My local

I’d left a 10-year relationship, moved out and moved up to the city I’d always wanted to live in, I started a new job, and I decided to live in Hackney. My old life had broken into many different pieces over the previous few months and The Cock became a constant and a concrete place for me, somewhere that helped me figure out how I wanted to put all the broken pieces back together.

The Cock became more than just a pub. I went there to work, to do research, to edit articles and book chapters while slowly sipping a beer. I’d have meetings there. I’d go to sit and read, or to just think over a pint, wondering if I was doing the right things, to think about what I’d left behind to come to London, and consider what I’d do next. I had first dates and last dates there, the first beer of the day and (too-often) the last beers of the night. There were quick passing pints and nights when we sat for hours. I’ve been there sober and wasted and devastatingly hungover. I once had to chase someone up the street who’d stolen a coat, and many times I had to walk to the cashpoint to get more money until they finally started taking card payments. I’ve sat in most of the seats (and none of them are comfortable), I’ve leant at the bar, I’ve stood for an hour in the middle of the room on a busy Friday night, swaying around with others. I remember it best late at night, when it was packed, the windows dripping with condensation, the air thick and heavy, the floorboards wet with beer and shaken umbrellas and rain brought in from outside (there’s always rain in my memories, though I don’t think that’s metaphorical). For a year or more I came at least once a week as I was trying to settle into this new life. In the next years I went less frequently, but it was still a place to go and make decisions: I took Emma, a new girlfriend there, soon after we met in 2015; later we planned a five-month travel adventure while sitting in there, then it was the last place we went before leaving on that trip, and one of the first we returned to later that summer (it was raining then, too). And while seven years later I couldn’t tell you how many pints of beer I’ve had in there, I can tell you exactly everything I’ve eaten in The Cock: a solitary pickled egg. 

It’s the door to The Cock which feels symbolic in my memories. It’s extra heavy and the kind that forces you back when you push against it, and you need to shoulder your way in. When you push in through the door it almost sighs as you come into the warm, calm, solace of the pub, and when you push out it physically knocks you into the busyness of Mare Street. That push was into the life I wanted and needed then. It was thrilling and scary, brash, loud, fast, ever-changing, filled with anxiety and excitement, and it was definitely, definitively East London. I loved it, and I still do.  

I’m writing this in The Cock. It’s early November (and it’s raining), two days before the national lockdown, and I’ve been feeling troubled and unable to think properly, weighed down by an odd lethargy and lack of creativity, and wanted some time to just sit with a couple of pints and my notebook. The main reason I decided to come back today is that Emma and I have decided to move out of London, and by the time the lockdown is lifted I might not be a Londoner anymore. Almost seven years to the day that I moved here, I’ll be leaving. I need a cathartic hour alone in this pub, to remember what this place meant to me in the beginning, and to think about the excitement for what comes next. The heavy door into The Cock was the way into my new London life, and in many ways the proper beginning of my adult life, even if it came when I was almost 30 years old, and it gave me an essential familiarity, and a pleasing, welcoming comfort, even on the very uncomfortable chairs. 

The Cock wasn’t my Queen Vic, but I didn’t want that. That idea of the local is still strange to me, but The Cock was able to define what a local pub meant to me, and that’s a pub which is uniquely important – personally, psychologically, socially – and for much more than just the beer. I won’t be local to The Cock anymore, but it’ll still be my local.