A Brief Glimpse of the Outside World

I walked through town today and saw a wedding party having their photographs taken.

I realised, that in the real world, brides and lesbians never look as good as their glossy counterparts!

Cool Hand Puke

O'Malleys Bar isn't as much fun as I first thought; my dyslexic wife doesn't really get my jokes, it is hard to lean against the 'bar' when then ironing board is in the way and why are there two children, not only running in and out of the place, but also asking me questions which demand answers.

So because of this, I ventured out at eleven last Friday night. The-Worst-Pub was empty apart from Liam, Cool-Hand, George and Wilson. George has morphed into a decent human being! His hate filled shaven pate has been replaced with a cutie-tufty head of curly hair that seems to have softened much of his vitriolic outbursts. Cool-Hand was very drunk and seemed to be up to something rather dubious with an unsuspecting eighteen year old boy. Liam wasn't saying much and Wilson was sweating!

The-Worst-Pub is a beautiful building and the entrance has an art-deco porch which I have taken up as my smoking perch. It's not so bad to sip alone with your thoughts watching the cars and buses traveling east or west. For indeed, there is always something strangely beautiful to see neon lights against red-brick and the blur of headlights illuminating mini-skirted revelers on their way to wherever they may be revealing.

Yesterday is gone

I was born in the wrong year, perhaps the wrong era, or perhaps in the wrong body; for surely our skin and bone is just a waste product that the soul will discard as easily as a whore takes off her dress!

Or perhaps, as passionately as my parents have wanted to climb from the earthy slum from which they were born I have always had an equal desire to slip back down into the mire; a desire not to mix with aspirants, a desire not to spend my evenings talking about house prices and the frightful worry of secondary school selection for their precious. I have always had the strongest desire to drink my drinks with men who have none of these concerns.

And tonight, as I walked passed The-Worst-Pub on the way to tesco metro I glanced into a window of the pub. Well, it was more than a glance, I stood transfixed starring into a world that was suddenly unfamiliar; it was a clean world, full of clean middle aged people reclaiming a building that had been occupied by the enemy since time began. The room that I could see from the street had used to be the nursery for tomorrows drinkers, the room where they first fell in love, had their first fight and more importantly it was the room where they learned the sacred rules of the pub drinker.

Take me back to the world of Shakespeare’s taverns or the smoke filled gin palaces of the nineteenth century. In fact, just take me somewhere else!

The Smoking Ban

This is my forth night on the bounce without going to The-Worst-Pub or indeed any pub since the smoking ban came into force at six o'clock on Sunday morning the first of July, in the year of our Lord two thousand and seven!

I love pubs! I have always loved pubs. But more to the point I love the inside of pubs; even on the hottest day of the year I would prefer to stand at the bar in the stifling heat rather than sit outside in the garden. If I want to sit in a garden and have a drink I can sit in my own!

After having experienced the ban in Ireland I know how crap it is. I don't have to go through a suck-it-and-see stage. I know already that I don't like it.

So, I have set up o'malleys bar in the kitchen! Put some cans in the fridge, turn the speakers around so they are facing in, put some peanuts in a thingy, lean against the work-surface and enjoy.

There are advantages to having a drink at home; It is a lot cheaper, music selection isn't left to some meatloaf fan with an inexhaustible supply of pound coins, you don't have to wait for ten minutes to get served at the bar, the surroundings are clean, and I am yet to hear a racist remark.

But, to be brutally honest it's a bit dull.

It Is Back

Okay! Five months is a long time away. But you know, foggy forgotten long weekends turn into foggy forgotten months and so on and so on, etc etc ad nauseam. Anyway writing here had become too hazardous to mention. But I will anyway; in a few short months I had collected my own little team of Santa’s little stalkers! Unfortunately these were all male and two out of three of them wanted to know about icky-icky stuff. Okay you guys, poo is a turn off and no I am not gay, not even when I was at school. But to my third obsessive mailer I must say that you looked great in your wife’s underwear but I would have preferred to see pics of her in them. I have no problems with a UK size 20! Well, nothing that five pints of stella couldn't put right.

Female stalkers I can handle. I think!

In fact, I was out with Walt extolling the virtues of a certain large redhead that I had seen at a petrol station when he said

“Well, it must be an age thing!”

“What must be an age thing?”

“Finding big women attractive.”

Perhaps it is, but when I was a lad, I knew many a skinny young man who went weak at the knees over a girl with a sweaty top lip and grew strangely aroused at the sound of her nylon clad thighs causing friction up her skirt on the walk back home from the boozer.

Obviously, many things have occurred and changed down at The-Worst-Pub. And more to the point many things have changed in my life. No, actually the point of all this is The-Worst-Pub!

Anyway, I will save that until tomorrow. I must put my chicken pieces in the oven. This will be my twelfth chicken night in succession, which is a record even for ole chicken loving me.