A Night out in the East End

Bank Holiday weekend. What's a girl to do?

It's a luxurious mix of being able to have a lazy day watching trashy films and eating and generally lazing about the house; but still having two whole days to do stuff so you don't get the guilt of a 'wasted' weekend. London is a bad place for that, so so much to do that staying at home for a weekend kicking back is shadowed by an anxiety that you're missing out on city life.

Last Sunday I organised an outing to show a visiting colleague, and other mates from work, a bit of the East End. The agenda was Columbia Rd flower market for a wander and brunch, then seeing what happened. I was hoping we'd maintain the unspoken tradition of Bank Holiday Sunday afternoons in the pub (it's rude not to because you have Monday off.)

After some appalling directions from the nearest tube station to my house, I met the Fin and the Dane and we wandered to the market. Before we could even contemplate entering the throng, we stopped off at the rough and ready Italian bar at the bottom of the market for the traditional Sunday brunch of a fry up and a beer.

Replete, we wandered through the buzzy, busy, noisy market, picking up some massive (and surprisingly heavy) sunflowers; and armfuls of simple English gladioli on our way. I was restrained from getting overexcited and buying plants, since in my head I am a savvy city gardener, who enjoys being among the kitchen garden foliage on the balcony. The reality of this is a dead window box, dead hanging basket and some chillis who've seen better days.

Now we could tick off the market, we met up with some other work mates in Hoxton Square for afternoon drinks. We found ourselves a good outside spot a funky bar and proceeded to make our way through enough wine for The Fin to berate us, since she had to fly to Norway that afternoon and we'd basically be responsible for her forthcoming dehydration and headache on the plane. Whoops. Fun though, we agreed on that.

Bank Holiday excess truly kicking in, the next stop was Broadway Market's Dove pub - a cosy bustling bar serving about a million Belgian beers and some rather excellent homemade food. The Dane and I thought Bloody Marys were a great idea for starters, we were right at the time. I highly recommend their sausages, apparently the Springbok ones are particularly good.

By this point, we were worse for wear and Nor'n I'ron had to head homewards. With an intrepid Scots colleague on his way across London to join us, the only option was to carry on. Full of wine, it seemed a great mission to drag ourselves to Shoreditch, so we investigated Bethnal Green's bars after being chucked out of The Dove at closing. I am fully aware that there are some credible and fun places to frequent in Bethnal Green, but as the local tour guide I inexplicably felt drawn to the dodgy local boozer. In we trooped, clearly tipsy and not the usual clientele.

Amid some staring, we bravely ordered our round and were about to pour back out of the front door to smoke on the pavement. Suddenly, a figure that can only be described as a Chinese dwarf whizzed around the side of the bar and began to shout at us; we quickly comprehended this to mean we weren't allowed to smoke out the front. He literally herded us out to the beer garden at the back to join a group of suspicious-looking tracksuit-clad locals.

Unfortunately for my friends, who live in South/ West London, I promptly decided at this point that the glass of cheap wine I was consuming had finished me off and I needed bed. Now.

I felt bad about leaving them there, but apparently they'd had a perfectly pleasant time after I'd gone and it was actually quite an experience.

Perhaps it will become my local boozer, now I know the rules about smoking out the back.