Friday, March 29, 2013

500

Any mistakes in this I'm blaming on the boogie that is going on in my head this morning...

I realised about two months ago that I was nearing a landmark. The reality is that I've probably written closer to 1000 blog entries; but the actuality is this is the 500th under the Farkynell2 banner.

I do write a lot of bollocks at times and I still need an editor, big time (and a time machine - for oh so many reasons). 


So, what's my 500th entry going to be about? Something special? Something that will attract more people to my erratic writing than ever before? Maybe just write about what I'm happiest with. Who can say for sure, because this is all I'm going to write tonight. I'm going to bed in a minute. In the morning I might feel completely refreshed and inspired. I might indeed.


That was written during the week. Today is Good Friday. From the size of my hangover and the fact my arse wants to spend the day in the loo while I want to do other things is proof that there is little Good about it at the moment. To make matters worse, the wife is full of cold and there is still far too much snow on view for the end of March for my liking. Some warmth really wouldn't go amiss at the moment.

My hangover is the result of going to a beer festival and drinking pints of good ale. My hangover isn't actually as bad as it could have been, but thanks to a largely unwanted shot of tequila it is worse than it perhaps should have been. The fact I'm 50 and 5½ pints of beer and a shot fucks me up worse than you could imagine is nothing more than a testament to ageing and the fact that I should have at least been sensible.

Last night was a bit of a hoot on many levels. Roger and I haven't been to a beer festival, with the intention of getting drunk for nearly two years, and oddly enough that day the weather was also horrendous and Roger buggered his knee up because I don't walk as fast as him even if it is chucking it down like a Bangalore Monsoon! Last night, it was just cold and I had no intention of walking home.

The pub quiz winnings has been the subject of much amazement in recent weeks. We've had a meal for 5, a night out on the booze for free and we're still well into 3 figures and if we keep winning £60 jackpots week in and week out, soon we could, technically, never have to spend any of our own money again, just so long as we keep winning regularly (but I'm getting paranoid about winning the quiz so regularly). This Wednesday, because the wife is off work, I drove so she could have a cider or three. I had also decided that I wanted to do the Lamplighter's beer festival, so Roger and I did that instead of our usual Thursday night out at the Adelaide (and that we would pay for a taxi home using quiz winnings). 

We walked into the Lamplighter and immediately I felt like I could drink for England, so instead of halves, we opted for pints straight off. Hop Back Spring Zing was okay and frankly if it had been one of the beers on a usual night we would have drunk it all night long, but the shadow of Oakham Citra and Dark Star APA loomed over us. The Citra, coming straight out of a very fresh barrel was one of best tasting beers ever and after one pint of that I needed another and then another and as Roger said, "It's going down too fast," which of course, as you will find out, could have been the mantra of some one else in the pub we were yet to meet.

After 3 pints each we were both feeling a little woozy, so what better way of ridding ourselves of this unwanted wooziness than by drinking more beer! So we both had our third pint of Citra each and Roger (not being a wuss at all) reckoned that should be our lot. So when we finished that we had a half each - he stuck with the Oakham and I needed to try the 4.7 APA, just to satisfy my curiosity. Then Zoe arrived...

We had positioned ourselves at the bar and had only been saying how, in bygone years, we would have been cursing the old gits at the bar for taking up all the room and that was essentially how the conversation with Zoe started. I think we both expected her to get drinks then bugger off with her mates, but she stayed and started to talk to us; ages were discussed and she thought Roger was younger than me and worse still she thought I looked like Rik Mayall, which as anybody who knows me will testify that he isn't something I'm keen on being compared to. But, because of this and that Roger is 'younger' than me, it was becoming all too obvious, even to us old duffers, that Zoe seemed quite interested in him. However, like me, the idea of being chatted up by girls in a pub while a massive ego boost is also quite scary, so Roger disappeared off to the loo, for ages, and left the girl with me and her attention or the object of her affection changed.

Now, she had already bought us tequila shots for being 'gentlemen' and she was as pissed as a fart, but why she should latch onto us was the biggest puzzle (or perhaps I'm just being down on us oldsters). Anyhow, I ordered another half each, just for the journey home and because, you know I was pissed and I wanted to see exactly what this girl's intentions were before I ran away and hid. Roger wasn't as adventurous and started to pretend he was taking phonecalls from B. Unfortunately, no one was paying any attention to him. Zoe was introducing me to her very large arse and I know how that sounds, but we were in a busy pub - she was just showing me how fat she was; literally. That's how weird this night was becoming...

Various different things happened, including her telling us in French what she'd like to do. Roger had some idea of what she was talking about, I was oblivious. Then the two halves turned up and they were pints and Zoe insisted she paid for them and Roger looked as though he was going to die and I think I ended up drinking most of both of them. Then she asked me if I'd like to take her home and I looked at Roger and he literally dragged me out of the pub and Zoe turned her attention to someone else at the bar. Lovely girl, very friendly, but if I was her dad (who was 44 or 48 depending on who she told) I'd lock her in a cellar.

And I was terribly terribly drunk at the time...

I'm really not used to drinking so much and at 7am this morning I had to piss like a horse while standing up with a head that was pounding. It was cold, the birds were screaming and I struggle to sleep when I'm hungover. I did manage it though and the next thing I noticed it was 10am.

Surprisingly, despite my head and my stomach feeling a wee bit fragile, I feel almost chipper today. That was my last big blow out before taking it easy and hoping to get a job. I simply can't afford that kind of debauchery at the moment. But, you know, I stood in that pub last night looking at it rocking and full to bursting and wondered just what the problem with pubs is in this country at the moment. There are several places in this town that buck the trend of pubs being a dying business, and there are several pubs in this town that could turn into monster places if they had the people who run the Lamplighter or of a similar ilk running them. I firmly believe, still, with my pub background, my energy and enthusiasm, I could do what the guys at the Lamplighter, or Paul at the Adelaide, or the guy who runs the Wig & Pen in town. I just need to be in the right place or find some rich benefactor who wouldn't mind investing in a concept that everyone tells you is dying.

The irony is that for years The Lamplighter was the preferred destination for Rog, B, the wife and me and we were regulars there for a good five or six years until the old landlord left and was replaced by someone who did his utmost to destroy a good thing. When we started to go to the Vic, the Lamp was still very much on the wrong side of good, but gradually, and presumably since the new guys took it over, it has attracted more and more of the town's artistic people and the sophisticated pub visitor and I reckon it's returned to being the best pub in town. Now it is clean, stylish, and sells exceptionally good food, they hope to have 6 or 8 real ales on at any time soon, and it has an incredibly vibrant, jolly and friendly atmosphere. You can't beat the place, really and well done the landlords. I'm a fan.

Effercio et Ineptias

  • I am currently listening to: God is an Astronaut, Amplifier, David Bowie, Aesthesys, This Will Destroy You and the Sugababes. I'm lying about one of these, but all the others have not failed to impress me, which is a good thing considering how disillusioned I was becoming about music.
  • Oh, and the new House of Love album - the dog's bollocks my friends - it's like 1989 all over again!
  • I am about halfway through re-reading The Shining, it is still a little like reading a new book and it isn't until you get down to the nitty-gritty that you realise that Stanley Kubrick essentially took the idea of the book and a bit of the framework and did his own story. I have always struggled to really like the film and seeing the way Kubrick destroyed a perfectly good story hasn't enamoured me any more to it.
  • Can someone explain to me why Jaime Murray gets work as an actor.
  • Shameless US continues to be the best thing on television by a country mile.
  • I recently found out that the amount of sugar we should be having, daily, is the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar a day. I have two sugars in coffee and I have, on average, 10 to 12 mugs of coffee a day. If you factor in the amount of chocolate I eat; the amount of sugar that's in a lot of the stuff I eat, no wonder I have high cholesterol and it's almost a pathetic decision to cut out peanuts from my diet. I mean, it's a bit like a smoker saying they're going to cut down from 40 to 30 a day. So I went and bought some expensive cholesterol lowering margarine/spread - that will sort it out, you watch!
  • Thanks to everyone who have stuck with me for 500 blogs. Bring on the next 500 (and has anybody noticed how I haven't been talking about my health since I left my job?).

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