A Brillo Pad, Two Baked
Beans and a Pickled Gherkin
I have hit a new low this week by acceding to a
request by a Lowlife reader to replicate the private parts of a person
known to us both, using a brillo pad, two baked beans and a pickled gherkin.
The errant requester insisted I photograph the creation thereafter for
inclusion in this column. The reader in
question will remain nameless, as I promised her that her identity would remain
confidential when she served me the pint in the Flagon last night before she
pinched a fag off her partner Chilli Willy.
It wasn’t a particularly late night in the Flagon
last eve and I even got a lift home off the kind hearted Chilli Willy but on
returning back at Codger Mansions I foolishly stayed up watching the film Green
Card, starring the enigmatic Gerard
Depardieu, finishing off the second bottle of brandy that I
bought off Philly the Gent . Depardieu
looked youthful, almost fresh faced, in the film but it was filmed in 1990, so
23 years ago now when he was 42, a year older than me. Even though I am in surprisingly good fettle
for my age, all things considered, I have not been accused of being fresh faced
for a while.
Chilli Willy most probably
offered me the lift to compensate for nearly killing me earlier in the evening
by insisting I eat some chilli chocolate that he had in his possession. Willy
had two batches of the chocolate, one mildly spiced and another hotter than a
peppered sprout (to quote the lyrics from Jackson
My late supper last evening was
poor, even by my standards, constituting of a boiled egg with hot pepper sauce
and pickled gherkins. In order to
stomach the gherkins I had to divorce my thoughts from the reason why I had
acquired them. I then indulged in my
recently developed habit of falling asleep on the sofa, only to be woken by
bird song at dawn before retreating to join my faithful teddy bear companion
Alfie in the Codger Mansions Presidential Suite. Alfie was less than happy that I was having
such a decadent time for a Monday and when I stirred for work this morning I
found him lying on the floor by the bed, Geordie Peacock style.
Geordie Peacock was played by
Daniel Craig in the poignant BBC drama serial Our Friends in the North and
Craig of course has gone on to play the secret agent James Bond, appropriate as
Chilli Willy’s chilli chocolate left me shaken not stirred. The appealing blended Scotch Whisky Chivas
Regal was of course one of James Bond’s favourite drinks and a bottle of the
tipple in question was presented to me by my wonderful little son Kenteke on
Father’s Day on Sunday, proving that my training of him has worked. Making sense of my anarchic life is sometimes
challenging but the dots always join together if one looks hard enough.
The weekend saw the addition of a resplendent new
hanging basket at Codger Mansions, which will most likely be half inched in the
near future if past experience is anything to go by. With the work on the front
wall now complete and with Liam Redwood having fixed the letter box, the
external appearance of Codger Mansions is looking better than ever. Which can
only mean that disaster is lurking menacingly around the corner.
Sunday last saw a rare excursion from the Flagon
on the Sabbath, with the Abdul, Weston Super-Leeds, Toby-in-Tents and his
girlfriend, the lovely Samuka Dudlovski, in toe. We attended a Steve Ajao's
Blues Kings gig at the Prince of Wales in Birmingham and what a wonderful
afternoon it was, being an old fashioned pub gig, with a packed out bar and
people dancing to the music, even though it was only late afternoon.
By the end of the gig Super-Leeds, Toby-in-Tents
and Samuka were lost in battle leaving just the Adbul and yours truly standing,
or wobbling rather, having had more drinks than we had realised. After some impromptu solid sustenance the Abdul
made his acquaintance with Halesowen’s most famous son, the highly influential
nineteenth century politician and economist Thomas Attwood, by sitting next to
his statue that adorns the steps of Chamberlain
Square Birmingham
The Adbul was wearing an awful T-shirt as he had
asked his daughter to buy him a T-shirt with a wolf on it for Father’s
Day. As Abdul is a West Bromwich Albion
fan his daughter missed a trick as she should have bought him a Wolves jersey. I took the opportunity to take a snap of the
Abdul sitting by Attwood's statue and in the resultant photograph he looks like
he is playing the part of the relaxed tourist whereas in actuality he had just
had eight pints together with as many roll ups, followed by a Big Mac and
fries.
Despite his name
my associate the Frymaster General never cooked fries (better known as chips in
Anglo Saxon) when I had the misfortune of sharing a property with him in
Fairfield Drive. Fortunately the décor
and general appearance of the Fairfield
Drive
I remember the dawning horror of waking up in the Frymaster’s
old flat many years ago in a state of inverted sobriety and being offered a cup
of tea for refreshment. It transpired
that the Frymaster only had a solitary mug (which had been relieved of its
handle) and he was clean out of milk and sugar, so the experience was not quite
shaping up to be like high tea at the Ritz and I was thinking that the tea
might not be such a good idea. The
straw that broke the camel’s back was that one of the Frymaster’s pubes was
nestling in the mug, so I made my excuses and declined the char leaving Earl
Grey rolling in his grave. Early Grey,
being Prime Minister in the 1830’s, was the author of the Reform Bill of 1832
and I was left in no doubt that the Frymaster’s tea making utensils, stocks and
procedures needed radical reform.
In order to rescue the Frymaster General from such squalid
conditions I invited him to move into Fairfield
Drive
The worst job whilst brewing was after the first
fermentation in the bucket transferring the beer into a barrel for the second
fermentation. This was because in order
to draw the beer from the bucket into the barrel you had to suck a pipe and
often you got a mouthful of the foul liquid, so to be equitable we took the job
in turns. It was the Frymaster's turn
one particular Monday and he was struggling to draw the beer down the pipe into
the barrel below and he was moaning as a consequence. Still-in-Fjord walked into the kitchen at
that moment and he could hear us but not see us and it must have been with
great disgust and bewilderment that he heard me exclaim to the Frymaster, “for
f*cks sake, just get down on your knees and give it a good hard suck.”
Presently, Dick the Hook would not benefit from the Frymaster
General’s cooking techniques or from lashings of the substandard beer that the
Frymaster and I used to brew, as he revealed to me recently in the Flagon that
he is on a diet due to a waistline that is expanding quicker than the Roman Empire in the second century. Due to his diet the jocular Dick was
torturously restricting himself to one pint of beer only but he still had time
to describe to me the fascinating contents of a book that he had recently read,
Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Dick explained that he was reading books as
a poor substitute for drinking beer but he had very much enjoyed the book
nonetheless and was now looking forward to seeing the film. From behind the bar the amiable Donny
Darkeye had been eavesdropping on the conversation and he interjected, “I have
seen Life of Pi and I can tell you it
is a wonderful film but I fell fast asleep after 20 minutes.” Which is a contradiction in terms if ever I
have heard one.
Postscript
Many congratulations to my correspondent and associate Willy
Mantitt and his wife, the lovely Mrs Mantitt, on the birth of their second child,
Charlie James Mantitt, who entered this world recently weighing in at 7lbs 14
oz. The birth of Charlie is clearly a
wonderful event in its own right but regular readers of this column will also
know that it marks the official end of Mantitt’s self imposed sobriety, pending
the arrival of the child. I use the word
“official” as in practice the weak willed Willy broke the booze ban within 48
hours of it coming into force and continued to flagrantly disregard his promise
thereafter, as predicated by the author.
© Dominic Horton, 28th June,
2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment