The Pirate-less Pensax
As I meandered around the
office today I pondered on my long held belief that everyone has a measure of
madness in them, to one degree or another.
I use the word “madness” in the context of people doing odd or unfathomable
things. On arrival at the photocopier I
found a smartly dressed man present that I have not had the benefit of an
introduction to, standing in full office attire but his feet were merely
stockinged and were not accompanied by shoes.
To compound his shoeless state the fellow was wearing the most garish
pair of brightly coloured socks possible, as if to announce to the world, “I
know I am not wearing shoes in an environment where shoe wearing is the
convention but I do not care a jot about it.”
To my mind, the incident fully justified my measure of madness theory.
One person who has more
than his fair share of madness quota is Sleepy Tom Parker and he proved this
once more on our yearly visit to the Bell at Pensax beer festival on Saturday
by again continuing the annual ritual of ignoring my simple directions (drive
through Kidderminster and keep on going until you reach Clows Top, then turn
left) and consequently Tom became hopelessly lost and ended up on a one track
road in the wilds of the Worcestershire countryside.
In fairness to Sleepy Tom
though he did arrive before us in mid-afternoon, with his brother Breezy John
Parker, and we found them sitting on deck chairs by their tent. Mind you, they did set out at the crack of
dawn for what is normally a drive of less than an hour but as Tom is
perpetually getting lost they unwittingly visited almost every village in
Worcestershire and had to stop for petrol thrice before finally arriving in Pensax. Even though it was only 1500 hours Tom was
looking decidedly drowsy in his deck chair so my travelling companions Chompa
Babbee and Fudgkins and I erected our tents in double quick time in order to get
Sleepy Tom on the move before he dozed off.
Fudgkins had only just
returned to Blighty in time for the festival as he had visited Katowice in
Poland to follow his dream of becoming a door to door toothpaste salesman, who
are popular in Poland, but he was deemed too short at the interview and there
was concern that when residents opened their front doors to Fudgey’s knock that
they would not realise he was standing on the front step unless they were also
unusually diminutive. So after going
through customs at the airport on the way home and declaring his foolishness
Fudgkins dejectedly returned to the Midlands
with his tail between his (short) legs and a year’s supply of Colgate
toothpaste in his suitcase.
Despite my invitation to
join us in Pensax the Pirate decided to stay in situ at the Flagon & Gorses
and as a consequence he missed Fudgkins regaling us with tales of his travels
to Poland and although it was not exactly akin to Gulliver’s Travels (especially as unlike Gulliver Fudgey is short
of leg) it did wile away the short drive.
Fudgkins explained that
in Poland Poland
On the trip to Pensax
Fudgkins’s newly procured second hand Volkswagen car seemed to be in as bad a
condition as his overburdened suitcase.
On the face of it the car looked in decent nick and it did get us to and
from Pensax but it was quickly apparent from being a passenger in the vehicle
that all was not well. It would be
easier for Fudgey to get into the Buckingham Palace garden party than to get the
errant car into gear and the passenger side electric window, which was showing
increasing signs of dissent, eventually packed in completely and refused to
come back out to play, making Chompa Babbee’s experience on the back seat a
gusty one to say the least. On exiting
the Fudgemobile I slammed the door harder than I anticipated and resultantly
for a brief second the wedged window popped its head above the parapet and
fortunately the quick fingered Fudgkins managed to pinch the window and ease it
into an elevated state.
If Fudgey has increasing
difficulties with his new motor he could try to sell it to www.webuyanyoldnail.com but
I wouldn’t recommend it given my demoralising experience. Out of curiosity I tapped the details of my
ailing but stoical vehicle Pat (see
Lowlife No 3) into the website and disappointingly it offered me a price of
a paltry fifty quid. Worse was to
follow as the small print stated that webuyanyoldnail would deduct an
administration fee of £49.99 from the offered price, meaning that in effect
they were offering me a ludicrously miserly one new penny for poor old
Pat. Pat may clunk and bang and make
all sorts of odd noises and emit odd odours of faint burning; his heater may have
ceased to be worthy of the name many years ago and his tyres balder than Duncan
Goodhew but Pat, and the service he provides, is invaluable to me.
Once we reached the holy
grail of the beer garden of the Bell I decided that before we started about the
wholesome and uncomplicated task of drinking a dozen pints of beer and
thoroughly enjoying ourselves to call order amongst our gathered brethren,
which was now swelled by the appearance of the Abdul from stage left, appearing
like a bald and grinning apparition.
Once the assorted giggling and dissentious comments had dampened down I
produced to Sleepy Tom the latest edition of Wolverhampton CAMRA’s Beerwolf magazine and suggested he cast
his weary eyes over the Snoozers in
Boozers feature, which to Tom’s great surprise, and to much mirth amongst
the party, included a photo of him in a comatose state. To celebrate sleepy
Tom’s enduring contribution and efforts in promoting pub slumbering I presented
to him a commemorative certificate, much to his delight. If Tom ever acquires a public house I suggest
he calls it The Sleeping Inn.
General frivolity ensued
at the beer festival but as ever it flew by in the blink of an eye and I found
myself awake in my tent on Sunday morning at 0600 hrs desperately in need of a
wee. On staggering out of the tent I
could see that Fudgey’s tent door was wide open, flapping in the wind and on
peering in I found that he looked like he had expired and was lying in state,
for all of the camp site occupants to view and pay their respects. I realised that if Fudgkins had indeed shed
his mortal coil that we would have to wrap him in the pop up tent for the
homeward journey (for which we would have to fashion a makeshift roof rack),
with the tent thereafter being known as the Pensax shroud.
Chompa and I had decided
to house Fudgkins in the single tent on his own due to his strange nocturnal
habits, with me having to tolerate Chompa in the larger tent. When we woke proper at 0800 hrs we discovered
Fudgey’s tent was unoccupied leading to the suspicion that Sleepy Tom and
Breezy John had snatched the body in Burke & Hare style. I was beginning to be concerned as to how I
would explain to Mrs Fudgkins that not only had her husband perished but that
his body is missing too. I then noticed
that the rickety Fudgemobile was also absent, meaning Fudgey must have survived
the night after all but had now mysteriously disappeared.
When Fudgkins’s returned
some time later we hurriedly struck camp and retreated to the café at Hopley’s
campsite down the road to indulge in essential greasy breakfast
nourishment. Despite Chompa Babbee
chomping his way through bacon all of his life of two score and six years he
recently announced that he no longer likes to eat it, for reasons unknown, so
he partook in the standard breakfast trade in of one rasher of bacon for two
sausages, which café owners are legally obliged to comply with given the terms
of section 17 the little known Pork and
Diary Products Exchange and Trading Act 1832, which is still on the statute
book.
On return home later that
Sunday I sat on the comfortable settles in the peaceful back room of the Flagon
& Gorses with Weston Super-Leeds and Jolly D, musing over a pint of bitter
on my annual trip to the Shire thinking that next year I really hope that
things will not be the slightest bit different at all. Well, all except for the horrendous Don
Estelle shorts that Fudgkins sported.
Postscript
Many congratulations to
my associate Greig Heatison and his lovely wife, Mrs Heatison, on their recent
marriage. Warm wishes and the best of
luck to them both in what I am sure will be a happy future together. Luckily Heatison warmed to the idea of
getting wed as at one stage he was so terrified of the thought of it that he
even walked out in front of a bus in Colmore Row in Birmingham
© Dominic Horton, 3rd July, 2013.
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