NOT only a prickly creature which has cautious mating habits, the porcupine is also a machine used for brewing beer a similarly cautious process.The brewer has to ensure the porcupine mashes to perfection, to ensure a quality ale or lager.

The Porcupine, for those who know Mottingham, is a pub, too.

Popular for Sunday lunches and for fans gathering to watch football, unfortunately to the detriment of others who are there for a quiet drink, The Porcupine sells itself as a family pub.

In the summer, with its large garden, aviary and some Jungle Jim-type stuff for budding Tarzans to practice on, it is undoubtedly very popular.

There is a room at the back, basically a covered verandah, overlooking the garden, which can be used in winter, if you want to get away from the footie crowd.

Which sounds great in theory but doesn't work in practice.

Those parents whose lives seem to depend on the victory of their team send their kids to the back room "to be quiet". A well rehearsed practice but one which rarely meets with success, especially as there is one of those silly mechanical rocking rides with infernal fairground music the kids want to play on.

Worse still, there is only one ride and lots of children.

It's not long before a fight ensues and mum and dad, bless em, are oblivious because their team (the one in the red shirts) is on the attack.

And that took care of our quiet Sunday afternoon drink.

But it wasn't all bad news. The first beer was fine, a perfectly-chilled lager in a frosted glass. PubSpy's assistants said the cider (Blackthorne) was just right while the glass of dry white wine could have been a tad drier but was reasonably priced.

To its credit, before the invasion of the little people, the back room made for quite a pleasant drinking spot. The footie roar was a dull blur from the front room the more formal and traditional part of the pub in keeping with its mock-Tudor (actually built in 1922) appearance.The menu looked fairly good with reasonable prices.

While the assistants looked at the selection, PubSpy fetched another round, sampling a John Smith ale for himself superb and a bottle of red wine good value for a cabernet for his two friends.

Here the fun stopped. Shortly before said invasion, we found 2.30pm on the Sunday in question was not a good time for Sunday lunch. There were no potatoes and a few other problems which kicked the roast into touch and we had to settle for the standard quasi-American fare of burgers and chips.

And that was a pity, as the wine would have been fine with a traditional Sunday lunch of roast beef. Our table could have been cleaner, too. It appeared it hadn't been wiped since the previous evening.

All of that aside, let's look at the Porcupine from the view of the other customers on our afternoon.

They were happy, beers flowed, the selection was pretty good, ranging from Courage and John Smith ales to Carlsberg and Carling lagers, there was also an array of the ever-increasing alco-pops and wines to choose from.

But The Porcupine, sadly, scores just one pint on my scale.

Oh, and by the way, the guys in the red shirts won.