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.

Lowlife 58 – Flesh, Bone & Fragility

Flesh, Bone & Fragility

By Dominic Horton

On emerging into consciousness on Monday morning I found to my delight that the wheels of the world were still turning and I was plunged into the new week, a day closer to my ultimate demise.  Or an impending little victory.  Or something.  But whatever, I was still alive, flesh, bone and fragility and once the fug of Sunday’s tipples started to clear the challenges of the week came into focus.  Fug clearing at the moment is aided in the morning by a hike up Gorsty Hill, the Black Country equivalent of the Khyber Pass, to get to the train station as my deceased car Pat was towed away by a scrap metal merchant from Darlaston on Saturday.   

My beloved car looked undignified on the back of the transport vehicle, held aloft for all to see that he was off to meet his end after being stripped of anything of value.  When I go they are welcome to take what they want of me if anything is in decent working order, though it would be good to be laid to rest with my meat and two veg still intact and attached to my person, though I haven’t stipulated this on my donor card: an addendum is needed post haste.  

While the paperwork was being completed the scrap merchant invited me into the cab of his truck and he proceeded to chain smoke, blatantly flouting the law on such matters, but his delinquency was most welcome and it seemed to be a fitting end for Pat, who had more than a touch of the Lowlife’s about him.   The grime encrusted scrap man is not legally allowed to have a fag in the cab when another is present but perversely parents are not currently breaking the law by smoking in a car when their children are also travelling with them.  It appears that finally the authorities are going to act to clear up this ridiculous anomaly in the law but I do not know why it was not done when the work place smoking ban came into force in 2007.  But Simon Clark, director of smokers' lobby group Forest (which is primarily funded by the tobacco industry) tried to defend the indefensible last week by stating that smoking in cars with children was "inconsiderate", but there was "a line the state shouldn't cross when it comes to dictating how people behave in private places".   Clark’s comment is effectively blowing smoke in the face of innocent, defenceless children and it just goes to show the vulgar immorality that is produced by the pursuit of profit.

Dear old Pat clocked up 99,226 miles falling short of the fabled 100,000 miles mark, a milestone (no pun intended) he deserved to achieve as a lasting legacy.  The MOT report (which I received after the last edition of Lowlife was published) was damning: Pat failed on eight counts and there were an additional sixteen advisory items so the cost of patching him up was prohibitive, being an amount equal to the Pirate’s weekly beer expenditure, which is a tidy sum indeed.

The Pirate has reason to have a commiserative drink though after the happenings at the Flagon & Gorses since my last despatch.  The Pirate explained to me that mid-evening on Tuesday last while he was dozing in the living room on the first floor of the Flagon & Gorses, dreaming of profits, he was abruptly disturbed from his slumber and confronted by a large, strange man with Ung Pirat (the Pirate’s son) trailing after him, who had been alerted to the intruder’s presence seconds earlier.  The Pirate brusquely invited the stranger to leave and eventually he did, taking his egress via the kitchen window.   The robber liberated a number of bank notes from the premises, which the Pirate can ill afford to lose.    

On climbing into the Pirate’s apocalyptical kitchen the thief must have thought that he had happened upon a scene of biblical disaster and I am astonished that he delved deeper into the Pirate’s and Ung Pirat’s living quarters thereafter.  Entering the window of the disarranged kitchen the robber must have felt like he was in a scene from The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe and the fact that he didn’t do a U-turn and that he proceeded to explore where angels fear to tread means that he doesn’t have a faint heart, indeed if he has a heart at all being a callous, cold blooded thief. It is a shame Chilli Willy was not present in the pub at the time of the intrusion as given he has the look and size of the fictional mafia henchman Luca Brasi he could have made the burglar sleep with the fishes or even worse sleep with the dishes (in the Pirate’s festering sink.)   If there is any justice in this world hopefully the crook will catch an exotic disease from one of the many hitherto undiscovered bacteria that lounge in the Pirate’s kitchen sink, the sight of which would give Nanette Newman a coronary.

Unlike the Pirate’s allegedly disarrayed kitchen the counterpart at the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeaway must be spotlessly clean given that it has to meet the standards laid down by the local authority, or so one would like to think.   Not wanting to have a game of hunt the meat in my beef fried rice and curry sauce last week I asked the Baby Faced Assassin if he could put in a request to the chef, Mr Ping, to furnish the dish with extra beef for which I offered to pay an additional sum but the grinning Assassin informed me, “for you, no extra charge.”  For once I felt the warm glow of customer satisfaction in the establishment but all that occurred in reality is that enough extra meat was added to the meal to bring it up to the industry standard but I was hoodwinking into thinking I got something for nothing.  It just goes to show that us consumers are easily pleased which makes me wonder why businesses often make such a calamitous hash of things. 

Hopefully calamity won’t be the order of the day on Thursday when I will find myself in the dubious company of the Pirate, Harry Stottle, Fudgkins and Windy McDisco on what will appear to be a geriatric’s trip to Derby Winter Beer Festival.  Not satisfied with leading me astray on the Sabbath Aldente McCheffrey is also making an appearance, which will bring the average age down a few notches.  I always think that the word “festival” is a bit too grand to what amounts to a load of middle aged and elderly men in a hall supping ale – it’s hardly the Rio Street Carnival.  I very much enjoy going to beer festivals but I have the good fortunate of being able to taste a multitude of fine beers all year round, served from the numerous hand pulls in the Pirate’s Pleasure Palace being the congenial Flagon & Gorses.   

After my spell of drinking only halves in the Flagon I now find that when I order a full pint that subconsciously it feels like a sinful, shameful act, even though I am not a Catholic.  It is almost as if I am telling myself that I am asking for twice as much beer as I need, like it is an admittance that I am not a moderate drinker after all (not that anyone has accused me of being that.)  But the benefit of the situation is that I fully appreciate each fulsome pint after denying myself such an indulgence for months, so it feels like a guilty pleasure.  Such was the case when my long time crony Still-in-Fjord reverted back to carnivorous habits after being a vegetarian for many years; he now relishes and enjoys the consumption of meat every time he scoffs it.  

If I was a Catholic I suppose I could partake in the denials of Lent and revert back to half pints for the duration of the religious observance period but six weeks is a long time and given the financial hardships described above the Pirate needs the pennies in his coffers.   One thing is for sure, when I am in a position to buy Pat #3 I will fully welcome the convenience of driving again after getting a few soakings in the recent wet weather traipsing to and from the train station.  I do enjoy walking though and as long as it is dry, an half an hour ramble provides a wholesome and invigorating start to the day.   The only thing with all this walking is that I get a terrible thirst on, so that being the case, barman, mine is most definitely a pint.  

© Dominic Horton, February 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

Lowlife 57 - Somewhere over the Rainbow

Somewhere over the Rainbow

By Dominic Horton

Based on the recent content of this column, on Sunday Chompa Babbee accused me or suffering from Season Affective Disorder (known as SAD).  Chompa has known me long enough to realise that I am a miserable soul all year round and not just in the dark and gloomy winter months.    In fact as a season winter is second only to autumn as my favourite with summer being the bottom of my list; I’m generally not one for sunshine and the heat and this year will be even worse as since I recently started to suffer from mildgraines my weary eyes seem to have developed an aversion to bright lights and glaring sunshine.   Recently though I have a longing feeling that I want to go to sleep.  I do not mean that I want to end my life but just get a bit of restful, peaceful sleep.  I have plenty of chance to sleep, and I am more fortunate than most in that regard but try as I may I never feel properly rested.  So maybe Chompa is onto something after all and that I subconsciously want to hibernate to see out the cold, dark winter.  If I could hibernate in the Flagon & Gorses it might not altogether be a bad thing especially as mostly that’s where my nuts tend to be anyway.

Poor old Willy Mantitt has two small children who like tag wrestlers take it in turn to keep him awake every evening and as a consequence he gets about as much shut eye as a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay being tortured by sleep deprivation.   I simply do not know how Willy copes or others in his position.  He has taken to nipping out of the office on the rouse of doing some business (which is usually shady in his world) and having a nap in his motor on ASDA car park. 

I had to coax myself out of a deep sleep on Monday morning which was the product of the tonic or two that I was administered at the Flagon & Gorses the preceding day.   I must have looked a pitiful sight sitting in my living room eating my unappetising breakfast, contemplating the week ahead.  Life outside of my Codger Mansions home seemed harsh, noisy and foreboding, with traffic clattering and banging at great speed up and down Furnace HIll.   I didn’t want to leave the quiet comfort of the house and step outside into the frosty, unwelcoming world.   But of course it had to be done as work beckoned and besides the living room still smells of the fetid odour from last week’s electrical fire, despite all my efforts to freshen things up.   I will have to invite Windy McDisco and the Pirate round to shift the smell by imparting their own special aromas.  It is debatable which stench is worse.

I could try to make work un-beckon itself as together with everyone else in the office I have been given the chance to apply for voluntary redundancy and it is a matter to which I have given a great deal of thought and procrastination.   There are many pros and cons but it was the thought of sitting with the Pirate all day in the Flagon & Gorses that finally sealed my decision.  I haven’t applied.  Having a few grand in my sky rocket with empty days stretched out before me like a Roman road will doubtless lead to my ruination and lead me swiftly to the gutter, at least I am headed there at a slow, steady crawl at the moment.   Anyway, there is no guarantee that my employers will accept my application to let me go, so vital am I to the structure of the large organisation, so important in fact that people barely know I am there half of the time; I am sure if I slipped out of the office quietly and retreated to the Flagon, no one would notice I had gone.  My name has never graced a structure chart and in the food chain of the company I am merely a krill, at the mercy of bigger fish.

Having a mundane existence employed as a small cog in the wheels of a big corporate business I have to take pleasure in life where I can get it.  However, according to the Guardian the government are having a new crackdown on legal highs but I hope this means that they are not going to ban Pat Debilder’s legendary pies, that have found their way to me recently, or the another warming and hearty treat in the form of Angel Brewery’s Pirate 63 stout.  It would be a bitter pill to swallow if the pies and stout are outlawed and my addiction to them would mean that I would have to go through a testing period of cold turkey, which would only be assuaged slightly by a drop of mild and a pork pie from the Flagon & Gorses.  

Mind you, I could do with steering clear of rich food stuffs as I felt a stirring of gout in the ball of my left foot on Tuesday and I had to flush it out by drinking copious amounts of water, which meant spending an increasing amount of time visiting the lavvy.  Talking of the karsi, I did something on the weekend that I have not done for quite a while, which is going for a poo but forgetting to do a wee, so having to pay a swift return visit to do the urination bit.  This only normally happens when I am in a state of desperation to do the No 2 and it is generally a rare occurrence.   Luckily this happened at home as it might be a source of embarrassment if the scene of the crime was a public lavatory.

On the subject of going down the pan my hitherto trusty (take away the letter “t” from trusty you end up with rusty, which is very fitting) and stoic motor vehicle Pat has seemingly reached the end of his days after failing his MOT this week in spectacular fashion.   When I took him in for his yearly inspection the mechanic was amazed that the dilapidated Pat had made it through another year and this little victory gave me the blind faith and deluded belief that he would pass the MOT after a few minor repairs.  But sadly it was not to be.   It is off to the knackers yard and I am crushed that Pat will be crushed.  He has served me well and he at least deserves a mournful Last Post to be played as he shuffles off his mortal ignition coil.  At least I know that he won’t have to suffer the indignities of being stripped for useful parts as he hasn’t got any.  Pat will defiantly meet his end whole without any of his bits being stripped for vehicular science. 

More than anything else MOT day acts as a crystallisation of a hand to mouth existence which involves constantly clinging onto the edge of a cliff with fingernails slowly slipping away from the precipice.  Somewhere over the rainbow I might have enough shekels in the war chest to not worry about the car going in for its MOT, but it is unlikely.  There does seem to be a lot of money around though for a lot of people though and I am not talking about those near the top of food chains but relatively ordinary persons.  These are people who must know how to play the game and how to win at it.  I do not know what the game is, let alone the rules and I doubt whether I would be cut out for it anyway.  The game I play is one of survival but it is not one that Ray Mears would be able to offer any advice on. 

The alternative to surviving is not an appealing one and I have no choice but to keep my head above water as I cannot swim.  Given the frequent downpours we have had recently I have had to wear armbands when walking through the yard area to the toilets at the Flagon & Gorses but at least the good chaps at the Environment Agency undertook work on the River Stour on Furnace Hill, so us residents have not had to drive through floods at the bottom of the slope this year with a Stour taste in our mouths.  I would love to drive through that flood water one more time with Pat, gleefully rolling through the water together, but is not to be. I have little alternative but to undertake another favourite pastime instead, which is decamping to the Flagon & Gorses to raise a glass in memory of Pat and to cook up a scheme to acquire another cheap, antiquated motor so I can travel freely around the parish once more.

© Dominic Horton, February 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com 

Lowlife 56 – Pies, Pints & Power Cuts

Pies, Pints & Power Cuts

By Dominic Horton

They say you should never tempt fate but this is exactly what I must have done by writing about power cuts a couple of weeks ago as I was afflicted by one first thing on Monday.   The morning of the first day of the working week is usually a sombre time as it is but losing power while I was in the shower (a powerless shower) took proceedings to a whole new level of anguish. 

The lights started flickering on and off when I was showering making it like a scene from the classic thriller Psycho but given my aching back I would rather have been playing the part of a patient in the unreleased and little known Hitchcock film Physio.  Fortunately the stab in the back was only metaphorical in the form of the power cut.   True to form the shower and the lights went off just as I had lathered up the shampoo in my hair meaning that I had to wash it off in the dark with freezing water in the bath, which was a rude awakening and it certainly blew the cob webs away.

I dashed into the living room only to find it full of an acrid smelling smoke with a burning smell emanating from the fuse box.  I immediately called my long-time associate Harry Gout as he knows a thing or two about electrics and he’s generally a man for a crisis.  Being the good egg that he is Gout pitched up pronto style.  After poking around in the cupboard that houses the meter and fuse box Gout swiftly arrived at his concise and damning verdict: “It’s f*cked, you had better call an electrician.”  The electrician turned up briskly and looked at the meter and advised, “It’s f*cked, you had better call Npower.”

Ahhh, my dear friends at Npower.  The matter, I thought, is now in the lap of the gods.  I had such difficulty in getting through to speak to an actual human being at Npower (or their equivalent) that anyone would have thought that I was trying to speak to the Queen at Buck House.  Eventually I got through to Ashley at Npower and she explained in her attractive Scottish accent that an electrician would be out to see me within the next three to four hours.  Realising that this would mean that I would be confined to my cold and powerless barracks I asked Ashley if she would kindly ask the electrician to call me when he was fifteen minutes away from my Codger Mansions dwelling so I could pop up the Flagon & Gorses whilst waiting.  Ashley joylessly explained that this would not be possible so I had to sweat it out in the house, which was very difficult given that it was freezing as I had no heating.

Having just read an article by the ever thoughtful and insightful Will Hutton in the Observer about the forthcoming Scottish independence referendum I asked Ashley how she would vote.  “I haven’t thought about it,” she explained.  It seems that Npower employees are not encouraged to think.

Undeterred by the crisis and my cold and dark home I put my dressing gown on over my clothes, like Halesowen’s version of playboy Hugh Hefner. It is doubtful though that Hefner wore two pairs of socks under his slippers and a Marks & Spencers thermal under vest, on account of them being sure fire passion killers.

I thought about putting a notice on Facebook via my mobile telephone to ask if any local ladies would be game enough to pop round and warm me up a bit but I thought better of it as knowing my luck one would misunderstand my intentions and turn up with a steaming plate of stew.

There was no sign of the Npower electrician come lunchtime so there was only one thing for it and I dug out my trusty Coleman Duel Fuel camping stove from the back of the cupboard and used the last sachet of beef and tomato cuppa soup, which I had been saving for a special occasion.  The soup starter was followed by a main of Super Noodles which fell sadly short of living up to their name.

By the time the Npower man arrived in the late afternoon I was chilled and demoralised and I had been too benumbed by cold to read even, so I had resorted to listening to my battery operated radio.   “You are lucky, the house could have easily burnt down” commented the man.  Once he had finished his business, which only took twenty minutes or so, I decided that it was my duty to drink to the fact that Codger Mansions is still standing and that I am still alive, so it was off up the Flagon & Gorses to see the Pirate & Harry Stottle, who were both comfortably dug in by the time I reported for duty.

As I was in a round of drinks with the over ripe duo of the Pirate and Stottle I thought it would simplify matters if I abandoned my usual half pint approach in favour of fulsome pints, which could be a dangerous road for me to go down if it becomes the norm again.  I need to develop a strategic drinking management policy for the immediate future as if I don’t have a structured and meticulous alcohol plan all hell could be let loose.  The only problem with half pints is that the perfect synchronisation between a beer pump and pint glass cannot be matched by its half measure counterpart.  I need to develop the policy and ensure that it complies with the constraints of the department’s limited monetary budget whilst maximising effectiveness and long term impact.  I’ll run the white paper past myself when the content of my in tray reduces a little.  

Reflecting on my half pint drink reduction plan, that I began a few months ago now, I feel that it has been a resounding success, without actually having any evidence to back this up and it could be the case that I am simply looking at the matter through rose tinted beer goggles.   The Abdul shed light on the matter on New Year’s Eve when he commented that I had drunk three halves in the time it had took him to sup his pint.   I rebuffed the Abdul’s comment on the basis that he probably drank his pint slowly simply to make his point and that it was New Year’s Eve after all and I was most probably drinking uncharacteristically at pace.   I need to collect hard data so I will have to mark the amount of drinks that I have on a beer mat but the only problem with this is once I have had a few I will forget to do it.  There are lies, damn lies and statistics and then there are figures that are collected when p*ssed that mostly prove to be unintelligible and always wholly unreliable.

Another thing that I need to be wary of in the Flagon & Gorses is pies. Pat Debilder has been supplying me with a steady supply of his homemade, world class pies and I have naïvely been accepting them gratis and gorging myself on them with such satisfaction that shortly after each hit I am left craving for more.  I now have the dawning realisation that Debilder has been employing the classic pie peddler’s tactic of handing out his delicious wares for free until the helpless victim becomes hopelessly addicted and thereafter the unscrupulous Debilder starts to charge exorbitant prices for the pies.  I have gullibly fallen into Pat’s trap and I will be injecting liquidised steak and kidney before I know it.   I have been powerless in my home this week, now I am powerless to the lure of pies.

I am delighted and relieved to report that my temporarily absent phantasm, who inhabits my regular, recurring nightmares, returned this week and I think it was the promise of one of Debilder’s pies that tempted him back.    The phantasm dramatically announced his restoration to Codger Mansions by scaring me sh*tless in my sleep before customarily drifting off into the night when I awoke screaming.  Once I had calmed myself down and brought myself back to reality I began to heartily chuckle at the unexpected and unannounced reappearance of my old demonic friend.  He’s pretty harmless really, he pops round in the dead of night, gives me a little fright and he quietly slips off again on his way.   In an odd way the phantasm gives me comfort that someone (or something more like) is there in the night, he is a familiar reassuring presence in a similar way to the ever present landlord, the Pirate, at the Flagon & Gorses and to mark the return of the ghoul it is time to join the Pirate for a celebratory pint.  Or half.

© Dominic Horton, February 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

Lowlife 55 – The Phantasm & Mr Fox

The Phantasm & Mr Fox

By Dominic Horton

In the last edition of this column I wrote about my incompetence regarding romantic relationships and my general apathy towards them, which has consequently left me in a state of tolerable solitude.  Things have taken a turn for the worse this week as even the phantasm that regularly used to visit me in a recurring nightmare has abandoned me without so much as leaving a Dear John letter.  I do not know what I have done to upset my old friend the phantasm but he has not invaded my dreams this calendar year after stopping by at least once a week for the last few decades.   Instead of inducing nightmares maybe the pre-Christmas cheese night in the Flagon & Gorses acted as an antidote resultantly chasing the phantasm out of the windmills of my mind.   Whatever the reason, he’s gone and by the looks of it he’s not coming back.  This leaves just me and my long suffering teddy Alfie in Codger Mansions in addition to my friends the woodlice and spiders. 

Come to think of it the Furnace Lane foxes have not crossed my path for a while so it looks like they have deserted me also and foxed off back to their burrows.   I used to see a fox and occasionally a badger on Furnace Lane pretty much every Sunday night on the way back from the Flagon & Gorses and not being able to fund a trip to the Serengeti it was the closest I have ever got to being on safari.  I have an affinity with foxes with them being creatures of the night and I find the sight of one quite a magical experience which I always find uplifting.  One Sunday in the summertime a fox stood motionless on Furnace Lane in the moonlight looking suspiciously at me and I carefully edged my way towards the wary beast and to my surprise I got within yards of the fox with him remaining still, his gaze resting on me.  For what was no more than a couple of seconds the fox and I stood there, him looking at me and me returning his stare until suddenly he bolted and fled off into the night.  It was quite simply a mesmerising moment, one I will cherish forever.

I will need the cunning of a fox to get through the next couple of months with my war chest being empty, especially with Pat’s MOT being due soon, which fills me with fear due to his decrepit condition.  The problem with working as an underling in banking is that it is like the line in Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink, water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink” as the industry is awash with money, both in terms of the cash flowing through the institution and the bonuses and salaries of my superiors, but none of it is mine.  I can look but I can’t touch.  It was heartening though to read about the sacking of rich Singapore based banker Anton Casey who put the following message on Facebook after he had to suffer the indignities of public transport when his Porsche was in the garage, "Ahhhh reunited with my baby. Normal service can resume, once I have washed the stench of public transport off me."  He also put a picture of his son on the train on Facebook with the following caption: "Daddy, where is your car and who are all these poor people?"  Tw*t.  In my book arrogance is a vulgar characteristic and I am glad that in this instance the demeaning Casey got his rightful comeuppance.

One banker who has had a better week than Casey is Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and Chief Executive of JP Morgan, who has found out that he will be remunerated to the tune of $20m for last year’s work.   I doubt whether Dimon will be trying to fashion a soup out of the contents of his sparsely populated fridge, which is what I will be doing this evening.   The fridge contains sprouts and bacon so it could be a new culinary low in Codger Mansions.  That said sometimes such concoctions exceed all expectations and turn out to be an award winning dish.  If you start out with a base of onion, celery and carrot (which I usually have knocking about) with a soup, in my experience you can’t go far wrong and there have been more high points than low in my kitchen.    Last night the Pirate and Ung Pirat were describing the state of their kitchen in the Flagon & Gorses living quarters, which is apparently piled high with washing up and the like and I said, “that sounds horrendous” and the Pirate retorted, “I would be happy if the kitchen was just horrendous, it is much worse than that.” 

Sprouts are the favourite food stuff of the Abdul, a dear crony from the Flagon & Gorses.   On the weekend I heard the dreadful news from Frank Henstein in the Flagon that the Abdul has had a stroke whilst holidaying in Goa, India, a favoured haunt of his.   The poor Abdul has been looking forward to the trip after having an annus horribilis last year.  Luckily one of his travelling companions is a nurse and she realised what was happening straight away and got him to the hospital pronto.  The doctors are hopeful that Abdul will make a full recovery and he should return to these shores shortly.   Despite concern for Abdul being at the forefront of the thoughts of all Flagoners inevitably such news leads to ponderings on one’s mortality and it made me feel fortunate to have my own physical health.   As the Scottish coach John McSeveney used to say with great zeal and vigour to my old footballing pal Fred E Mercury and unenthusiastic players at Sheffield United on cold and wet mornings at the training ground in the 1970’s, “aye, it’s good to be alive!”

I felt less than alive on Monday morning as despite not being in too bad a condition, and having had a relatively early night the day before, the booze terrors were working their evil.  I had the odd sensation when I walked into work that I was in a place that I wasn’t meant to be, like sitting unwelcome in a stranger’s front room with all the family staring at me asking themselves, “who on Earth is that man and what is he doing here?”  The booze terrors have no bounds in how distinctly uncomfortable they can make a person feel and once you are afflicted by the condition there is no escape without being treated with more alcohol and occasionally even that does not work.  You have to take the terror demons on the chin and laugh in their face but you know that they will laugh back at you with a wrathful, devilish cackle. 

One organisation who is effectively laughing in my face is Npower (NincompoopPower) as they have offered me a paltry £75 as a “goodwill gesture” for illegally breaking into my Codger Mansions home in order to inspect the gas meter.   To make things worse like a stubborn schoolboy in a playground argument NincompoopPower are refusing to accept they are in the wrong despite damning, irrefutable evidence that I have presented to them to show that I made every effort to arrange appointments to allow access to the property.    I have dismissed NincompoopPower’s unreasonable offer out of hand and made them a counter offer but they have failed to reply so now it is off to the Ombudsman.  I wouldn’t mind but like everyone else I have to pay a fortune for my power, with bills spiralling out of control in the last few years.  The BBC reported last week that Poor NincompoopPower claimed in a recent report they make little profit and that higher energy distribution costs will lead to further price rises but the energy regulator Ofgem has deemed the report, “misleading” as the figures quoted in the report were wrong.  Naughty NincompoopPower. 

Next up, according to the Telegraph the Chief Executive of NincompoopPower Paul Massara claims that energy prices are higher in the UK due to the country’s “old and draughty” houses.  I live in the same old and draughty house that I was in five years ago yet in that time my combined gas and electricity bill has increased by a whopping 33% despite my usage not increasing.   I can take an educated guess that Massara does not live in a cold and draughty house and have to heat his living room with a cheap halogen heater from Wilkos.

Talking of cold and draughty, having again populated this column with a disjointed collection of words I am off up the Flagon & Gorses for a well-earned tipple.  The adjectives cold and draughty are not in relation to the pub itself but in reference to the landlord, my comrade the Pirate, bless the bearded skipper and all who sail in him.

© Dominic Horton, January 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

Lowlife 54 - A Lone Ranger

A Lone Ranger

By Dominic Horton

Following my latest romantic calamity I am slowly coming around to the creeping realisation that being on my own is actually my natural modus operandi.  Burdening a potential partner with my habits, quirks and shortcomings (of which there are many) would be an unfair imposition on someone that I liked and if I didn’t like them then there would be no point in being with them in the first place.   Fundamentally I am a creature that prefers to lurk alone in Codger Mansions and in the bar of the Flagon & Gorses, fraternising with the other inmates who loiter there. 

There are of course pros and cons to being on one’s own.  I can stumble up the Flagon & Gorses when I want to (finances permitting) and I do not have to sit through anything on television that is not to my taste such as Coronation Street, a snippet of which I recently had to suffer at someone’s house and I was horrified at how truly awful it was.  Complete and utter dross.  The acting of one of the cast (who has been on the show for many years but I do not know his name or character’s name [he is Mancunian but I know that is hardly much of a clue]) was shallower than the shallow end in a flea’s swimming pool.   

The main drawback of solo living is usually perceived to be loneliness and in my case there is an element of that but I think I would still feel lonely, or more accurately desolate, if I lived with a woman, even if I was head over heels in love with the poor soul, so that in itself is no reason for me to seek a companion.  “Sharing” things seems to be one of the main reasons why people like to be in a relationship but I can easily share the miseries of life with my fellow internees at the Flagon & Gorses any day of the week.  To my mind the biggest disbenefit of living alone is a fiscal one as I have to pay the rent and the bills with only my insubstantial income.  Like most things in life it usually boils down to pounds, shillings and pence in the end. 

The inimitable Colly Coren explained to me a few years ago that he is so set in his ways and used to his own routines that he would find it almost impossible to live with a woman and he then enlightened me with the comment that at our ages (he’s 10 years older than me the cheeky b*stard) men are only seeking women for companionship as reasonably, procreation is out of the question.  Fair enough I thought.  But then he condemned me by saying that I am as crotchety, stubborn and inflexible as him and would not last five minutes living with a woman.  I immediately disputed Coren’s assessment of me but on reflection later I realised that he was actually on the money.  It is a case of others knowing you better than you know yourself.    One of the reasons why periodically I have tenuously tried to find a suitable partner is that subconsciously I want prove Coren wrong but his wisdoms have won the day. 

Often society views living alone as not a natural state but people are increasingly doing it.  CBS reported that 17% of Americans lived alone in 1970 but by 2012 the figure had increased to 27%.   In Britain it is reported that 34% of people currently live alone.   There often seems to be an assumption that people would rather not live on their own and that all singletons are relentlessly pursuing potential partners like Captain Ahab obsessively hunting his nemesis, the great white whale, in Moby Dick.  We all know what grisly fate befell Ahab after he ignored Starbuck’s voice of reason to cease his chase for the whale.  My voice of reason tells me that my status quo of living in a solitary fashion is the way it is meant to be for me.    Anyway, a dim view is taken of whaling in this day and age so my harpoon sits idle in the shed acting only as a reminder of former glories.

One thing is for sure I can ill afford to have a girlfriend at the moment at the pennies are few and the creditors many.   (Incidentally, “Girlfriend” and “boyfriend” seem awkward words to apply to people in their 40’s or older and if I had a “partner” it would make it sound like we ran a window cleaning business together.)   Although I know full well that I am over my overdraft limit (which was inevitable after Christmas) the Bank keep sending me letters to remind me of the fact just to rub my nose in it which doesn’t put me in the best of moods, especially as it brings to the forefront of my consciousness that all I have managed to muster for myself in life is a hand to mouth existence that constantly teeters perilously on the brink of oblivion, both in a financial and emotional sense, like the van balanced on the cliff at the end of The Italian Job – maybe that image should be printed on the front of the envelopes of the bank’s letters to me to indicate their content so that I could throw them away without even having to open them.

The charity Shelter recently reported that as many as one in nine people put unopened bills straight in the bin unable to face up to their financial predicament.   There are an awful lot of people in the country worse of that me in these difficult times as the Shelter report stated that last year approximately a fifth of the adult population of the country had to borrow money to pay their rent or mortgage.   The Mexican at work questioned why there has been no revolution given the state of the country and we agreed that a revolution might not be a bad idea to shake things up.  But we thought we would have a cup of tea before we hatched plans to storm parliament. It would have to wait until later as we had more pressing matters to attend to such as discussing the weekend’s football results, which was a shame as I can just envisage after the revolution Mex triumphantly parading around Trafalgar Square on a horse like Pancho Villa.

If I could earn a few quid from this writing lark it might ease the pecuniary pressure but I am not holding my breath for any success.  Apparently the successful Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid, whose last book is entitled How to Get Rich in Rising Asia, divides his time between  Lahore, New York, London, and Mediterranean countries including Italy and Greece.  Being a penniless writer of significantly less talent and resource than Hamid I divide my time between my Codger Mansions bolt hole and my retreat of choice the Flagon & Gorses.  The Flagon is not a tax haven but more like a haven from a taxing life.

A safe haven for everyone is the toilet but I have been having increasing difficulties in the karsi this week as the toilet seat, which has been broken for some time, has taken a turn for the worse and is in a terminal condition.   I will have to wait until payday to buy a new seat so in the meantime visits to the toilet for a number two are fraught with danger.   Mind you things are not as bad as a few years ago when there was a crack down the front of the toilet seat, which didn’t cause much of a problem until one day when I unwittingly got my foreskin caught in it, which needless to say was not pleasant and it bought tears to my eyes.

The sight that greeted me Tuesday last in the Flagon & Gorses also bought tears to my eyes but fortunately on that occasion they were tears of laughter.   The Pirate and Harry Stottle were muddling through the crossword but given that they had been indulging in a bit of overage drinking for the preceding few hours the whole thing was a farcical fiasco.   The pair were making such a hash of the crossword that yours truly had to step in and provide a couple of answers and I am generally as bad at word puzzles as the Pirate is at running the marathon. 

But in fairness to the Pirate and Stottle despite their tipsiness and advancing years they got there in the end and completed the crossword, in a fashion.   We get by in life by managing such little achievements and I have just about achieved writing another 1,500 words of nonsense for this edition, so until next time adios amigos.

© Dominic Horton, 2014.

Email: lordhofr@gmail.com