Lowlife 45 – Cheesy Does It

Cheesy Does It

It was the second cheese night in the Flagon & Gorses on Monday (or The Revenge of the Killer Cheese) and I learnt the following fromage fundamentals: firstly, a cheese based meal is more calorific than any counterpart known to human kind (in the spirit of equality I have avoided the phrase “known to man”) and leaves the partaking diner’s stomach leaden and bloated to such an extent that the drinking of beer post meal is almost impossible.  Secondly, it takes the body’s internal organs a minimum of three days (under protest) to digest an excess of cheese and no amount of water/ beer/ sundry fluid can accelerate the process.  Thirdly, cheese, more than any other food stuff (including but not limited to stuffing) induces a proliferation of farting in the consumer to such a degree that a cheese fest can provide a person with one’s own self-propelled jet pack.   On the cheese night the Flagon’s uncompromisingly incomparable custodian, the Pirate, went into flatulence overdrive (Flatulence Overdrive could be a third rate 70’s prog rock band) and produced a world heavyweight champion like demonstration of bum burpery not seen since the days of the fabled Gassius Clay.

Before the Pirate farts he arches his back or lifts his leg in order to get exactly the right position for the gust to make its egress from his bum cheeks in a display of such delicate choice of angle not seen since Dennis Taylor potted the black in the concluding frame of the 1985 snooker World Championship final.

The old adage of course is that eating cheese in the evening inevitably leads to nightmares but I did not have one on Monday so it is now clear that the phantasm that visits me weekly has a dislike of Stinking Bishop.  Eating cheese every night to ward of my enduring, sleep inhabiting ghoul is not a realistic option for the reasons described above so I await his next visit in the coming days.  I might even bake him a cake but I had better not make it a cheesecake.  

I think I have foxed the phantasm recently though as I have taken to falling asleep on the sofa, only to wake in the middle of the night fully clad in a confused state.  I find sofa sleeping not properly restful.  It has oft been said that an hour’s sleep before midnight is worth two after but I contend that an hour’s sleep on the sofa is worth half an hour in bed.  Being a poor mathematician I am not sure what an hour’s sleep on the sofa before midnight equates to and I dread the day when my dear son Kenteke asks me to help him with his algebra homework.  The only vaguely algebraic calculations I understand are things such as: friend = DG Lowe = from Dudley, where people for yes say “r”; friend – r = fiend, therefore DG Lowe is a fiend. 

After conducting a quick physical inventory on awaking on Tuesday my overriding feeling was one of bloatedness, a condition that I despise.  I was also rendered a little on the nauseous side and given that this was due to a gluttonous surfeit of cheese I could hardly counteract it with my usual remedy of Mini Cheddars as that would have been simply fanning the flames of the fire.   I needed some of the exotic, green liquid that one woman gave to another whilst I was watching a brief clip of the film Flash Gordon on Sunday.  The conversation between the two women went like this: Woman 1: “Drink some of this it will do you good”; Woman 2: “Will it make me forget”; Woman 1: “No, but it will make you not mind remembering.”  The dialogue could easily have been between the Pirate and an aspiring beer drinker in the Flagon & Gorses.

If I was quickly catapulted to power in a banana republic style coup the first thing I would do is be tough on bloat and tough on the causes of bloat.  This inevitably means that cheese would be rationed, but I would make no excuse for this.  You can’t, after all, make an omelette without breaking eggs.  Come to think of it, I would ration eggs as well as they are another bloat inducing foodstuff.  In terms of self-induced ailment, in my book being bloated is worse than being hung over or having bowel difficulties after eating spicy food purporting to be based on recipes from the sub-continent but in actuality originate from Sparkbrook.  But like Gloria Gaynor, I will survive.

Talking of my book it reminds me that my crony DG Depardieu, the writer of rodent based children’s literature, this week kindly gave me valuable written feedback on a piece of work that I have been scribbling.  DG suggested that I needed to put more of myself into the book and he wrote, and I quote, “e.g. divorce, depression, drinking.”  The worrying thing is that Depardieu was not playing it for laughs in describing the essence of my character by reference to the three D’s, he was in fact being deadly serious for once in his whimsical life.  Although DG’s concise assessment of me doesn’t make heartening reading many would argue that he has hit the proverbial nail on the head but if he carries on with his insulting slurs I will indeed be banging a nail into his head.   DG advised me to be ruthless when editing the book but I explained that being ruthless is not in my nature.  The only way I could be ruthless is if I married a woman called Ruth and she left me.

I do not need to attack people with nails to be called to court as my presence has been requested at Dudley Magistrates Court next week despite me being an upstanding, law abiding citizen of the highest degree.   The bumbling buffoons at Npower have besmirched my good name and told porkie pies to the court officials claiming that I refuse to let their engineer into Codger Mansions to inspect my gas meter for safety purposes, which is more defamation of my good character to pile on top of DG Lowe’s description of me (which at least has some substance, though the fact that his comments are abusive makes the whole thing substance abuse).  Npower have conveniently forgotten that they not only cancelled an appointment that I arranged at the eleventh hour without explanation but also ignored all my subsequent correspondence with them.  No wonder Npower’s gas bills are so exorbitant given their bungling inefficiency.   The N in Npower must stand for nincompoops.

I hope that Nincompoops-power don’t cut my gas off in an act of schoolboy vindictiveness as the weather is on the turn and as I effectively have no heater in my vintage Postman Pat style car I have had to dig out the leather gloves that Kenteke bought me to drive in, so I now look like a cross between the Swaffham Strangler and Postman Pat.  Postman Pat’s cat Jess is unlikely to see the week out without being asphyxiated by my leathery hand but at least I will be able to attend Dudley Magistrates Court at the Nincompoops-power hearing to confess all after first selling Jess’s lifeless carcass to Mr Ping at the Rhareli Peking Chinese take away.  If Pat sees the winter out it will be a miracle as his engine is coughing and spluttering more than a Senior Service smoker with bronchitis and strange banging sounds are emanating from the front of the car almost like a small man is trying to get out from under the bonnet.  Maybe Fudgkins is stuck under there. 

It is a little bit undignified having to scrape the ice off the inside of Pat’s windscreen on frosty mornings, especially as the procedure produces what look likes snow, which falls from the glass onto my legs in the driver’s seat.  It comes to something when the weather in the car is considerably worse than it is in the open air.

If Nincompoops-power do cut my gas off then I will have to abandon what will be a freezing Codger Mansions in the evenings to seek a warming retreat which will inevitably mean that I end up in the Flagon & Gorses, a place where I can be found on occasion, as you well know.  As long as they don’t force me to eat any more cheese I think I could put up with the situation and despite the trials and tribulations of the week I could triumphantly burst through the door of the pub in a blaze of apathy and like Henri Charrière in his famous book Papillion announce to all and sundry, “Hey you b*stards, I'm still here.”  Knowing my rotten luck after such a grandiose entrance I would be greeted by Chilli Willy behind the bar, who in a gentle, kindly tone would ask me, “Do you fancy a piece of stilton?”

© Dominic Horton, November 2013.