Lowlife 66 – The Leader of the Gong

The Leader of the Gong

By Dominic Horton

Following my second round of mild-graines a few weeks ago my health has far from been fully restored to such a degree that I have been in bed by 2100 hours many evenings and I have also avoided the Flagon & Gorses for a whole week as I thought I would go dry to see if it made any difference; it has not so I think I can rule out booze as a cause of my ailments (meaning they are not ale-ments.)  So it was back off to the quacks to see what he could do for me.   Being burdened with a chivalrous nature I offered my seat up in the packed waiting room to three women all of whom refused my offer; none of them struck me as being offended feminists so they all must have been thinking, “I’d rather endure standing up than put my aris anyplace that you have been.” 

Like my Dentist Mr Shulman, Dr Mangolatta is a young man of Asian descent and, also like Shulman, he also arrived at work a minute before he was due to start, unshaven and a little slovenly.  But Mangolatta inspires confidence in the same way that Shulman does, with his contemporary medical knowledge and easy manner and I have complete faith in him and given that my eyes passed their recent test with flying colours it is not blind faith either. 

 

Derek Wilton

Mangolatta explained that my blood tests revealed that all my major organs seem to be in decent fettle and I have no obvious illness to explain my symptoms, so he opined that my malaise is most probably down to post-viral fatigue.  When doctors have no idea what is up with you they diagnose a virus and when you have had a virus but you are still ill they state that it is post-viral fatigue; they must learn this trick in week one of their medical training and it sticks with them throughout their careers.  Mangolatta also said that I have an ear infection so prescribed some antibiotics.  At the pharmacy I was shocked to find that the price of a prescription has penetrated the £8 barrier (oddly the price has been set at £8.05) so before we know it you will get no change out of a tenner.  It will be cheaper to buy a bottle of vodka than pay for a prescription so it will be like the days of Soviet Russia when in the absence of any proper medication doctors would prescribe Vodka for all illnesses, even those that were caused by the excessive consumption of the spirit in the first place.

So I was hoping that the gong bath that I attended last Friday (on the kind invitation of Greenetta Redhead) would cure my unwelcome ills.   For the uninitiated (as I was prior to Friday) a gong bath involves someone banging Oriental gongs for an hour or so, while you lie motionless on the floor with your eyes closed, following which the gongmaster fleeces you out of a tenner.  Despite the gong bath not being a usual Lowlife activity I was keeping my mind open about it and I was looking forward to the evening.   My only prior experience of gonging was when I was a child, staying over at St Helier guest house in Llandudno with my grandparents and my brother when the landlady, Betty, would bang a gong to signify to the guests that breakfast or dinner was about to be served, so I didn’t know quite what to expect at the gong bath.

The gongmaster, Phil the Gong, is a Derek Wilton look-alike and wore a Chinese style white ice-cream man’s jacket but I refrained from quipping “two choc ices please”, as it didn’t seem appropriate in the circumstances.  After my introduction to Phil was complete, I lay down on my roll mat, in unison with all of the other gongees, ready for action, or inaction more like.   Before he started the gonging Phil the G said “let us say 'ohm' three times”, which was fitting as being very nervous that is exactly where I wanted to go (I realise that this weak gag only works here in the Black Country.)   Then I closed my eyes and the gonging started and I have to say it sounded unbelievably enchanting, the sound seemed to envelop me and reach to every part of my body and soul.  After a few seconds I opened my eyes to make sure Phil was actually banging the gongs personally as I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t playing a BBC soundtrack whilst sitting in a chair swigging on a can of Special Brew with his feet up, reading the Sporting Life, tab on.

The Acme Thunderer Whistle

Suddenly the gong music changed slightly and became dark and sombre and it reminded me of the spooky soundtrack in Apocalypse Now when Willard is sailing down the jungle River to find Kurtz and it put the wind up me a bit and gave me the woollies.  It didn’t help that shortly afterwards the old bloke lying not far from me nodded off and started snoring loudly, so it felt more like being in a hospital ward at night than a relaxing Eastern experience.  At least the snoring signified that the old fella was still alive, which was reassuring, as I am sure Phil the G wouldn’t have wanted to have a fatality on his hands.    Shortly after I was taken out of my mystical plain again and brought back to reality after I heard a rustling and it became clear than one of the brethren had broken rank and stood up, presumably to attend an impromptu call of nature.  You can always hold a wee in for a decent amount of time but if you need a Tom T*t and it becomes pressing then you have no choice but to go, so I had empathy with the gongee in question. 

Back to the gonging.  Some Percy Edwards style bird imitations were followed by Orca the Killer Whale and I was getting fully into the swing of things but then an odd but very calming thing happened.  As part of my on-going illness I have had flashing lights in front of my eyes, like the Aurora Borealis almost, but gradually under the influence of the gong the lights formed into slow moving decreasing circles (that Richard Briers would have been proud of) that gently floated across the inside of my closed eyelids.   I felt a sort of soothing bliss, a rapture; this feeling only lasted a second or two but it was an incredible sensation and it was almost miraculous given that I am a sufferer of anxiety disorder and generally more jumpy than a junkie who is walking through an eerie forest in the dead of night whilst going through cold turkey.

Before Phil the Gong set about his business he informed the gathering that the proceedings would be coming to an end when he started to play percussive instruments followed by the sound of the cymbals but when this eventually happened I was unsure as to whether things were at a close and I kept opening and closing my eyes to check.  To avoid doubt I think Phil would be better off signalling full time by the tried and trusted method of three sharp blasts on an Acme Thunderer whistle. 

Percy Edwards

Prior to leaving the building I approached Phil to thank him for the exceedingly enjoyable gong bath and he shaped up to hug me so I had to quickly thrust out a hand in panic for a handshake to ward off his proposed over familiar bodily contact.   I waved my tenner under Phil the G’s nose but he seemed most perturbed by this as if to say that he’s a Buddhist and money is of no consequence – he informed me that I had to drop the cash in a basket on the way out, which I suppose is his way of dissociating himself from the vulgarity of the monetary transaction.

To reflect on my gong based experience I retreated to the Flagon & Gorses to partake in what are more familiar Lowlife relaxation techniques.   After an hour or so, while I was propping up the bar with Richie Ramone, to my surprise in strolled Phil the Gong himself and ordered a pint of Bathams Best Bitter.   It was a case of East meets West Midlands.   I suppose being a gongmaster is thirsty work and no one could argue that Phil the G had earned his refreshment.  Phil said hello to me and I felt a lot more at ease, being in my natural habitat. 

There was only one way to finish off this most Oriental of evenings so after the Flagon I scraped into the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeaway just before closing time.    Instead of my usual I ordered schezwan beef and fried rice and the Baby Faced Assassin seemed so thrown by this that for the first time in my memory his perma-grin fell from his face and he seemed somewhat distressed.  This was probably due to the fact that he wasn’t looking forward to asking the chef Mr Ping to knock up the dish with only seconds left before close of play.    I was going to tell the Assassin about the gong bath but I thought better of it as if he attends the next session and subsequently gives someone food poisoning he might be arrested for gong related crimes.  And we don’t want that now do we. 

© Dominic Horton, April 2014.

(See http://www.philresound.co.uk/index.htm if you are interested in information on the gong bath.)

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

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