Running on Empty
I see that Philip
Hollobone, the Right Honourable Member of Parliament for Kettering, has called
for a ban on Muslim women wearing burkas and other similar head garments in
public because it upsets his sensibilities.
Hollobone (who would be better named Hollohead) said that he wants to
see the faces of burka wearing women so he can say hello to them when he passes
them in the street. I hope for the sake
of all Muslim women that they do not have to suffer the displeasure of having
to see the disagreeable Hollobone on their travels. I wish someone would bung a burka on the MP
in question so his unpleasant face is not exposed as he is a singularly ugly
individual; he would then be a berk in a burka.
I am not calling
Hollobone a racist but when he had the privilege of studying at Oxford he was,
according to Wikipedia, a member of the Monday Club, a far right pressure group
which is notable for having promoted a policy of voluntary, or assisted
repatriation for non-white immigrants which mirrored the pledge made in the
Conservative Party's General Election Manifesto of 1970. Hollobone might be a bit uppity as he got
divorced this year and he would most likely be at his happiest telling Muslim
women to remove their burkas or veils fulfilling his role as a special
constable.
I would look like a
berk if I had purchased the trousers I tried on this week in a well-known high
street store. I was kindly given some
gift vouchers for the store for my birthday so I toddled along there to redeem
the vouchers in exchange for a desirable piece of clothing. I hazarded upon some chinos and was faced
with a choice of straight or skinny and being of a certain age I plumped for
the straight version but when I tried the trousers on they were so tight
fitting that at one point I thought I would have to ask the shop assistant to
call the fire brigade to cut me out of the trousers. All of which begs the question as to how
tight the skinny fitting version of the trousers are; they must give a free tub
of petroleum jelly with the purchase to assist the wearer to get in and out of
the trousers. And yet I see young men
around and about wearing such leg clinging britches and their movements do not
seem to be too restricted, even when the chap donning the trouser is of the
portly variety.
I prefer a bit of
room for manoeuvre in my attire and I value comfort above being a slave to
fashion. It struck
me walking up Colmore Row in Birmingham in the drizzle the other day in my
plastic mac, sports jacket (which has a tweedish air) and brown brogues that I
am slowly morphing into Peter Sallis’s Clegg out of Last of the Summer Wine. There is a fine line between looking
distinguished and having the appearance of a stereotypical pensioner and I
think I have unconsciously crossed the line into Cleggdom. Anyway, returning back to trouser talk I prefer to have a
little bit of ventilation around my crown jewels and for them not to be
confined.
Fortunately I am
not confined in my vocabulary due to the magic of the invaluable Thesurus.com and the word of the day on
the site today is “fleer”, which means to grin or laugh coarsely or mockingly,
which is something that the delectable Carla von Trow-Hell does to me all the
time from behind the bar in the Flagon & Gorses. On Sunday evening she derided me for
concluding the evening with half a pint of Thatcher’s Heritage Cider stating
that it was a drunk’s trick to finish off with a glass of cider or two. Little did Carla know that the half of cider
was to launch me into a week of dreaded sobriety ahead of Sunday’s 10k “fun”
run with Toby-in-Tents. It’s no
coincidence that simply by adding the letter “i” the word run is transformed
into the word ruin, which is fitting.
(Conversely, extracting the letter “i” from the word married leaves the
appropriate word marred.)
The process of me
drying out this week will be like drying out of the timbers of the Mary Rose
and it has been conducted under strict laboratory conditions, which has
involved hot baths, cold showers and a particularly poky self-made tomato and
chilli soup. I added braising beef to
the soup, which ruined some perfectly good beef and a good soup in one foul
swoop (in fact it would have had to be chicken to be a foul swoop, but you get
my drift.)
So on Sunday I will
be running on empty, booze wise. The
scientists and dieticians will tell you that alcohol is detrimental to sporting
performance and while they are undoubtedly right the majority of the time
anyone who has experience of amateur sport will tell you that is not the whole
story. Apparently, Fudgkins is a far better golfer
when hung over and the slovenly Tim Jameson, who I used to play darts with in
the Fairfield, could barely throw an arrow unless he had consumed so much booze
that he had to put a beermat on top of his pint so he could remember which one
was his, but once Tim reached his optimum booze state he was a magnificent
darter. And I would imagine that many of
us will have stories of man of the match performances playing football or five
wicket hauls at cricket after waking up in the morning on an unknown sofa in
Darlaston with memories of what happened the previous evening slowly fading
away like a ship on the horizon.
My old Sunday league football manager
Sweeney used to have a mantra that he subjected his players to that went “drink
as much as you like on Saturday night but ensure that you are in bed before
midnight”, as he considered that sleep was more important than sobriety to any
self-respecting Sunday league footballer.
When you are not a professional sportsman
and life and boozing gets in the way of sporting dedication, the goal posts are
moved. One Christmas Sunday morning
circa 1993 the goalposts literally seemed to me to be moving after an
unfortunate turn of events. The
Fairfield Drive Christmas dinner party was staged the night before and given
that the weather was freezing and a heavy frost was forecast in the morning, I
was safe in the knowledge that the game would be postponed due to a frozen
pitch, so I was free to imbibe what I wanted.
The party went swimmingly well, despite Herman
Trotsky twice collapsing
into the Christmas tree during an impromptu after dinner speech.
On the morning
after the dinner party the house looked like a scene from the apocalypse but I
dodged tidying up by escaping to football to go through the formality of the
game being postponed. To my horror the
ageing referee Ernie Pike turned up and declared that the game was on despite
the pitch being harder than the settles in the Flagon & Gorses as, quoting
Ernie, “the pitches are hard in the warm weather at the start of the season and
games are played then.” It was at this
juncture that I deeply regretted following the aperitif of a skin full of
lunchtime pints with a bottle of whisky, shared with El Pistolero whilst cooking
the turkey curry for dinner. We had a
decent result, an away game drawn 2-2 and I scored off a corner but I could
remember none of this after the game. If
I had been interviewed by Geoff Shreeves for Sky Sports post match and he had
asked me my thoughts on the contest I would have had to say, “I’ve absolutely
no idea Jeff. What was the score by the
way?”
The ever interesting Drew Monkey
knows the score, having had his fingers in a number of pies over the years,
including owning canal barges, being an environmental officer, all things
brewing and playing in folk and soul bands.
Drew’s folk band are playing on Saturday night as part of the Flagon
& Gorses’ annual International Talk like a Pirate Day celebrations, an
event which sadly I cannot attend due to the damn run on Sunday morning. I suppose I could go to the pirate evening on
Saturday but it would mean either not drinking (which would be a more torturous
experience than being a political prisoner in North Korea) or consuming beer
and suffering the consequences on Sunday morning. Toby-in-Tents suggested that I get blind
drunk on the pirate night and get people to sponsor me not for finishing the
race but for actually making it to the start line. On Sunday evening in the Flagon Drew
entertained me with stories of near death experiences he had over the years and
it is a miracle that he is still alive.
I sincerely hope that I do not have a similar story to tell after the
run on Sunday morning.
© Dominic
Horton, September 2013.
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