Not on Your Life Sonny
I do love a walk through the Jewellery Quarter on the way to work in the
morning, it’s a beautiful place and it delays the inevitable by a quarter of an
hour. I got off the train one stop early
today and strolled through what is to my mind the best part of Birmingham
central as it is my birthday, 42 years young but I do not look a day over 50 so
things are not too bad. I don’t know
where the year has gone since my 41st birthday, it must have slipped
down the back of the sofa. The downside
is that once I arrive at work the highlight of the working day is over and it
is all downhill from there. The place
was particularly alluring this morning and given the September sunshine, the
many resplendent hanging baskets and the cries of seagulls it had an almost
seaside feel.
Given the growing residential element to the Jewellery Quarter there are
now many tempting and stylish looking cafés (in addition to the hearty greasy
spoons) and I always promise myself that I should treat myself to breakfast in
one of these establishments before work one morning. I never have visited one of these café though
as I do not rise early enough from my Codger mansions flea pit and I can rarely
afford such a luxury anyway.
Even though like most other industries the jewellery trade has been
affected by the enduring recession the Jewellery Quarter still bustles with
life and even at an early hour shop owners and Jewellery workers are going
about their business.
It’s a depressing thought stumbling into work in the morning and
realising that I am imprisoned there until 1700 hrs, at which time I flee on
the dot. It always amazes me that I am usually the only person in the
department that actually leaves on time as all my other colleagues mostly stay
later like masochists, suckers for punishment.
Some of them might feel like they will be rewarded in heaven but I am
not sure what the Mexy’s excuse is as the Mexicans seem too obsessed with hell
and death to pay any attention to anything as fanciful as heaven. And the Phantom is from Grimsby and it is
well known in religious circles that persons from that town are refused entry
into the heavenly after world.
The singer Cher does not seem like she is ready to go anywhere near the
heavenly after world as judging by the way she looks she thinks that she is
still in her 20’s. Cher has just
announced that she is to start touring again at the age of 67 and I suppose
that is no mean feat for a pensioner, though Mick Jagger and his aged Stones
cronies have barely stopped touring for years.
It is Cher tastelessness that the Californian born singer is trying to
make herself look a third of her age and her blonde hair (or wig) with red
streaks gives her the appearance of a raspberry ripple ice cream. I am not suggesting that Cher should dress
like Nora Batty out of Last of the Summer
Wine but a modicum of taste with regards to her age would not go
amiss. Cher did a farewell worldwide
tour eleven years ago so all of the punters involved probably feel a bit
miffed. Mind you all of Cher’s plastic
surgery makes her look like she is back from the dead so that could be seen as
justification for having a resurrection tour.
Am I going to one of her shows?
Not on your life Sonny.
One sixty something who does not try to look younger than his years is
the Pirate, the gregarious landlord of the Flagon & Gorses and in fact
contrary to Cher, the Pirate appears more advanced in years than his age. Like Cher the Pirate is also going on tour,
hot trotting to Belgium for a beer junket next weekend. Last weekend I witnessed the unusual sight
of the Pirate sitting in the bar on Saturday night and he seemed relatively
sober to boot, in other words he was more sober than me. It transpired that he had entrusted himself
to serve an Indian meal to revellers in the back room. Once he had stirred the pot in the kitchen he
sat down to a pint and given that he was effectively undertaking the dual tasks
of serving the curry and drinking beer it could be said that he was balti
tasking.
The Pirate now seems to want to exercise editorial control over Lowlife and dictate what does and what
does not appear in the column. Being
slow on the uptake, it has taken the Pirate nine months and 33 episodes of Lowlife to realise that I am likely to
write about his disclosures to me if they are of sufficient interest. He must have taken advice on the matter as
he has implored me numerous times in the last week or so to not publish a
particular comment that he has made.
Conversely, the Pirate has asked me to publicise the pub’s annual
International Talk like a Pirate Day, which this year is on Saturday 21st
September; it is unclear what fee I will be paid for this advertisement but is
unlikely to be sufficient to even purchase a second hand copy of Treasure Island.
Unlike the pirates in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic I will not be
drinking any rum this evening, despite it being my birthday. It’s supposed to be a non-drinking day, so
that feeling of emptiness will descend at booze o’clock. I bought some Chinese herbal tea to drink the
other week as a booze substitute but it tastes filthy and I don’t know how the
Chinese put up with it; they obviously don’t sell PG Tips in the Orient. I would rather drink smooth pour nitrokeg
Mild than Chinese green tea and that’s saying something. Mind you, I’ve found that oddly the worse the
mild the better it mixes in a black and tan, which is one of those puzzlers
that no one will ever work out.
Vodka, and not rum, is the drink I propose to use for my revolutionary
vodka and veggie burger diet (the V & V diet), an idea that I hatched after
a chance meeting with a bookmark. The
bookmark was kindly supplied to me with compliments by The Book Depository, an
excellent firm who peddle second hand books and despatch them worldwide, even
to Codger Mansions. You will see from
the photograph above of the bookmark [email
and papers versions of this column only – Ed] that there are only 73
calories in a regular veggie burger, whereas there are 279 and 359 calories in
a regular ham burger and cheese burger respectively. The new diet fad appears to be the 5:2 diet
whereby you eat normally five days a week and only consume 600 calories two
days a week. 600 calories means that
one can eat five veggies burgers (one for breakfast, two for lunch, one for tea
and one after the pub) and still have enough calories left to imbibe four
single vodka and slim line tonics. The
idea sounds like a winner to me and if I publish a book on the matter it could
make me more money than the Half Pint to
Heaven book (see Lowlife 33). Unless anyone has any better ideas, the book
could be entitled Veggie Burger for Tea
with a Large VAT!
Given my newly found half pint habit Jolly D has playfully
christened me with the nickname HP, which means I suppose that when I am
cheekily verbally abusing the Pirate it will henceforth be known as HP
sauce.
***** STOP PRESS *****
Flagon Theft, the Pirate Bereft
Just as Lowlife was going to
press I heard news of a break in at the Flagon & Gorses whereby a thief
broke into the pub in the dead of the night in the early hours of Thursday
morning, smashing a window in the bar to gain entry. It sounds like Hazel O’Connor has been at it
again. I was informed by Ung Pirat that
the thief stole the charity bottle, to which I replied, “Just the bottle? You
think that he would have stolen the money contained in the bottle as
well.”
So just as the interior renovations in the Flagon are complete the
Pirate now finds himself having to replace a large window and find a new
charity bottle. Let us just hope that
the thief wounded himself in the act of breaking the window to gain entry. Stealing charity money means the thief is a
genuine lowlife and it makes one wonder whether it was someone who has attended
the pub and knew that the bottle was there.
The bar staff at the Flagon now need to be on the lookout for a punter
covered in bandages who pays for a pint entirely with small change.
Diet Claims Holds No Weight
After investigating my veggie burger
and vodka diet claims, minutes before this column was to be published my
researcher hastily alerted me to inaccuracies in its content. Anxious to avoid litigation, publication was
suspended so I can clarify the position with regards to the calories contained
in a veggie burger. It transpires that
there are approximately 160 and not 73 calories in the foodstuff, roughly 80
calories in the burger and 80 in the bap.
In my defence the picture of the veggie burger on the bookmark does
include a bap but in hindsight it appears that a “1” has been erroneously
omitted from the quoted figure of 73 (i.e. I am guessing it should read
173.) Even so, five veggie burgers and
four slimline VATs only accounts for 1212 calories, less than half of a man’s
recommended daily calorie intake of 2,500, so all in all the V & V diet
could still be used to reduce the Pirate’s burgeoning beer belly.
© Dominic Horton, September 2013.
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