This pub is The Coach and Horses, an old coaching inn on the London Road in Isleworth. After I took the photo a bloke came up and asked me if I was alright, in the tense way that blokes sometimes do just before they thump you in the head. I told him I was alright. He asked if I was taking a photo of the pub. I said I was. "Why?" he said. Because of the music inside it, I said. "Oh, alright," he said, and wandered off.
The music inside the pub was jazz. They have free jazz sessions here every Monday. I know this, because I have seen it listed every week in Time Out for a year. And I finally got here. Well worth the trip across town too. There's regularly a strong line-up of jazz musicians at The Coach and Horses. Tonight it was the turn of John Parricelli, Mark Lockheart, John Horler, Steve Watts and, the man who organises the evening, a drummer of some reknown called Trevor Tomkins. All the seats in the music half of the pub were taken (Swindon v Exeter in the other half not so popular...on the telly, not twenty-two footballers kicking chunks out of each other in the public bar). I doubt whether I have been amongst a more knowledgeable and reverential pub audience this past year. Talking between pieces, even when there was a couple of minute break, was kept to a barely audible whisper. It felt rather intrusive to push to the front with my camera, so here's a shy photo taken with the phone...
I found this piece about Monday nights at The Coach and Horses, and Trevor Tomkins, on another blog, devoted to the London jazz scene, and therefore written by someone who knows more about jazz than me.
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