know, the motto is “No one likes us, we don’t care”. This football club has some of the roughest fans in London. J was curious about a shooter called the ‘Sowetan toilet’ (Soweto is one of the townships in South Africa). Boris the bartender, who lives upstairs, explained that it contains banana liqueur and Amarula, with a couple of chocolate liqueur drops on top. You can use your imagination to figure out why it is so named.

J picked up S for lunch. S suggested we go to the Belgian restaurant at the V&A waterfront, Den Anker. S had the steak tartare and J had the kilo of moulesfrites. She regretted choosing quantity over quality as the mussels were not the best, ¼ of them did not open during steaming and although they were advertised to be authentic Belgian mussels marinière, the chef had added leeks and celery to the sauce. Although the food was mediocre, the restaurant did provide an impressive selection of Belgian beers. They even had one of J’s favourites, La Chouffe, on draft. S had his standard Chimay Blue from a bottle. We would recommend only visiting this place for the beer. We’re beginning to learn that if something is labelled ‘authentic’ and it’s not from South Africa, it’s not going to be particularly authentic, but will be someone’s take on authentic.

We then headed to the African Trading Post for a quick chat with Lenny to tell him our concerns about the import of the animal products into England. He said they would look into it. Shortly after that, we received an email from senior management, giving us information on their shipping and import agent. They won’t be able to provide a definitive quote or confirmation of what we can ship to the UK until Monday.

We headed back to the hotel for aperitivo hour(s) and then called it a night. We learned some people had checked into the hotel and now three rooms were occupied, including the penthouse suite above us. We ended up hearing those guests a few times before going to bed.