The Oak
Extract from ‘King of the City’ by Michael Moorcock
Published 2000
She’d wound up as live-in staff in a pub on the Kent coast. Broadstairs, I think. A Tudor Steak House renamed in themed-up gibberish. What had been The Oak was now something like The Widow Murphy’s Real Old Sailorman’s Vaults Under The Sign Of The Magpie and Maypole. Reassurance stops for the lost tourist. The only people in there have maps in one hand. A place all serious drinkers and teetotalers avoid.