Old Queen’s Head Turns Four

Ladies’ toilets are where unscientific insights can be gathered into what kinds of people attend what kinds of nights.

Not that I was lurking in the loos with a boom mike during The Old Queen’s Head’s fourth birthday party, two Friday’s ago. I needed sanctuary due to being laden with a massive handbag, a trench coat and a laptop ensconced within the Double Whopper of padded cases. Try dancing with that circus on your arm.

Fortunately, the OQH’s toilets are objet d’arts and contain a large  wicker chair, perfect for the girl who just wants some quality hang time. I seized the moment to make some notes (music: right up my funky electro street, bouncer: ANGRY, chandeliers: present – I love those chandeliers) and also watched a girl spend ages trying to paw a scrap of toilet roll off her heel.

Then the door came crashing open and there, smilingly with all the charm of a baby playing with a kitten, was a drugged-looking brunette.

‘What are you doing? You look beautiful in that chair.’

I told her, then launched a vox pox, just like they do at the BBC: concerned but engaged and with a tilted head.

She confessed to being slightly drunk and said she was having fun and liked the music ‘apart from the slightly cringey songs that make you think you’re in Benidorm.’ We chatted about my career and where it was going (nobody knows) and, shortly after, another girl came plunging out of an occupied toilet to tell all about her journalistic career. Soon there was a whole committee of us, philosophising, lamenting and borrowing each other’s mascara.

Back in the actual party, Edwin Congreave from math-rock sensation Foals was playing remixes of everything from classics like Daft Punk’s Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger to ‘perfect caressing music’  Empire of the Sun to surely-not-Drumming Song-again.

I loved it and could have stayed all night. But there’s only so much gay abandon you can have with your laptop before you’ve gaily abandoned your laptop and that can never happen. I may not have gone the distance but if my laydeez from the Ladies were anything to go by,  four years down the line, one of Islington’s trendiest boozers is still delivering quality.

The Old Queen’s Head
44 Essex Road
Islington
N1 8LN

Tel: 020 7 354 9993