Lowlife 65 – The Best Things in Life are Free

The Best Things in Life are Free

By Dominic Horton

In the song Money (That’s What I Want) Barrett Strong explained that the best things in life are free but ultimately he wanted hard cash.   We are told that money makes the world goes round but according to Mark Twain the lack of money is the root of all evil.  One thing is for sure and that is you do not truly appreciate the value of money until you are on your uppers, which, like many others, is a state that I am in more often than not, in my fragile fiscal existence.   I realise that things could be a whole lot worse, especially as essentially I am at least not in debt (well, not in the monetary sense anyway.)

One person who doesn’t want money, who has actively rejected it, is Mark Boyle, the Moneyless Man, who spent a year living without cash, growing his own food and foraging whilst living in a caravan in a farmer’s field.  Boyle organised everything in a most clever and efficient way for his cashless existence and was a model of green, ecologically friendly living.   The approach that Boyle took is without doubt admirable and we can all learn lessons from his experiences (which can be read in his book The Moneyless Manifesto, which you can read for free online) but freezing in a dark caravan in mid-winter and half starving to death (due to my general inability to grow anything other than my modest overdraft and my waistline) and wiping my aris on the local newspaper is not my idea of fun.  But in all earnestness Boyle’s experiment gives us food for thought and allows us to critique our often linear view of money, what it is and how it affects all of our lives.

Barrett Strong

Growing your own food could be seen as being increasingly important given that researchers from University College London last week explained that in their view we would be better off eating seven portions of fruit and vegetables a day instead of five.  The Pirate, the vivacious landlord of the serene retreat being the Flagon & Gorses, misunderstood the “7-a-day” advice and he has been quaffing seven pints of Nottingham Don’s Pale Ale daily.   By following Boyle’s example of providing food by foraging and growing your own it would at least mean that one would not have to suffer the indignities of valiantly (or potvaliantly more like) trying to digest the offerings of the chef Mr Ping at the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeaway.   I would most definitely advise you to not go foraging in the bins of the Peking as you never know what horrors you might find; it would most likely even wipe the perma-grin off the boat race of the front of house man the Baby Faced Assassin.

I should only write kindly words about the dear old Pirate in this edition as he has had a difficult time recently after suffering from a heavy cold. I told the Pirate not too worry, that the cold will soon pass and like Gloria Gaynor he will survive but he responded, “it is more a case of the record’s B-side, I’m F*cked but I’ll have a Go.”  Tuesday last he self-medicated by prescribing Nottingham Don’s Pale Ale to dry up his runny nose and Mount Gay Rum to make him forget why on earth he prescribed Nottingham DPA to dry up his runny nose.  While the Pirate worked his way through DPA/ rum/ tissues Theo Atrical kindly offered to clean up the beautiful, antiquated rose air vent that sits in the centre of the ceiling in the bar of the Flagon.    The Pirate was grateful to Theo for his offer and he commented that the air vent is an old, ornate feature of the pub that substantially doesn’t work, to which I retorted, “Pirate, it sounds just like you.”

Mark Boyle, the Moneyless Man

Back to the loose thread of this week’s offering, being money, which was at the at the forefront of my activities on Saturday evening, when I was given the night off from the Flagon & Gorses for good behaviour, as I attended a screening of 97% Owned, a documentary made by an organisation called Positive Money. The film is about the financial industry and its role in the economy.   The screening was organised by Transition Stourbridge, an environmental group based around the aforesaid town.   As he introduced the film a member of the group explained that free potatoes, artichokes and plants could be found in the foyer if attendants wished to take some on the way out; I waited for him to say that hooky fags, McSporran whisky and dubious pork chops would be flogged on the cheap after the film but such a comment was not forthcoming. 

The film was fascinating and thought provoking and proffered its view that the control of issuing new money is largely in the hands of the big commercial banks by way of lending and not under the jurisdiction of the state, who only issue 3% of all new monies by means of issue bank notes via the Bank of England.  This means that whatever policies the government choose to employ they cannot properly control the economy.   For interested parties you can view the film via the internet and it is certainly worth a watch.  A discussion followed the film where the audience could proffer their views and members of Positive Money clarified points made in the film.  At the end of the discussion we were invited to take tea and cake and I had a stark moment of clarity when I realised it was Saturday night and I found myself in a Quaker meeting hall with a load of hippy types which is without question terra incognita as far as Lowlife is concerned, so after a quick bite to eat it was off to the Flagon & Gorses before my withdrawal symptoms became irreversible. 

The Bisto Advert

Whilst scoffing my brunch on Sunday I pondered on a much quoted statistic which was repeated by Mark Boyle in The Moneyless Manifesto, which is that in Britain a third of all food is wasted, which is a dreadful state of affairs, especially given the increasing number of people in the country that rely on food banks, which I have discussed in this column before.  There is never much food waste in my Codger Mansions headquarters, which can lead to some strange concoctions at times but to use up some vegetables and garlic that was on the turn on Sunday I made a wonderfully rich tuna and tomato ragu, which would saw me alright for supper but which has stank the house out ever since given that it was slow cooked; on my return to the Mansions from the Flagon it was the exact opposite to the luring aromas of the Bisto advert of yore and I nearly did an about turn and headed for the Peking.   I am eternally thankful to myself that I didn’t.

My spendthrift attitude towards food waste is partly due to economic necessity and in fairness to my dear Mother she sagely forewarned me in her own way when I was a teenager that frugality is a trait that I would require in life after she advised, “you will never have any money.”  Such words were not a dire forecast of my future prospects in life but a liberating statement as the subtext said, “you will never have any money so you might as well not worry about it and enjoy life for what it is” which I have often heeded to my advantage.   That said when you are boracic lint you cannot exchange advice for a drink in the Flagon, which makes us all slaves to money to one degree or another.  Except for the Moneyless Man of course.

Another piece of invaluable advice that I have benefitted from came from my Auntie Anne, my mother’s sister, when I was a child, daunted by a number of onerous tasks that my Granddad Charlie had set me in his garden.   Like many people of his generation Granddad grew his own vegetables but unlike Mark Boyle it was not for ideological and ecological reasons but initially due to post-War austerity.   There was always a lot of work for us grandchildren to assist Granddad with and I fondly remember sitting in the garden after the work was done with a cup of tea (made with tea leaves), a digestive biscuit and a warm, satisfied glow. 

Anyway, seeing that I was not exhilarated about getting stuck into the gardening Anne simply said, “just do a bit” which was pure genius as things no longer seemed so overwhelming and Anne knew that once I made a start I would soon get through the jobs at hand done, which indeed turned out to be the case.   Throughout my life I always hark back to the “just do a bit” advice when faced with burdensome undertakings to complete, such as the writing of this column for example.   So if you take any pleasure from reading this balderdash, you have not me to thank, but my dear old Auntie Ann for offering me such shrewd advice, which cost me nothing.  This proves the point that, contrary to Barrett Strong’s desires, the best things in life are indeed free.

© Dominic Horton, April 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

Lowlife 64 – Failing to Deliver

Failing to Deliver

By Dominic Horton

I was disappointed to not have the opportunity to read the Halesowen News this week after the errant paperboy failed to deliver the publication to Codger Mansions.  The News fills in the gaps in my knowledge of happenings in the parish that I do not hear about in the Flagon & Gorses and as such it is a vital resource for a writer of a column such as this, so its absence can be costly.  Mind you I can hardly complain as when I used to deliver the News as a boy I regularly overlooked delivery to a house on the basis that it was a little way away from the other dwellings on the round.  The elderly occupants of the house were always efficient in lodging their complaint to the News offices and I always used to wonder why anyone would want to read such a boring local newspaper in the first place.  Karma has it that I am now in the position of the pensioners in question and my keen anticipation of receipt of the local newspaper means that unwittingly I have officially slipped into middle age.

Paper rounds then were effectively child slave labour (and I would imagine that the position has not improved greatly in the intervening years) and lugging hundreds of papers around in two bags over both shoulders was tantamount to child abuse but in those days children did not have the luxury of getting on the blower to Esther Rantzen.   Things took a drastic turn for the better though when the Poison Dwarf decided to quit his Sunday morning paper round at Tasic’s newsagents on Shell Corner and he bequeathed the round to me.    The round was seemingly so well paid that the Dwarf used to deliver the newspapers in his car, him being seventeen and all, and I wondered how this could be so but soon enough all was revealed.  

 

The shop that was formerly Tasics

The pay for the paper round was the going-rate pittance but the key to its profitability was the fact that you had to collect the money for the papers plus the delivery fee off the punters as you walked the streets of your round.   Some customers were happy to rise early and pay you in person once your knuckles had rapped their front doors but others preferred a lie in and would leave the monies for their papers in hidden, secretive nooks and crannies such as under a welcome mat or in a plant pot in the porch.  

At the end of the run through of the round the Poison Dwarf had a pocket bulging with the change that he had collected from the customers and he explained that Tasic never counted the loot but simply slung it in the till.  So the Dwarf advised me to continue with his practice of relieving the pile of coins of all the gold nuggets and also of the fifty pence pieces in an effort to supplement the meagre wages.   This practice yielded such a fruitful return that the overall remuneration for the round was such that eventually I sub-contracted half of it out to my friend Scouse Stuey (who had a touch of the James Dean’s about him).   I didn’t have a great deal of guilt about outwitting Tasic out of a few pennies as the Polish newsagent was unscrupulous enough himself to sell a match and a fag combo to underage smokers and besides I was a street kid from Shell Corner with a living to hustle.

The Dwarf also counselled me to get to the shop no later than 0630 hours to start the round as at that time Tasic had not packed the paper bags so you could do it yourself; Tasic was happy with this as it saved him a job but the benefit of self-packing, continued the Dwarf, was that while Tasic was not looking you could slip a few top shelf magazines into the bag and flog them at school to make a few extra bob, which was a good little side-line.  Things went awry on this front one Sunday though when I had sneaked a copy of Razzle between the pages of a Sunday Mercury and subsequently forgot about the matter.  I unwittingly put the Mercury through the letterbox of an old man who paid exclusively in pennies, which he left in a pot in the porch; his front door was primarily made of glass and as the Mercury hit the ground on the other side of the door to my horror the Razzle slid out of the newspaper and came to rest besides it.  I could hardly knock on the door and ask for the magazine back so I chose to just let sleeping dogs lie.  Luckily for me there was no complaint to the shop and the old fella must have simply thought that the Sunday supplement was unusually racy that week.

James Dean

One bloke always answered the door in a highly dishevelled state after having seen off a gallon of beer the night before and it was clear that each week my knock on the door had interrupted his restorative slumber; he always answered the door in tight red briefs and if I was lucky he had hastily thrown a garment on his potbellied upper body but more often than not he went bare chested.  He would rifle through his wife’s purse (after shouting to her up the stairs “where’s thee puss?”) for sufficient coins to settle his bill while loudly imploring his kids to stop playing on the Stannah stair lift behind him, which they used as a fairground ride.  I suggested to the bloke that he could simply put the monies under the doormat next week to save him having to arise from his pit but he always decided against this option, offering apologies and promising that he would be up in good time next Sunday.  This of course is the classic drinker’s deluded belief that everything will change for the better and be different tomorrow, but of course it never is.

The last drop of my deliveries was to an elderly gentleman named Horace, who was a disabled wheelchair user and I had to knock on his kitchen door which was accessed via his garage.  The garage housed an immaculate Ford Granada in metallic gold and every week I checked the mileage but it never increased and I wondered why Horace didn’t flog it off as it would have fetched a few quid but maybe he secretly harboured a thought that one day he might drive again but sadly that was never going to happen. 

I would always tap on Horace’s kitchen door but more often than not he failed to respond.  Through the frosted glass I could see Horace sitting motionless in his wheelchair and I always feared that he might have given up the ghost and shaken off his mortal coil.  When banging harder on the door reaped no dividends I would gingerly enter the kitchen, which would always smell like death, and place a hand tentatively on Horace’s shoulder whence to my eternal relief he would wake with a start before coming to the realisation that it was only me and there was nothing to worry about.   Old H would then put the kettle on and he would always offer me a two fingered Kit Kat (which made a pleasant change from a two fingered salute) and we would chat about Saturday’s football results for half an hour or so, which he seemed to appreciate given that he lived alone and seemed housebound.

 

A metallic gold Ford Granada 

I was earning more on a Sunday morning than other kids at school who did a morning, evening and Sunday paper round but eventually the halcyon days of the scams came to an end after Tasic sold the shop to an Irish couple named Sean and Mary, who introduced a record book to keep track of the money I collected.   Sean never failed to be cheery, even before dawn on cold mornings and Mary never failed to be miserable, even when Sean tried to draw a smile out of her with his wisecracking blarney.  By employing creative accounting I managed to retain a cut of the collection monies for a while but eventually I realised that the game was up after increasingly rigorous audits by Sean were introduced so with a heavy heart I packed in the round as the reduced income was making my position untenable.

On my final Sunday I told Horace that I would not be visiting anymore and I introduced him to the new paperboy and although he seemed to take it well enough I could tell that underneath he was wistful and forlorn that our little Sunday morning chats were coming to an end and in all honesty so was I, as I enjoyed and looked forward to them.   As I was about to go Horace said, “follow me” and beckoned me into his front room and there to my surprise and delight I found a magnificent fully working train set that filled the whole of the room and Horace let me play with it for a while.  Eventually I departed with a fond farewell, leaving behind Horace, the red pants man, Sean and Mary and it was full steam ahead into my next dubious career.

© Dominic Horton, April 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

* Lowlife is dedicated to the memory of the late Jonathan Rendall.  

Lowlife 63 – A Costly Hammer Blow

A Costly Hammer Blow

By Dominic Horton

I have noticed recently that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ponce a fag.  So many people have forsaken smoking in favour of electronic nicotine pipes that the circulation of cigarettes proper is becoming increasingly rare in pub life.   The former Australian cricket captain Allan Border once allegedly said that he smokes one fag a fortnight and I am in the Border camp, albeit that on average I have a puff much less than once every two weeks.  I can often go for months without smoking a cigarette but just occasionally I enjoy standing outside the Flagon & Gorses on Islington and watching the world go by, tab on.  But I am not going to take the extreme measure of buying my own fags when I have got this far in life poncing them off dedicated smokers so it is a little churlish of my fellow Flagoners protecting their health and wellbeing by switching to electronic pipes, to the detriment of my occasional, crafty pleasure.  

Cradley Town FC's Badge complete

 with hammers

So effectively I have given up smoking by default, though Fudgkins and Harry Gout might beg to differ and they remain pipeless and are still willing to crash a fag given their generous natures.  Even Mother Teresa (who has tried to become fagless a number of times in the past) has taken the fag pipe route but she has yet to file a report on her progress with the Lowlife news desk. 

The etiquette around electronic fag pipes is still developing and in terms of whether to use them indoors in public places people can often seem a little unsure of themselves, like Bambi unsteady on his feet emerging into the world.  I am not 100% sure what the rules are in the Flagon but fag pipe users seem to still pop outside to get their fix but that is probably accounted for by their desire to get away from me for five minutes or so.   All of the offices at my workplace are glass walled and I saw a bloke in another room across the way having a surreptitious toke on a fag pipe a couple of weeks ago and while he was not doing any harm to his colleagues that were in situ I instinctively thought that it didn't sit right as in the office environment it fell short of being professional.  That said I have no firm views on the matter either way.  In fact there are plenty of things that I do not have strong opinions on and sometimes I have no opinion at all. 

Allan Border showing how many fags he has

a fortnight

The prevalence of radio phone-ins, social media and television debate shows seems to have made us a very opinionated population indeed and people are often quick to tell you what they think of a particular issue even if you do not have the slightest interest in their views.  Sometimes when Flagoners are deliberating some point of order or other they will ask me, “what do you think?” and when I reply, “I have no opinion on the matter” they look at me with great puzzlement, as if I had just told them that I have turned teetotal and joined the Temperance Society. 

Becoming boozeless might not be such a bad idea as my judgement must have been clouded by something this week when I made the foolish and ultimately costly mistake of acting upon a plumbing tip from Willy Mantitt, of all people.  Taking advice from Mantitt on any subject is fraught with danger and enhances the chances of financial loss, or a mishap of some description occuring, and an expert on anything practical Willy is most assuredly not.  The matter at hand was my attempt to dislodge my mangled toilet seat, an act which was being severely hampered by the fact that the screws had rusted and refused to budge even once they were awash with WD40. Those of you that I am acquainted with will know that I am more of a brandy man than a handy man and that challenges of this nature are anathema to me but I was determined to liberate the injured seat from the karsi. 

I found myself corresponding with Mantitt by email to get an update on the Oscar Pistorius trial (which Willy has been following diligently) when I happened to mention the toilet seat conundrum.  Willy advised me to tap the screws with a hammer to cause vibrations which will in turn help to dislodge the screws.  Having no feasible alternatives, and being in a state of increasing desperation due to my dear son Kenteke's impending visit, I acted on Mantitt's suggestion and gingerly tapped the screws with a hammer.  No success.  I hit the screws a little harder with the hammer but still to no avail.   Rising frustration lead me to abandon the gingerly tack in favour of a more forceful approach and having previously worn the shirt of Cradley Town FC in my footballing days I heeded their motto of “Gi' it some 'ommer.”  Like most of the matches I played for Cradley the action ended up in defeat as to my horror a number of cracks emerged in the porcelain and the karsi sprang a leak when it was flushed, which was not the outcome that I had envisaged.   To add insult to injury I realised that I needed a number two and I couldn't even retreat to the Flagon to have a sit down given the earliness of the hour. 

King George V (on the left) in 

"A Conversation Piece at Aintree" by

W R Sickert

It was a case of SOS t*rd alert and fortunately a sympathetic plumber scrambled his equivalent of Ghost Busters who sped to Codger Mansions, red lights flashing, in express fashion.  The plumber and his mate really were a crack squad and dealt with the job like a SWAT mission.  The plumber hastily surveyed the damage to the karsi and provided an expedient and concise expert assessment, “Your bog is f*cked mate.”  He went on to say that a whole new toilet was needed and I asked if he could not just replace the part that was broken but the plumber explained, “you are joking mate, this toilet is older than God's dog so there will be no chance in finding the part in question.” 

The plumber's mate set about ripping out the toilet while the plumber sped up to B&Q to acquire a new one; on his return the plumber had the new karsi fitted in 20 minutes flat and that was that.  If karsi fitting doubles was an Olympic sport these boys would undoubtedly be gold medal winners.   After I had crossed the plumber's palms with silver (in what turned out to be a very reasonably priced transaction) it was straight to the new addition to Codger Mansions to give it a much needed test run. 

I told Mantitt that his plumbing tip resulted in a disaster that lead to me in parting with a number of shekels but Willy is no stranger to litigation and is more slippery that a greased up eel and he quickly abdicated himself of all responsibility.  What comes around goes around as a few days later his boiler packed up which left him having to part with two large, which is a tidy sum but given all of the shadowy deals he has on the go it is mere small change to him.  

As well as a fully working karsi I am glad to report that my health has (more or less) been restored this week after my bout of suffering from mild-graines, tinnitus and generally being in a less than optimum state which for once was not an ailment caused by ingesting the wares of Mr Ping, the chef at the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeaway.  If fact my crony the Pirate, the frolicsome landlord at the Flagon & Gorses, told me that his health seems to be on the up after he has improved his dietary regime and kicked the habit of eating half a dozen cream cakes every day; the Pirate is naughty but not necessarily nice.  A healthier diet must have accounted for the Pirate’s lower blood pressure and cholesterol as it could not be explained by exercise given that he is more sedentary than a crippled mannequin.

Mind you, it might be wise for me to lay off abusing the Pirate (verbally that is) as after the recent keen trim of his beard and hair (such that is left of it) he was accused by The Coarse Whisperer and Harry Stottle of looking like King George V; if I am not careful the Pirate might get Chilli Willy to mince me up and add me to his swan pâté to be eaten unwittingly by Flagoners who try the regal foodstuff for novelty value.

Despite being a renown heavy smoker King George V was most likely never reduced to poncing fags in the bar room of a public house in the West Midlands but like the rest of high ranking royalty he did survive by sponging off the state whereas the Pirate is more likely to be sponging off the state of his sweatshirt after spilling his tea down it.  Besides, the Pirate is not a royalist but a republican.  And, of course, a publican.   He is lots of other things as well, but as aforementioned I had better refrain from defaming him too much at present so I will have to get back to it next week.

© Dominic Horton, March 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

Lowlife 62 – First Tango in Parish

First Tango in Parish

By Dominic Horton

The recent sad death of Tony Benn reminds me of my first political experiences under the tutelage of Arthur Von Rossi (Jonty's older brother) when I was 13 or 14 years of age. Arthur used to play to me on his cassette player long meandering speeches made by Benn, which he assured me were politically sound and made perfect sense, but being a wet behind the ears schoolboy the speeches sounded like double Dutch to me and I could not make head or tail of what Benn was banging on about. Fortunately for me Von Rossi the elder explained the content of the speeches in simple terms that I could understand and he also supplied me with copies of the socialist newspaper Militant to further add to my understanding of leftist ideas and ideology. Despite being open to argument and challenge and not being an expert in politics by any means, my views have remained left leaning over the years, which is often the case with people who are skint.

Arthur did not keep his political activities covert despite strongly believing he was on MI5's 'people to keep a weather eye on' list and although I thought this to be paranoid poppycock at the time things that I have learnt in the intervening years do make Von Rossi's claim seem not so incredulous after all. Arthur had some strange practices in life at the time, most of which would be indiscreet of me to go into, but my most vivid experience with him back then was when he urged me to take a good sniff of some unidentified, murky liquid he had stored in an old Mellow Birds coffee jar; I inhaled the liquid fumes heartily (as you do when you are young and foolish) and I was unfortunate enough to smell what turned out to be the most putrid, foul odour that I have ever had the displeasure of sniffing, much to the amusement of Arthur. One of the Pirate's worst bottom burps does not even come close to the malodorous contents of the festering jar. I could not be 100% sure what was in the jar but I had a good idea after a brief discussion with Von Rossi the younger, who I suspected Arthur had subjected to his Mellow Birds torture in the past.

I was reminded of Arthur's unorthodox dentistry methods recently as I popped into the Olde Swan in Netherton (affectionately known to all as Ma Pardoe's of course) with Fudgkins, the lovely Mrs Fudgkins and Harry Stottle prior to attending a production of the Noel Coward play Brief Encounter at Netherton Arts Centre. Many years ago whilst in Pardoe's one Sunday evening with the Von Rossi brothers and the Frymaster General, Arthur explained to us that a filling had dislodged itself from his mouth and he had erroneously swallowed it but instead of visiting his dentist, and parting with his hard earned shekels, he had waited for nature to take its course before cleaning the filling and restoring it back to its proper place with some industrial strength glue he had procured from his place of work. Now that's something for you to chew on.

All hands enjoyed Brief Encounter and the shine was only taken off the evening for me by me not feeling tip top, due to my ongoing illness, and subsequently suffering a mild-graine in Pardoes after the show, even though I was drinking bitter (teasingly only the one as I was driving). Mind you the evening might be better described not as Brief Encounter but as Close Encounters of the Third Kind as it is relatively alien for me to be outside of my usual haunt of the Flagon & Gorses. To entertain us in Pardoe's Harry Stottle recited a steady stream of anecdotes to us from his Thespian days in the theatre, the highlight of which he informed us, was playing a spare part in a lavish production of My Fair Ladyboy.

Returning back to my schoolboy days of my political awakening with the Von Rossi's. At the time we used to play football over the cemetery, which is not as bad form as it sounds as there were vast fields of open ground, which are quickly filling up these days due to the inconsiderateness of people who have failed to cheat mortality. Incidentally, I have always found it odd that we refer to expired persons as “the late …..” as it must be terribly difficult to be punctual if you are deceased and tardiness (which I normally abhor) can be excused in the circumstances. That said, the phantasm that visits me in my nightmares on a Monday night never fails to appear on cue, so I am possibly cutting the lifeless too much slack and they are most likely spending too much time pushing up daisies instead of getting to appointments on time.

Anyway, we were always glad when Philly Idol came to the cemetery kick-abouts as he was the first person in the parish to own an Adidas Tango football, the type that were used in World Cups, and given that we were used to playing with the workmanlike Mitre Multiplex football (which dominated the market at the time) the lighter and more exquisite Tango was a very exotic and sort after treasure indeed. The games of football were always inconveniently punctuated by the cemetery keeper chasing us off (to shouts of “Parky!”) and he turned up even out of opening hours, which I thought was pretty Draconian of him. I used to be terrified of being caught by the mysterious Parky but none of us ever were but looking back I am not sure what exactly he would have done if he had caught up with us anyway; it would mostly likely have been the case that on sight of the alluring Adidas Tango that he would have asked if he could have joined in with the game but being a newcomer he would have of course had to have gone in goal to start with.

At the back of the cemetery was a wooded stream and hilly meadows and we used to explore them Huckleberry Finn style and climb trees and do other typical things that schoolboys get up to. One night we decided to camp in the fields, each of us telling our mothers that we were staying over at one of the other's houses. Such was the general nonchalance of parent's towards their children at the time that none of the mothers could be bothered to check our stories. The success of the camping adventure lead us to do it again a few weeks later, but that time camping on the sports field at the demolished Greenhill School. Once we had pitched the tent it was pitch black but being boys we wanted to partake in a sporting contest and decided on a game of cricket. A makeshift bat was found, a ball appeared from somewhere and a dustbin was utilised for the wickets. We swiped a load of flashing yellow warning lamps that you used to see at roadworks and used them to illuminate the boundary, which I thought was an act of genius, but would have lead passers by in the adjacent gulley to think that a strange Druidic procedure was being practised. Given the flashing lights and loud shouts of “Howzat!” we were clearly drawing attention to ourselves, in what was a residential area but we paid no mind to it, being vacant brained boys.

After the cricket we returned to the tent but in no time at all we heard sinister footsteps approaching, that were being made by a person wielding a torch. We all looked at each other, as if to say “what the f*ck do we do?” and in our silence we all acquiesced to stay put and remain still. The beat of our hearts quickened in direct proportion to the increasing closeness of the footsteps and fearing a knife wielding madman we retreated to the back of the tent, not a wise move given that a thin piece of canvas would hardly protect us from a sharp, murderous blade.

The footsteps stopped outside the door of the tent. There was a pause which seemed to last longer than the Oscar Pistorius trial, then slowly, agonisingly, the hand of the foreign body slowly unzipped the door to the tent, all of us contemplating a grisly end. A torched poked into the tent and shone in our eyes, blinding us, like the subjects of an interrogation and our collective fear peaked but right at that moment, not being lost for words like the rest of us, Ollie Leaver shouted, “we do not want your sort round here mate, so f*ck off.” The torch bearer replied, “this is the police, get outside of the tent, now.” I had never been so relieved to be apprehended by the law in my life. The officers (turns out there were two of them) ordered us to return to our homes immediately but we pleaded in unison that our mothers would kill us, so they showed us clemency and allowed us to remain for the night as long as we remained quietly in the tent.

After we had struck camp in the early morning I sauntered home in the sunshine and acquired a bottle of orange juice that was conveniently sitting on someone's doorstep and while I sipped it I pondered on what had been another colourful and memorable, yet pretty harmless, jolly jape.

© Dominic Horton, March 2014.

* Email: lordhofr@gmail.com

Lowlife 61 – Fast Food, Slow Cooker

Fast Food, Slow Cooker

By Dominic Horton

You have to question your sanity when you continue to do things that on balance are not beneficial to you and all the evidence is weighted in favour of it not being sensible to undertake the activity in question. The Baby Faced Assassin at the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeaway had his evil way after I left the Flagon & Gorses on Sunday evening and as a consequence of the oriental supper I had so much salt and Monosodium glutamate coursing through my veins on Monday morning that I had a Ready Brek style radiation glow. Despite the chill in the air I had to remove my coat walking up Furnace Hill for fear of overheating; I had no fear of overeating on Sunday night and shoveled all of the Szechuan beef and fried rice down my gullet to placate my dissenting stomach. I once again requested extra beef to boost the meal’s vegetable/ meat ratio and Mr Ping the chef fulfilled my wishes without the Assassin requiring any extra expenditure on my part, which was gentlemanly of him.

I ended up in the Peking in a desperate late night scramble for sustenance as earlier in the evening I intended to stop off for a nibble on the way to pick up Harry Gout as I thought I deserved a treat after completing a grueling run; instead of a treat I popped into McDonalds, the only available food stop by Gout’s house. The fast food “restaurant” was so unexpectedly busy, with customers frenziedly clamouring around the counter, that it looked like the scene of a food drop from the back of a United Nations truck to desperate, starving persons in a disaster zone, so I gave it a skip. I fully intended to have a pork pie in the Flagon & Gorses to compensate for my burger-less state but the events of the evening overtook me and the thought of the pie of pork became lost in the wilderness of beer and bonhomie.

After a couple of hours of taking root in the bar with Gout and Chompa Babbee, who was making a cameo appearance, in strolled a folk duo who brazenly asked Carla Von Trow-Hell behind the bar if they could get their instruments out: Carla was getting excited until she saw that the men were referring to their fiddle and banjo respectively, that were resting dormant in their cases. Carla acceded to the musicians' request and once they had satisfied their priority of getting a drink they struck up in no time at all, launching into a pleasant enough rendition of the age old folk tune Marie's Wedding. Within seconds I found my foot voluntarily tapping and it wasn't just to get my blood circulating to ward off the onset of gout in the ball of the toe on my right foot. I even sang along to a few lines of the song until a disturbed Harry bade me to cease such discordant crooning with a pleading look of disgust.

The folk duo continued to entertain the inmates that were present within the bar and they even played Fisherman's Blues by the Waterboys, a favourite of mine that reminds me of my Fairfield Drive days living with El Pistolero, when we would listen to the song after having a sherry or two, bottles that is. Into the pub ambled Drew Monkey, as he has a habit of doing on a Sunday evening, and he parked himself down next to the folkies and was pally with them, which is no surprise as Drew is a bit of a musician himself, having more strings to his bow that Glen Campbell's twelve string guitar. Being unable to resist the temptation, after a gargle of beer to water his vocal chords, Drew started to warble with the duo and his singing of The Wild Rover lead to pints being quickly downed and punters heading for the exit and in no time at all he had the pub cleared. Standing at the bar, Frank Henstein decided to gallantly stick it out but at every opportunity he made the excuse of going in the back room to collect glasses for the bar staff just to get away from the din.

As the evening wore on the performers played the tender and sentimental Irish folk standard, Carrickfergus, and with me being adequately refreshed it made me maudlin, so it was with a tear in the eye that I departed for the Rhareli Peking, humming the doleful song, much to the bemusement of the permanently grinning Baby Faced Assassin.

Not only did the Peking's finest enhance the abhorrent and wholly unwelcome drink terrors on Monday morning but it also sucked the majority of fluids out of my body leaving me drier the Tutankhamen’s mummy. It was in this distinctly disagreeable state that I was faced with a pigeon flying directly at my head whilst completing the short stumble from the train station to my workplace. Fortunately, the pigeon ascended just in the nick of time and flew inches over me, which was just as well as it would have been embarrassing walking into the Flagon & Gorses with the pigeon's beak firmly implanted in my forehead, with me asking for a pint of bitter for me and another one for the pigeon.

This week has been characterised by trips to the doctors but they were not in connection with the effects of the Sunday night supper from the Rhareli Peking. First, it was off to the surgery Friday last to start the ball rolling to get a bit of physiotherapy to ease the back pain which is the product of stiffness caused by sitting immovable at a desk for the last sixteen years of my working life. It is odd to think that such a sedentary activity has lead to the troublesome injury. I was assessed by a new, fresh faced doctor and he began his deliberations, “well, at your age ….......”. Although I had considered myself to be a relatively young man on entering the surgery I felt ancient and infirm all of a sudden and it was a watershed moment if ever there was one.

Second, it was back to the doctor's on Wednesday as since I suffered from the mild-graines before Christmas (see Lowlife No 49, Lord of the Mild-graines) I have never properly recovered from it and things took a turn for the worse this week with the spots in front of my eyes becoming more prominent, the tinnitus in my ears becoming louder and me generally feeling crook, as the Aussies say. The doc was unsure about my condition so referred me for blood tests.

I just wanted to read my book in the surgery waiting room but I kept getting distracted by the bothersome television in the corner that produced an unrelenting flow of medical information and health advice. Television pictures seem to be piped into everywhere nowadays, like some nightmare vision from Orwell's 1984 and it is rare you get a minute's quietude anywhere, which is why the Flagon & Gorses is such a welcome haven of tranquillity with its absence of music (notwithstanding the above), gaming machines and televisions (save a rare broadcast in the back room). One's toilet is also a serene sanctuary but there was disaster at my Codger Mansions bolt hole this week when the unruly toilet seat finally gave up the ghost and re-classified itself as broke proper. I hastily purchased a new seat (aqua coloured for a change) but the screws on the old seat have rusted so I can't get it off, meaning that now each trip to the karsi is so fraught with peril that I have to put the life guard on standby when I go for a Tom Tit.

To add to my tribulations my new (second hand) car Helen started to rapidly lose power on the way back from the doctors and I decided to see if I could get her to the garage before she came to a grinding halt but as the garage is up Gorsty Hill, which is steeper than the North side of the Himalayan mountain K2, it was not my brightest idea and in her enfeebled condition Helen declined making the ascent, spluttering before her wheels ceased to roll. The cost of a new alternator was partially offset by me picking up a slow cooker for a bargain £19.99 (reduced from £54) on an emergency trip to buy some tomato sausages, which reminded me of the downfall of my vegetarian days when I was living at Fairfield Drive.

I was a fairly shoddy and indisciplined veggie but the dedicatedly carnivorous Frymaster General had made it his business to get me back to eating meat, so knowing I was at cracking point he cooked eight tomato sausages, ate four and a half and pushed the plate across the table towards me, beckoning me to sample them with by raising his eyebrows and nodding his head. I succumbed to the porky temptation and the sausages tasted like pure heaven, which is a lot more than can be said for the wares of a certain local takeaway, which will remain nameless, but which I am sure you can work out for yourself even if you lack the powers of deduction of Inspector Poirot.

© Dominic Horton, March 2014.

* Email: lordhofr@gmail.com

Lowlife 60 - Life in the Sloe Gin Lane

Life in the Sloe Gin Lane

By Dominic Horton

Being greeted by a hangover at the start of the week is nothing new to me but I have had fewer pleasant ones than the variety that I had on Monday morning and the pleasantness was due in large part to the sloe gin that I was drinking with Fudgkins in the Flagon & Gorses the preceding evening.  Fudgkins had been drinking sloe gin with Alexander Sutcliffe two weeks prior so I had Sutcliffe to blame for my consumption of the drink even though he was in absentia, which was criminal on his part given the barrelhouse atmosphere that developed during the course of the evening.  Washing the sloe gin down with pints of the moreish Elland 1872 Porter (at a heavyweight 6.5%) was a winning combination but it was acting as too strong a relaxant, so I stepped down the ante and downgraded to taking the porter in black and tans instead.  I used to drink black and tans with Sutcliffe when we used to loiter in the Royal Oak as teenagers and it was a tactic we developed to make the best that we could out of poor quality mild and Guinness and it at least made things bearable.  

I always associate drinking pints of black and tans with snow as when I used to work at Patrick Motors petrol station (which is a whole other story) heavy snowfall befell the earth on a lonesome winter Saturday and under severe pressure from my colleague, the Wild Man of Brummio, the gaffer shut the station mid-afternoon on account of us having no customers.  I called Sutcliffe post haste and arranged to meet him in the Royal Oak to have a little taste of beer and to shelter from the inclement weather.  Having a 4 X 4 (rare in those days) the Wild Man offered me a lift and as he wanted to have a drink himself at his club he put his foot down and we skidded off the forecourt, heading down the road.  

We found ourselves at the island by the Oak but our progress was halted by a little old dear who was driving at two miles an hour in a Metro.  Panicking that his eight hours drinking time was dwindling away the Wild Man took the drastic action of driving right over the island to the other side, leaving tyre tracks in the grass, and after booting me out of his motor he took the same root back directly over the island shouting expletives at the crawling Granny as he went.  Sutcliffe and I then proceeded to drink black and tans until it came out of our earholes, as young men are prone to do, and a blues duo struck up in the bar and it felt like Christmas. 

On arrival at the Flagon, early Sunday evening, it was clear that some of the inmates had drank a few and that they were in the mood for a few more.   Although Frank Henstein carries his drink well I could tell he was full of mild as he was starting to communicate less by speaking and more by hand gestures; his daughter-in-law Toe-Knee Tulips was making a rare appearance at the drinking side of the bar and was in a very relaxed state and seeing that Agent Fudgkins and I were enjoying the sloe gin so much she elected to join us.  Frank Henstein accused the long suffering barmaid Carla Von Trow-Hell of having a nice ar*e and Neddy La Chouffe was so taken with the whole bonhomie of the evening that he decided to ditch the car and he reappeared from stage left and got involved with the black and tans.   Neddy’s is a professional motor car tinkerer and in his expert opinion the “Helen” style number plate on my new car could be worth a couple of hundred quid.  With pound signs in my eyes I ordered another round of sloe gins.

All hands clamoured round the L shaped bar like whelks on a rock face.  Fudgey gave me a book, The Little Grey Men, by BB and Carla immediately nicked it and Toe-Knee claimed second dibs on it, so by the time I read the children’s book to my dear boy Kenteke he will be a fully grown adult.   Philly the Gent compensated for my loss of the book by lending me a DVD, Captain Phillips, a film about pirates, and such a piratical infusion was needed as the Pirate himself was AWOL, resting upstairs in his quarters. 

When supplying us with a steady flow of drinks Chilli Willy took the unfamiliar tack of being nice to us and the general consensus was that we didn’t like it and all internees agreed that he should return to his usual sullen, curt demeanour.  Being cunning though Willy stayed in the game by changing tactics and he informed us of the fascinating life and times of one of his distant forebears, the eminently colourful Chalkley Beeson who was a businessman, lawman, and cattleman and owner of the famous Long Branch Saloon, Dodge City during the wild west era.  Beeson was Sheriff of Dodge City.  Get that Sheriff of Dodge f*cking City; imagine that on your CV – I can see a smarmy, marble smooth suit asking in an interview “what makes you think you are qualified for the job Mr Horton?”.  “I was the Sheriff of Dodge City, now if you don’t give me the job I am going to blow your f*cking head off.”  Beeson drove noted gunman Clay Allison out of town.  Beeson knew Wyatt Earp.  Beeson had a big moustache.  Beeson was without a shadow of doubt a right rough and tumble character.  “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us” tough.  Two lumps of grit in his coffee.   The Milky bars were not on me but I did order another round of sloe gins.

The Chalkley Beeson story was Chilli Willy’s finest moment since he cooked the deluxe and luscious food on the Jewish food night and he can live off the story well into his dotage.   Meanwhile, in strolled the inimitable Colly Coren and surveying the Wild West Midlands sight around the bar he must have thought he had walked into the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City in the 19^th century.   Coren fell short of greeting us with “howdy” but despite his sobriety he did have enough sport in his bones to join in with the general carousing and high spirited horseplay.   Willy and Carla did not slide our sloe gins down the long bar top as they would have got stuck on the beer towels and there is a ledge half way up the bar anyway:  if they had so, it would have been to my detriment as Fudgkins would have been quick on the draw and had my drink down his throat quicker than you can say Wild Bill Hickok.  The rest of the evening was hazier than the early morning mist over Tombstone but it ended with Willy and Carla giving me a lift back to Codger Mansions and Carla generously shoving an unwanted bottle of wine in my hands that was clanging around the motor.

Back to Monday morning.  Someone must have broken in during the night and cooked a curry and left all the dishes strewn across the kitchen, it couldn’t have been me as I can remember it.  A small piece of green chilli wedged between my teeth gave the game away though – not an unpleasant reminder in morsel form of the night before.  If I see a morsel of food on the kitchen surface I always instinctively eat it even if I don’t know what it is, a bit of bonus food; I have fallen foul of it a few times when it was not food at all but a foreign body that tasted acrid.  Unwashed dishes, poor form, not like me at all, I always manage to tidy up no matter what condition I am in post Flagon, hang my trousers up etc. 

Sundry bits of paper were strewn over the table, potential dates Carla had given me for a Flagon beer junket, notes for this column, a reminder that I need to look into buying a mattress.  Despite everything I am a shining beacon of organisation.  I need a new mattress because of a bad back; my existing one must pre-date the three day week and is less supportive than a parent whose child has just said that they are running off to the circus.   Have you seen the price of mattresses? I was aghast when I looked, it will have to wait.  Willy Mantitt, who admittedly has a few quid (not all of which has been acquired in a condign fashion), said that he spent three and a half grand on a top of the range mattress stating that you spend a third of your life in bed and that it was the best money he ever spent.  I suppose you wouldn’t hesitate to lay out three and a half large on a motor if you had the cash knocking about, so for once Mantitt is onto something.

I dragged my hangover onto the train to get to work and out of a dark corner of my eye I saw a headline on the inner pages of the Metro that a passenger was reading, which read, “Why does anything exist at all?”  Such a poser was too much to handle in the circumstances so I just thought to myself that if in the final reckoning I fail to evade the clutches of the sinister devil I hope at least that they stock black and tans and sloe gin in hell.

© Dominic Horton, 2014.

* Email: lordhofr@gmail.com.  

Lowlife 59 – Every Curry has a Silver Lining

Every Curry has a Silver Lining

By Dominic Horton

In my view plants hold hidden evil and I sense this keenly every time I undertake the diabolical act of having to stunt the garden’s growth; I hesitate to use the word gardening as the sum total of my efforts is to mow, cut down, trim and weed, simply to keep the advancing foliage at bay.  In many ways I find plants more threatening than people and I generally steer clear of both if I can help it.  I don’t do anything proactive to plant flowers etc. as to my mind there is too much vegetation in the garden in the first place and I have no desire to swell the number of the plant army.  If you are not careful the rampant force of greenery can attack the house and actually overpower it, as happened to an unfortunate dwelling in Blackheath that I spotted the other day which was enveloped in a wild leafy growth.  I imagine that the poor inhabitants of the house have the stark choice of risking being devoured by the plant leviathan on leaving the building or starving to death inside the property: a Hobson’s choice if ever there was one.

I do not know if my trepidation of plants and the like is rooted, so to speak, in my being exposed to the terrifying 1981 BBC television adaptation of John Wyndham’s book The Day of the Triffids or whether there is another explanation.   Either way, I am of the unshakable belief that one day things that sprout forth green will take over the world and extinguish all human and animal existence.   There is no greater example of the determination of herbage than the fact that a humble, seemingly feeble weed can wilfully use all of its powers to actually grow through tarmac: on the face of it, it is impossible for a tiny flaccid weed to penetrate such solid matter and the only possible explanation is that the plant is driven by pure evil.   Before you write my theories off as the ramblings of a raving madman take time to think about it, ideally over a pint in a quiet corner of the Barbara Cartland Suite of the Flagon & Gorses.  You might start to realise that my premise is not so crackpot after all.  

One thing that is crackpot is the consumption of takeaway food stuffs, which are generally foul and make you feel dreadful once you have consumed them, such feeling often stretching well into the following day.   And yet, despite all reason I continue to eat them even thought I know full well that home cooked rations are far more healthy, nutritious and tasty.    I am not a takeaway fiend by any means but one a week is one too many so I need to address the situation at hand.   I covenanted not to have any take away bile on Sunday but I ended up with a curry despite my best endeavours.  The usual routine in the Flagon on the Sabbath is that Philly the Gent rings Mamas just after 2200 hours to get the kebabs in but on Sunday Philly said, “Olivia [his wife] has told me not to have a kebab tonight as she doesn’t like the smell of it in the house.  So I am going to have a curry instead.”   When Philly asked if I wanted anything my mind thought “no” but my mouth said, “chicken Jalfrezi please”.

These things tend to by cyclical; I can go weeks without a takeaway then all of a sudden they appear on the Codger Mansions menu, calling like unwanted Jehovah’s Witnesses.   Buying a takeaway is now ludicrously easy, far too easy, as you can order one over the internet without having to speak to another human being, which appeals to me given my general aversion to other people.   Half an hour after your order (which gives you enough time to take your pub clothes off and slip into the Burlington Bertie equivalent of Hugh Heffner gear) a bloke knocks your door and hands over a white plastic bag and that’s that.  Transaction complete.  You don’t even have to bung the fella any money as you have already paid by card over the internet, which is like not paying at all.  If I had a porch I could ask the meal to be dropped in there so there would be no human contact whatsoever, which would be idyllic. 

When you order takeaway food via the internet they should at least make you read an attestation to warn you about what you are doing: “PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that the food stuffs that you are about to order will most likely be unfulfilling and they will make you feel bloated, lethargic and more full of salt than the North Sea.  Please think carefully before proceeding.  Click to continue.”  At least ordering takeaways over the internet means that I can thankfully dispense with the services of the Baby Faced Assassin and Mr Ping at the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeway, so every curry has a silver lining.

Contactless transactions are more than welcome to me and although I originally resisted self-service check out machines in shops I now use them with relish.   When self-service check outs were first installed I viewed them with disdain given that they would inevitably mean that supermarkets and shops would need to employ less staff.  Although I retain this view the benefits of not having to speak to a shop assistant or look them in the eye when I am suffering from the booze terrors far outweighs any moralistic standpoint and it now means that trips to Tesco Express down the road from Codger Mansions are not fraught with awkwardness, meaning that I can especially avoid breathing booze fumes over the Muslim shop assistant whilst buying bacon. 

After their introduction I would shun the self-service scanners and insist on being served by a member of the human race and it used to amaze me that in the busy Sainsburys Local on Colmore Row, Birmingham that people used to queue to use the scanners when it was far quicker to get served by a shop assistant; it was almost as if the scanner fiends were desperate to get a fix of the new gadgetry.   On a visit to the aforementioned Tesco Express a while ago a suit clad manager from Head Office was explaining to the shop assistant how the self-service till works and I quipped to the assistant, half seriously, “You’d better watch it mate, that machine will have you out of a job.”  The suit was clearly unimpressed with my comment, as indicated by the accusing stare that he gave me. 

There was also an element of Luddite fear in me about using the scanners but one day when we were in a rush and there was a queue my dear son Kenteke suggested I use self-service and he said, “Come on Dad I’ll show you how to do it.”  Since then I have never looked back and if one particularly chatty shop assistant is working I enact a mad scramble to the self-service till to avoid her before she can get to her station to serve me.  I thought I had honed my plans to perfection to avoid the loquacious assistant until one day when I found to my horror that when you buy alcohol a Tesco humanoid has to get involved in the transaction.   Since that fateful day all of my booze purchases have been in the Flagon & Gorses or via online grocery shopping, which is another spellbindingly miraculous invention.

I have had a spellbindingly miraculous acquisition this week (due to the sterling work of Toby In-Tents) in the form of my new car Helen, so called because of her number plate’s resemblance to the name in question.  Helen is a Chevvy which conjures up images of me sitting in a grand American gas guzzler, with a throaty throttle, cruising down long, straight freeways in the deserts of Nevada with country and western music emitting from the stereo.  The reality of the car is another matter as Helen is a Chevrolet Matiz and of the same small size and minute power as my decrepit old car, Pat, but in comparison she exudes opulent luxury as unlike Pat she has a working heater, radio and windscreen wipers and her wing mirrors are not held on by sticky tape. 

Now that I have a decent motor Barty Hook, from Lowlife’s London office, suggested that I spin down to see him but driving to London scares me more than the thought of using self-service scanners ever did, so it is unlikely I will undertake such a journey in a hurry.   The host of the Flagon & Gorses, the Pirate, has cordially invited me to the Smoke this Thursday on a rambling beer junket with Windy McDisco, Aldente McCheffrey and The Bantam Raspberry Blower but after our tiring trip to Derby Beer Festival last week I had better give the excursion a miss in order to protect my bodily organs and the pennies in my wallet, which are dwindling after purchasing Helen and attending the sumptuous eight course French dinner at the Flagon on Monday, expertly cooked by Chilli Willy himself and the moonlighting  McCheffrey.   Given the tight space in the Flagon’s kitchen, which is like a ship’s galley, I hope the bearded Willy and Aldente didn’t bump into each other as they would have stuck together like a pair of stickle bricks and I would have had to cart them off in Helen to the hospital to get them parted in what would merely have been another of life’s little adventures.

© Dominic Horton, February 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.