Sobriety, Talking Bollocks and Kathy Burke

I once stayed sober for a whole five months. Oh yes I did. And it wasn’t too bad packing it in either. Granted, come day four or five, I got a bit snarly and had a tendency to bare my teeth at various humans. And my sleep went belly up too. But come day eight/ten (there or thereabouts) I woke up with a saintly glow around me, did a backward flip out of my pit, threw back the curtains and announced, “Hello new day! I’m ready for anything you throw at me!” And then I jogged downstairs to partake in a highly nutritious and flavoursome breakfast.

            It was really weird shit; my energy levels went through the roof, I developed a can-do approach, I began being nice to people (I distinctly recall smiling at a child-type thing on one occasion) and the whites of my eyes became white.

Fuck me! I'm sober!

            I even went to the pub and would smugly nurse a diet coke while everyone around me got their faces in the trough. Fools, I would think, as I eyed their drunken behaviour. How weak of them to need alcohol to have a good time. Look at me – look at the fun I’m having without alcohol.

            But therein lay the problem; I wasn’t. And that’s what did for me, in the end.

            Thing is, I like drinking: I like going to pubs (cos I can be a dead sociable fucker, me) and I like the act of having a drink and talking bollocks. I do bollocks very well. But not so well when I’m sober. And I do drinking very well. For starters, I don’t get morose and start snotting and wailing all over the gaff like some. No, give me a flagon of vodka and I’ll still be grinning like the village idiot at the end of the evening. Although (and it must be said) I can get a bit over excited sometimes and let myself down.

            So five months of sobriety came to a halt. My skin had never had it so good and pleaded with me to not go back to my old ways. No can do, I told it. I’ve been bored as arseholes.

Look at this dozy mare. She's been on the wagon for a fortnight and the

boredom's made her come over all queasy and howsyerfather.



            Sometimes I make a list up of famous people I’d like to get pissed with – a top ten, as it were. Graham Norton’s always up there, there or thereabouts. Him and Paul O’Grady. It’s hard to pick between the two (what with me being such an old fag hag and all), but what a scream a night out on the lash with either of those two would be. Then there’s that geezer who’s very wise about things, the dog whisperer – bet he’d be good value after a Bacardi Breezer. He fixes humans, wouldn’t you know?  And Derren Brown – now that would be different – he’s a real smart alec (although I’d have to keep an eye on my wristwatch/knickyknackynoos and vodka level to make sure he’s not surreptitiously tampering with them). Who else? Too many sportsmen to fit in a pub sadly, but Lawrence Dallaglio is a deffo and Jenny Pitman looks like she’d spin a good yarn after a yard of ale. Michael Caine and Robert De Niro are simply crying out to be my new bezzie drinking buddies, whilst the multi-talented Kathy Burke is obviously itching to have a snot and guffaw with me over a gutful.

            And you can’t do all that stuck indoors clutching your mineral water to yer knockers. No siree. You take my word for it, you're better off up the pub having a guzzle.

Whilst waiting for her real muckers to front up for a drinking session

of Biblical proportions, Kathy ruthlessly phones me to cancel our

pre-arranged quaff, citing a bout of the shits after a rogue curry...



Andy Murray, Gangsta Limps and Bollock Rubs

I like sport a lot. I watch shed loads of it, and although I’m a bit of an old hoofer these days, I do as much of it as I can. And I think athletes are great. They’ve got enough savvy to score the only drug around that is totally free and doesn’t involve having to break into a gangsta limp: endorphins. And on top of that, the good ones get paid to do something they love. Smiles all round, you’d think.

            And then you see Andy Murray. Jesus. Just what is it with this guy? And moreover, who enrolled him in the Myra Hindley School of Charisma? Dear, oh dear. Mind you, after Sunday’s lame effort in the Australian Open and the flush of realisation that he’s just not made of the ‘right stuff’ to become a champion, perhaps I should cut Bonny Prince Charlie a bit of slack. But then I see that dragged lip and think, nah, bollocks.

 There's always one. This discus thrower clearly doesn't know if he's coming or going.

It's wrong. And on every level...



            Friday sees the 6 Nations return to our screens. And I can’t wait. Rugby players have a whole range of facial expressions and normally get to show off a fair old few of them during the course of a match. Invariably, most of them have something to do with having their nuts crushed or eyes gouged. Proper stuff. Then it’s all smiles as they head off to the changing room for japes/bollock rubs and rubber ducks in the communal bathtub.

England rugby players show Andy Murray wots wot and oo's oo.

Just look at this fucker run and smile at the same time.



            The only thing that spoils it all is that munchkin of a Scottish bird* who hangs about pitchside to ask players and coaches inane questions. If England lose a game (heaven forbid…) watch Martin Johnson look like he wants to deck her when she chirpily asks if he feels ‘disappointed’. I’m telling you, if a female presenter isn’t called Gaby, fuck her off. 

*Mind you, she could be related to Andy Murray, and he gets her to wind up the English lot for a laugh…

           

           

Crime, coffin-dodgers and 'Grunt'

I love the crime in these paarrrrtts. It’s so namby-pamby and, ‘How very dare you!” When I think back to the horror of what was contained within the pages of The Walthamstow Guardian, it still gives me the heebeejeebies. Here, there’s various accounts in the local press of youths being given a ‘good talking to’ about the error of their ways. Try that any of that caper in London, and they’ll have your truncheon off you and be bashing it in your bollocks before you can say ‘Juliet Bravo’.

"How very dare you!" It's an oldie, but still a goodie.

Pick the bones out of this fucker...

           

           You get quite a few car accidents down this way, too. Mostly, it’s the coffin-dodgers – they’re all at it. Last year one of them just drove into the window of the hairdressers. Willy nilly, if you please. And others just seem to randomly veer off the road – maybe a sign that they shouldn’t be cruising around when their afternoon nap is due. You should see them, shooting off at all angles, down that ditch, up that cow’s arse. If they ever got any faster than 20 miles an hour, I swear one of them is going to be meeting the Big Chief earlier than they’d like.

Anyhoo…I’ve had a funny old few days: I came over all holier than thou and wrote a story without any foul language in it. And I don’t mind telling you, it’s taken it out of me. Nearly cracked open the Ovaltine. What next? I hear you say. Effing poetry? Nah, I don’t think so. The only way I could recover from my ordeal was by reclining on my sofa and snotting and guffawing to Peep Show last night.

The story was lobbed off to Mslexia yesterday for their annual short story competition. I think a cast of thousands go in for it. Nice work at £10 a pop. If I knew what day of the week it was, I’d start my own literary mag called ‘Grunt’ (or similar) and would let any old sod grease my palm with quivering tenners in exchange for a guest appearance opposite a vodka advert. I can see it all now…

Gym Clothes, William Hill and Burnt At The Stake

January. And my gym’s full of humans I haven’t seen before. And they don’t half clog the place up. Curiously...although attending a temple of exercise, they do seem extremely reluctant to actually do any; and appear content to just waft aimlessly from workstation to cardio machine without breaking into a sweat. Two birds even managed to row next to each for about five minutes, whilst relentlessly chatting about work bollocks throughout. Dear oh dear. Move on, sisters, I need to have a go. Still, all the cloggers did have nice new gym clobber on: one tart brazenly displayed a ‘70% Off’ tag from the back of her undersized LA Gear top as she breezily pedalled away (Level 0) on a bike and fucked about with her iPhone.

I’m telling you, If William Hill would take my money, I’d soon let him know which one’s won’t be darkening the pedals of the cross-trainer again after the end of the month.

I'm 'fucking gutted'. These two were fatties when the came in. After 40 minutes of posing

and talking bollocks they now look like this. Am I missing a trick?

So, January 2011 and my Bic Biro’s gone all-a-quiver: after ruthlessly ignoring it for ages, I’m going to have a bash at lobbing something into the Mslexia Short Story Competition. If you’re not in the know (and maybe, frankly not that arsed..) Mselxia is a magazine for birds that write. Mind you, if they knew I was using words like ‘birds’ they’d probably burn me at the stake (I do worry when I see anything ‘Just For Women’ – makes me think they could be just a tad on the mad side and suffering from a distinct lack of humour). But there’s hard cash (vodka vouchers) up for grabs and if nowt else, it’s all good practice.

Slight technical hitch – deadline next Friday. Best start peddling like fuck.



Dr Zhivago, Fanny Battering and The Good Ear Review

I haven’t done one of these for a while, as my keyboard aura has been fucked with. I blame it on Christmas, myself; it gives me a large dose of the heebeejeebies – what with all those cherub-faced children, having to engage with fuckers you’d rather chin any other time of the year, and then there’s the lashings of greed and hypocrisy. It gets right on my knockers (I can tell you) and has me reaching for the vodka bottle. I wonder why anyone bothers with it. Still, it seems to have caught on.

          And then there was the snow. What a laugh that was. And how bloody cold was it? My bathroom looked like that iced-up house in Dr Zhivago (of note, my attempts to successfully pull off a credible Julie Christie impersonation fell somewhat short of the mark. In fact, it could be said that I resembled a multi-layered bag lady as I shuffled around my bathroom with gloved hands, that couldn’t quite wrestle the toothpaste onto the toothbrush; such was the severity of their shaking. Mind you, a mate of mine said I looked more like Tony Christie. And I suppose there’s a case to be made for that too).

           

 Julie and Omar visit my gaff, to make sure I'm not exagerating or telling porkies..

Julie brutally disses me by demonstrating how easy it is to look like a babe when your tits are frozen... 

            So, I don’t like Christmas and I don’t like being cold.

I thought I’d go to the gym. It’s a good time to go, over the festive season – the gym has a distinct lack of humans in attendance and their showers are piping hot, so it’d be a win-win situation. So off we set (my husband and I), and I was in buoyant mood, “Tangerines and nuts for everybody! Merry Christmas to you all!” But my newfound optimism for some quality time at the gym was short-lived. Upon entering the birds changing room, I was greeted by the sight of a wizened old fowl, stooped over and vigorously patting talcum powder onto her fanny. She looked up and smiled, before applying a fresh scoop of talc to her bits and continuing to batter away.

Now I don’t know what it is with some birds in the changing rooms. And I don’t mean lesbians or any of that caper, I just mean the ones who give it all that, “Us girls together” bollocks. They just seem to want to show off their giblets and grunge all over the gaff, rather than being a bit more modest, a bit more discreet, about it all – you know, use of towel as a shield or even (like me) use one of the shower/changing rooms (where I can hop around on one leg whilst trying to get my pants on in private). But there they are; legs apart, vice-like grip on each end of a towel and making exaggerated sawing motions with it between their legs. Get a room, I say. Dear, oh dear.

So, I drank a lot of vodka last month. I had to. I went to pubs that had hound-flanked log fires; where the birds kept their clothes on and house doubles were the order of the day. I ate steaming plates of pub grub, talked bollocks with my husband and dropped the odd howler of a fart. It really was, the only way to get through it.

Just before the real horror of Christmas kicked in, I slapped myself around and managed to send off a blindingly good monologue submission to ‘The Good Review’, before all was lost for the rest of the year. I’d been working on it for a while, so really, it had been more a matter of tidying up.

So now I’ve come out the other side, and my fingers have begun tapping away again. My aura has been restored. Love to everybody (this is, in fact, a lie). And the festive season now seems like a distant memory.

Although sadly, I fear the image of the biddy and her talcum powder may be indelibly etched into memory for time immemorial….

Kunty Kinty, Ascot and illegal drinking dens

Like Kunty Kinty, I went back to my roots yesterday, and plunged into London for a hectic few hours. The main reason for my flying visit was to scatter some early (and mildly bolloxed-up) copies of my book about the gaff in the a) vague hope it might generate some interest and b) knowledge that a tree has not snuffed it in vain.

The plan was simples: shovel my book onto the shelves of Foyles, Waterstones etc etc and to offload the remainder to any fucker who a) looked like they might like a snot and guffaw, but b) didn’t look up their arse too much.

And in a nutshell – that’s what happened. But that’s not what this blog is really about.

You see, as I was crashing around deepest Soho, I happened to find myself lurking without intent in Archer Street – which was once home to an illegal drinking den I used to frequent many years ago – back in the days (and moreover, nights) of namby pamby drinking hours.

I first went in there about ten years ago, the day after the managers’ Jolly Boys (and Girls) outing to Ascot.

I was in the pub trade at the time.

Now it must be known, that pub managers let out for the day tend to go a bit berserk (I blame it on the natural conditions – sunlight and all that) and this had been no exception. So it all got very messy. Very messy indeed.

The next day I was green.

I had overdone things.

And the only thing that was going to save me from dying a long and painful death on my couch was to limp out for a hair of the dog.

Upshot is, me and the old man found ourselves in Soho, forcing down slurps in various favoured establishments – including the fabulous Intrepid Fox (R.I.P). But I was struggling. I was still feeling on the verge of croaking and fighting to get my bevy down my Gregory. But like a real pro, I kept at it.

And then – just as I felt the first pangs of feeling human again – the last bell rang. But I needed more.

We spilled into the street with the rest of the punters and shuffled around. Other bars were also closing too. And some foody/wine bar places wouldn’t let us in. Bastardios.

But I had got the taste for it.

Then, as we found ourselves in a side street, a shady figure stepped forward from a crumbling doorway and asked if we were looking for a place to drink. Yes indeedy, we answered. He stood aside and we piled in.

It was dark, it was smoky (of all varieties), it was seedy and it was suspect. It was over two floors, with a pool table in the basement and ‘going ons’ going on in the basement. So we went back upstairs and happily paid £3 for tins of lager and got on with drinking duties.

                  This lot don't know Jack...they passed Archer Street twenty minutes ago...

But after a while, I got hot in there. It was summer; the place had (no apparent) ventilation – and my earlier beer sweat had returned with a vengeance. I had to get some air. Urgently. So we took our drinks outside, walked a few yards down the road and stood against a wall as we carried on with our supping while I cooled down. 

Then a strange thing…literally, after about one minute, there was a police raid. All Sweeney style; hurry-up vans – the lot. We watched with open mouths as the old bill bundled in. And bundled resisting bodies out. And as the bloke who’d invited us in got dragged out, he chucked us a thunderous look, it suddenly dawned on me – he thinks we’re plod.

It was time to have it on our toes. And besides all that, if I got caught up in any of this – I might lose my licence – and my job.

We ran off with our tins, half-pissed – snotting and guffawing.

We only got as far as Charing Cross Road before we got invited to another drinking gaff above a cab office. The bloke inviting us in looked iffier than the last one and had many gold teeth. He explained the rules, you went up a few flights of stairs, paid a fiver each to some other bloke and that got you into the ‘bar’.

We went in of course. And it wasn’t too bad.

Months later,and feeling a bit bolshy (pissed) we went back to our original den. Someone else was lurking in doorway giving us the ‘come hither’. So we went in. Had a few good nights in there, as it happens. Met all sorts. And all sorts make the world go round.

So yesterday, it was sad to see that, like The Intrepid Fox, my old illegal drinking den had also gone. It’s now a poncy sandwich/frothy coffee bar. What’s the world coming to? Dear oh dear. I don’t know, I really don’t…

Happy slapping, the hokey-cokey and strawberry jam

In many ways I’m not suited to living in the country – what with being a townie and all that. The main problem is that I’m just about the most impatient fucker I know on this planet. Yet, here I am, slap-bang, in the land of ditherers, dawdlers, delayers, dunno-ers; shufflers who aimlessly wander one pace in front of you no matter which way you turn, yakkers and chatters who shamelessly hold-up growing queues as they regale their bollocks to the hired help, fussers, cluck-cluckers and (moreover)…knobs in caravans*.

Naturally, if happy-slapping weren’t a crime, I’d be at it hammer and tongs.

And that’s not even taking into account the dreaded trips to The Post Office. Jesus H. Christ. I wouldn’t mind so much, but they actually have the audacity to disguise the place to make it look like a business, with products like calendars and jigsaws in the window and stickers advertising a selection of services. There’s even a bright red letter box on the pavement outside, and to further deceive – a sign, boasting the words ‘Post Office’ above the painted wooden door. But when you get inside, it’s no more a Post Office than my garden shed is. It’s a fucking social club. And ain’t dat the truth.

And moreover, the level of cluck-clucking is permanently set at fever pitch.

As a helpless onlooker, matters are seemingly presided over (doubtless to arrange bingo, whist drives, the hokey-bleeding-cokey and the such) by someone housed behind a counter with a glass window. I imagine that this person may have some form of auctioneer’s gavel to keep the crowd in some form of order. Although I’ve never got close enough to see for sure.

Fifteen minutes at the back of what, some might call a queue, although I prefer to refer to it as a ‘gathering’ and I’ve had enough. At that point I wave the white flag. And bugger off out of it.

                       They don't fuck about in Spain. Hokey-cokey's are well known for spilling out
                                                             of  Post Offices and onto the streets.

Of course, in the words of Ziggy (Big Brother – year wotever), it’s not them – it’s me. Obviously, there’s something fundamentally wrong with my lack of ability to appreciate (and readily engage in) the warblings and twitterings of local gossip. You see – I just didn’t have to put up with any of that bollocks in London as a) no fucker cares b) no fucker speaks to anyone else. Post offices are gloomy halls with trailing queues, where automated voices instruct you to advance towards ‘Till Number Seven’ and so on. You might not get anyone’s life history whilst you’re waiting, but you’ll get you’re parcel sorted.

Lucky for me, my local Spar also sells stamps. Although it appears as though the same punter from two days ago is still clamped to the counter regaling a lengthy yarn about strawberry jam…

I swear…if it weren’t for the stonking scenery, I’d be on Crimewatch. And then some.

* Very obviously, the whole topic of the detested caravan warrants an entire blogfest to itself… and will follow in due course.