The Harp, WC2

Not my first visit to the Harp, as I've been here in 2012 and possibly once or twice since, but didn't write anything down. On this occasion I was with a small group celebrating a friend's 70th birthday, so she had to come here even though the stairs to the toilets are a bit difficult for her. I had already drunk more beer than I had intended at the first four pubs, and there were two or three still to do, so I went for the lowest strength beer on the bar, which was Dark Star Hophead, now just 3.4%. Some people say it's lost whatever it had, but I was never a huge fan anyway, and I thought this was pretty good (NBSS 3.5). Some of the others said it was quieter than normal, but it seemed pretty busy to me, and it was certainly noisy enough to make conversation difficult for me. This is quite a small pub considering how popular it is, so I guess it has to get crowded in order to maintain the throughput of beers, but it doesn't exactly encourage me to return.