12 Pubs of Christmas Organisers Not Abiding by the F*cking Rules

By The Fish

It was the third pub of Christmas, and the organisers of the Queen’s Chessboxing Club’s annual 12 Pubs of Christmas pub crawl became mired in a world of hypocrisy, deceit, and subterfuge.

As all QUB students know, each pub on the way of the festive, Christmas jumper-wearing odyssey requires participants to partake in specific rules. Classics include “No bathrooms”, “No drugs”, and the “Accents pub”, which often doesn’t go well after a certain hour.

I managed to acquire the following intel from a chessboxer known as “Spassky”, who asked to not be named out of fear for his chessboxing career prospects.

The 1st pub – the SU bar – saw the sober souls of Elmwood eschew phones for half-an-hour and actually talk to people. That surprisingly worked well. The next pub down the road – Lavery’s – saw the dutiful dozen drink pints and “pints only”. Alright with student discounts.

However, our odyssey took a turn with the arrival at the Points. Unike Odysseus, whose men blocked their ears with earwax to avoid the luring sounds of the sirens, the Chessboxing Club was inexorably so enchanted by the toilets. While the rule of the third pub explicitly forbids bathrooms, members – including the committee – went for a supposed “quick piss”, disregarding the irrelevance of the length of time in which one goes. “We’ll not do it again”, said the president after being pressed.

Stately, the club traversed to what should have been the “Accents pub”: Spoons. A near-riot ensued when a friend of Mr Spassky overheard the Club’s secretary speaking in his native North Down accent. In his perfected Brooklynspeak he berated, “Lemmegetan accent from youse boring schmucks!” They would not abide; the committee continued to ignore their own rules. Bitter, our friend and his crew scowled “Fuhgeddaboudit” and turned for the exit.

For half the group, the crawl was halted there. The other half were reported to have “called it quits” a mere 3 pubs later.

This turn of events thus presents another catastrophic failure for the 2nd annual edition of the Chessboxing Club pub crawl. “That crawl”, Spassky said, “is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

Written 4 Dec 2025.

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