A couple of gorgeous London pubs

In the back room after the family have gone

Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been? Well, not up to London to visit the Queen, but to London to see my brother graduate. After years of hard study in addition to doing his day job, my little bruv has got a BSc in Social Sciences, and can pursue his dream of being a teacher. He did it through the Open University.

I have massive respect for anyone who studies with the OU. For non-Brits, it's a university where the work is done mostly through home study in the students' spare time, with additional tutorials and summer schools. It's backed up with programmes on the BBC, too. It has the same standards as other British universities, but the way it's structured means people who can't study full time because of work or family commitments, or who might find accessing a bricks-and-mortar university difficult (eg people with severe physical disabilities) can get a degree, masters, even PhD.

Another view of the Fox's back room

Anyway, in addition to seeing Dibbles* get his certificate we had lunch with family in a pub called the Fox and Anchor. I found it via the daily Emerald Street email. I'm not usually one for girly bobbins, but Emerald Street really is good and the email always includes a bar or restaurant review. They send out separate emails for London, Birmingham and Glasgow/Edinburgh – I get the London one, but I wish they had one for Bristol!

The Fox's website says it's in Clerkenwell, but it's definitely round the back of Smithfield Market. Is Smithfield Market in Clerkenwell? I don't know! At any rate, you just need to walk round the meat market to find it. We needed somewhere easy to get to from the graduation venue (the Barbican Centre), as one of the party wouldn't have been able to walk far, with a traditional menu, as another was a fussy eater, and the Fox seemed to fit the bill. It's lovely inside, all dark wood panelling. At the back there are even little mirrored booths, where perhaps once upon a time Victorian blokes entertained loose women, or worked out a dodgy deal or two.

The food was jolly nice, though I hadn't realised you needed to order vegetables separately and my chicken-and-ham pie came all on its own so I quickly ordered some additional veggies. My brother ordered the pork pies with mushy peas, and they looked really good. The beers were excellent.

The bar at the Black Friar – look at the frieze!

After a long meal Mr Robot and I waved goodbye to my brother and the rest of the family, had one more beer, and set off on our photo safari. We were walking round the edge of the City of London, where it meets the City of Westminster. A loop round Old Holburn, Fleet Street and the Embankment meant we ended up in the splendid turn-of-the-20th-century Arts and Crafts pub, the Black Friar. I've just bought a new camera, so hopefully these last two photos will give you a clearer idea of what we love about it - there's just nowhere else like it, with its marble walls and brass reliefs of monks brewing beer.

The back room at the Black Friar

*My brother doesn't read this blog. Good job, eh?