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

Lowlife 53 – Waiting for Something to Happen

Waiting for Something to Happen

By Dominic Horton

I found myself having a Mini Cheddar crisis on Monday morning as there was none to be seen in the vending machine on our floor of the office.  The Cheddars were an absolute necessity to ease the slight biliousness caused by Sunday’s drinking and the sorry offering from the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeaway; the chef Mr Ping graced the dish with so little meat that it could have almost as qualified as vegetarian.  Ping must think that he is the kindly butcher Mr Jones from Dad’s Army rationing his meat in such a way but it was more a case of “I’ve been done” that Clive Dunn.   I might be taking my life in my own hands buying supper from the Peking as the BBC reported this week that despite last year’s horse meat scandal there has been a worrying lack of food standards inspections with some restaurants and takeaways not having been inspected for over a year.   I doubt that Ping’s kitchen has got cockroaches though as any discerning bug would give the place a wide berth which means that I am lower than an insect in the order of things.

In search of Cheddars I scaled the stairs at work to the floor above and I was relieved to find that there were some in the vending machine with the yellow wrapper shining like a warm and welcoming sun.  But to my horror I found the machine to be out of order, which was, well, out of order.   I trudged Cheddarless and despondent back to my desk to assess my options, which were few. 

I told my work colleague the Mexican my tale of Cheddar woe and being a reader of these pages he immediately asked me, accusingly, if I was hung over.   “Hung over” was a far too severe and damning word to describe my state so I answered in the negative but it does beg the question what constitutes being hung over and for that matter when can one be said to be drunk. These deep philosophical questions demand much difficult theorising at the best of times but even more so on a Monday morning when one is despondent about the working week ahead and the senses are dulled through Sabbath supping.

There are times though when you can say to yourself without reservation that you are without doubt hung over and if you have to carry out any trying tasks in such a condition it can be challenging.  At such times I console myself with the thought that at least I have not got to go in a skydiving simulator, as did my brother the Codger in his drinking days when he was in woeful post-booze condition.  It would be harrowing enough being in the skydiving machine in such a state but the misery would be doubled if you were sick as presumably the sick would splash back into your face.

I would venture that one person who was in a hung over state on Sunday morning was the Pirate, the inimitable landlord of the Flagon & Gorses, as it was his birthday party on Saturday night to celebrate the start of his 64^th year on this planet.   To compound matters the Pirate had to work behind the bar from Noon until 1900 hours as for some reason Lario Manza was in absentia and this was especially painful for the Pirate as I was sitting the right side of the bar quaffing the sumptuous Pirate 63 stout (brewed by the Angel Brewery to compensate humankind for having to put up with the Pirate for 63 years), which was sitting a little awkwardly in my stomach on top of the pilchards on toast that I had for lunch. 

The enchanting Penelope Keith recently revealed on BBC Radio Five Live that she had to eat pilchards on toast for Christmas Dinner after suffering a power cut on the day.  Being a child of the 70’s I would like to think that I am not fazed by a power cut and when one happens I can manage and improvise as needed.   I haven’t had a power cut in Codger Mansions for a few years but the last one literally drove me to drink.  It was a Monday and I had made a solemn promise to myself that I would not go up the Flagon & Gorses due to on-going funding difficulties and I was unflinchingly determined in my resolve.  Within an hour of being back in the house the power went off but I was undeterred and made myself a sandwich for tea by the light of a torch and I decided to retire to bed with a good book and a candle.  Within minutes a deafening drilling noise started to sound right outside the house which shook the Mansions to its core.   Needless to say I couldn’t concentrate on the book and sleep was completely out of the question.  I popped outside in my dressing gown to talk to the workman to ask how long the drilling of the pavement was likely to go on for to which he answered, “At least until after midnight mate.”   I was left with little option but to get dressed and seek sanctuary in the Flagon and have a drink or two.  It was a genuine Hamlet moment and not the first time that I have ended up in the pub drinking through no fault of my own.

The pub called Tuesday last and I dutifully answered to its enticing cry.  I found Windy McDisco blowing a putrid anal gale, true to form, that would have earned him a at least a silver medal if trumping was a discipline in the Commonwealth Games.   Fortunately the Pirate did not enter into competition with him and I was mightily relieved that Windy and the Pirate refrained from duelling banjos on this occasion.  Anyway, to join into the spirit of things I explained that earlier in the day I had done the gentlemanly thing and f*rted before I had got into the lift at work so as not to offend the nostrils on the other occupants of the elevator.  However, to my dismay like a loyal dog the f*rt followed me into the lift.  The Pirate, who was on form for once, quipped, “that was wrong on many levels.” 

The Pirate must have finally found his funny bone as he came out with more drollery shortly after; I bought a round of drinks but left the Pirate’s in the pump as he had not finished his pint.  When the Pirate was strolling to the toilet Chilli Willy behind the bar in reference to Bob’s pint said in all innocence, “do you want me to pull it for you?”  Looking down at his private parts the Pirate retorted, “No, I will pull my own thank you.”

Despite the Pirate trying to ruin things by having his birthday party the normal hum drum quietude of the Flagon has more or less been restored following the frightful Christmas and New Year period and that is fine by me.  It is now back to being a case of “We all sat round or lounged at the bar waiting for something to happen” as Christopher Isherwood put it in reference to his regular watering hole in the book Goodbye to Berlin.  The peace needs to be shattered occasionally though by an influx of customers to keep the Flagon machinery rolling so it is highly disconcerting that the dry January disease has reached epidemic proportions and sufferers are upholding their sobriety like a badge of honour.  If you are suffering from this affliction the Pirate has many remedies that can cure you and they are a damn sight cheaper than a prescription.  

There is bound to be an example of a dry January saint arriving at his local on 1^st February for a pint only to find it shut down with the doleful landlord explaining, “We have had to shut down as trade was so poor in January all because of w*nkers like you.  Thanks a million.”   I am the first to admit that drinking, its culture and its people are far from glamorous and in fact the whole business is often not far short of the exact opposite and I encourage no one to drink more or for teetotallers to take up booze.  But a mass boycott of public houses in the New Year at the time landlords need customers most is at best thoughtless and at worst disdainfully selfish.   So if you are suffering from dry January disease, or you feel it coming on, do yourself and your landlord a favour and take some suitable medicine.  After all, even the thought of sobriety seems better after a pint.

© Dominic Horton, January 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

Lowlife 52 – Drink and be Merry and Have a Dry Sherry

Drink and be Merry and Have a Dry Sherry

By Dominic Horton

On Monday the Daily Mail reported that according to a study conducted by the drinks company Upbeat the day was “Blue Monday”, reputedly the glummest day of the year, with the Christmas merrymaking being at an end the populous is wallowing in a deep pit of despair having to face once more the reality of life, which was temporarily suspended over the festive period.    In such circumstances reading the Daily Mail is ill advised as it could push one over the edge.   Apparently on Blue Monday the British compulsion of complaining about the weather peaks and the divorce rate soars, with twice as many people petitioning for divorce in the month of January than in the second most popular month of September. 

I would imagine that disgruntled spouses intending to get rid of their other halves leave it until after Christmas in order to profit from cunning gift tactics; that is, knowing that they are going to end the marriage in the new year the discontented party cynically buys their spouse a cheap second hand Showaddywaddy CD knowing full well that they are going to receive in return the complete box set of The World at War, the latest edition of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack and a 92 piece set of socket spanners.   Once the gift booty is in the bag it is a case of thank you and good night.

One person who was not suffering a Blue Monday was the multi-millionaire businessman and art dealer Charles Saatchi who consoled himself over his split with TV culinarian Nigella Lawson by swanning off on his £25m “love boat”, smoking fags whilst cavorting in the company of toff fashion designer Trinny Woodhall, made famous by her television show What Not to Wear; Saatchi should have no worries on that front as he always plays it safe by wearing a dark suit and a white shirt with a tab on the end of his lip.  Mind you, if his relationship with Woodhall goes the same way as his marriage to Lawson he might be wearing spicy beef with green peppers in black bean sauce if they have a bust up at the dinner table.

The New Orleans Rhythm and Blues legend Fats Domino immortalised the phrase “Blue Monday” in his song of the same title and latterly so did the pop band New Order, which reminds me of my brief encounter with New Order bass player Peter Hook, whose autobiography is called How Not to Run a Club, in reference to the financially ill feted Hacienda club in Manchester, which Hook part owned.  The Phantom, Ms C and I went to see Hook at an evening at the Glee Club in Birmingham where he was interviewed by the writer and former notorious drug runner Howard Marks.  At the end of an entertaining show we approached the affable Hook to say hello and to take our photographs with him.  When it was my turn to have my photo taken I handed the camera to the Phantom, a Grimbarian, who proceeded to have difficulties with it so Hook exclaimed, “Can’t you work a f*cking camera?!” only for the quick witted Phantom to devilishly reply, “Can’t you run a f*cking nightclub?!!!”  Grimsby 1 Manchester 0.

Devilish is not a word that will be associated with Christenings in the future as it has been reported this week that the Anglican church are to remove reference to the devil from their baptism services. Currently godparents are asked to “reject the devil.”   Debate has ensued as to perceptions of the devil and evil and as to whether the devil actually exists or if evil is just present is human behaviour.  I decided to look evil right in the eye on New Year’s day and it was off to the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeaway to face up to the Baby Faced Assassin and to sample his less than agreeable foodstuffs. 

I realised that as an opening New Year’s gambit it was no use denouncing the Assassin and Mr Ping so after visiting the Flagon & Gorses I decided it was best to get it over with and suffer one of their beef fried rice and curry sauces to prevent me from thinking that I could avoid their villainous lair this year.  The Assassin at least had the good grace to sugar coat the pill by providing me with complimentary spring rolls in a bag marked, “thank you for your custom” and so my return to the Peking after my Christmas break was thus sealed.   I was temporarily spooked out the following day when Ian Payne on BBC Radio Five Live Sport started the broadcast by announcing, “The Baby Faced Assassin is back!”  To my relief I realised that Payne was referring to the fresh faced Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who has just been appointed manager of Cardiff City FC. 

I could have satisfied my hunger on New Year’s Day with infinitely more nourishing and appetising fayre than the monosodium glutamate laden dish from the Peking as in the Flagon Pat Debilder donated to me two portions of meat and vegetable pie but the tucker was too precious to be hastily scoffed post-pub.  The world class pie graced the plates of my dear son Kenteke and I the following evening and we dined like kings as we were also given cheesecake that had fallen from heaven by the free baking Selena, so all in all we had a hearty meal which helped to sooth the awfulness of the day in which I had been plagued by the horrid alcohol terrors, bought on by accumulative festive tippling leaving me as booze soaked as a Christmas pudding.  

The terrors were so bad that on the train on the way back from work I had a bad case of the dreaded gargoyles whereby everyone appears to look grotesque and hideous and I couldn't look anyone in the eye and I just kept my head down until it was time to get off the train.  Of course to other onlookers the people were all of normal appearance with varying degrees of attractiveness (except for one woman who actually looked like a gargoyle [and a particularly ugly one at that]) but it is a trick of the ghastly terrors which distorts the perception of people so they look like (as my Grandad Charlie used to put it) a Friday night’s faggot trod on.   A quick dose of the beastly gargoyles would act as an effective deterrent to any prospective teenage boozer who might otherwise think that drinking is glamorous.   I feel like Marley’s Ghost in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol when I am burdened with the terrors: “I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.”  I most probably look like Marley’s Ghost as well.

So all in all I think a couple of nights of sobriety are in order ahead of the Pirate’s 63^rd birthday party next week and I haven’t got much choice in the matter anyway given that all I have left in the war chest is two buttons and an old peseta.  Christmas chews you up and spits you out, skint and demoralised.   As is my custom every January I will be raiding my pennies jar Tom Good style to get me through the month in once piece.  I am hoping for a plentiful bounty this year as instead of collecting just pennies, tuppences and five penny pieces I have added ten and twenty pence pieces to the mix so not only might I be able to keep the wolf from the door but in addition to the beer money there might be a bit of cash left over for food as well. 

Despite my resolution to not make any resolutions I have made a resolution, which is to drink more sherry.   Sherry is a much maligned drink so I will show it my support after payday when I will acquire a suitable bottle.  It seems as good a resolution as any and at least it will be something that I will enjoy and it is a positive action as opposed to one in the negative.   All these people virtuously covenanting to give up this and that remind me of the zealous DUP politician the Reverend Ian Paisley bellowing, “Ulster says no!” on the 6 o’clock news in the 1980’s while I was trying to eat my tea.  It put me right off.   Luckily like the Man from Del Monte at the Flagon & Gorses the Pirate says yes, he says please feel free to drink and rollick in my pleasure palace and see the New Year in during January with a pint in your hand and a smile on your face.

Money Week reported that the killjoys at employee benefits company JLT have recommended that instead of spending money on booze to invest it in your pension and it could be enhanced by £20,000 but employing that tactic would mean that life would hardly be worth living, so my advice is stuff the pension and drink and be merry and have a dry sherry.

© Dominic Horton, January 2014. 

Lowlife 51 - The Loneliness of a Long Distance Drinker

The Loneliness of a Long Distance Drinker

By Dominic Horton

I was weary of the festivities long before Christmas Day and I will be relieved when it is all over and the seasonal drinkers in the Flagon & Gorses have swanned off with their puritanical attitudes to the gym leaving us regular inmates to have a bit of peace and quiet so we can wallow in our miseries.  It will be pure bliss.  The only day really worth going to the pub during the festive period is New Year’s Day (the earlier the better) as it is deathly quiet with most revellers nursing hangovers after staying up past their bedtimes.  One can sit quietly and celebrate the relief of the passing of another Christmas and contemplate the impending year ahead with the hope and optimism that it will be no worse than average. 

The sooner the odd Christmas behaviour of fellow Flagon internees ends the better.  On Christmas Eve people heartily shake your hand and wish you all the best for the big day as if you are about to set off on a sea voyage to Australia whereas in actuality you will see them again in less than twenty four hours for a drink on Christmas Day lunchtime. 

Slowly the humdrum of pub life will get back to normal and although the regiment is always a little depleted in January the stalwart foot soldiers will fight the good fight in order to keep a few much needed pennies flowing into the Pirate’s needy coffers.   As discussed in this column this time last year some heretics abandon ship in January and don’t go to the pub or drink at all but they are forgetting that a pub is for life and not just for Christmas.  Don’t abandon your landlord in his desperate time of need.  The poor old Pirate at the Flagon & Gorses is desperate enough as it is without having to suffer a downturn in custom. 

Some people flirt with alcohol without ever forming a meaningful and long lasting relationship with it and good luck to them as it is a good approach if you can get away with it.  Many years ago the inimitable Alexander Sutcliffe told me that I am a career drinker and I was too busy ordering another round to disagree with him.  But it is nothing to be boastful about, far from it.  It would be better to be swimming in a sea of p*ss than one of booze as at least with the former you can quickly wash it off and restore purity but the latter is a more devious and evasive mistress whose cunning and trickery knows no bounds: “come to me and I will comfort you” she whispers seductively and more often than not I fall for her alluring words only to find that by morning she has fled leaving me forsaken and in need of her succour more than ever.  

Every festive season I think to myself that things will be better this time next year but of course they never are.  In many ways things can only get worse as at least at present I am fortunate enough to have a home, a job and the welcoming retreat of the Flagon & Gorses.   Maybe Mother Teresa is right and that I need to find myself a good woman this coming year. I don’t think I will need to ask ladies to form an orderly queue outside Codger Mansions as any self-respecting women that have read this column will be giving me a wide berth if they value their sanity and I don’t blame them.   At least my faithful teddy bear Alfie remains staunchly loyal though I do get odd stares when I take him out for Sunday lunch.

Funnily enough a couple of people have tried to thrust ladies on me recently, not literally I hasten to add, but I have thus far resisted given the disaster at Philly the Gent’s 50^th birthday party in the summer.   Philly had been telling me for a while that his wife Olivia had a single friend who might be suitable for me so at his party the Gent pointed the lady out and I duly introduced myself.  We pleasantly chatted while I supplied her with drinks and we even had a stumble to music, which would have qualified as a dance if it were not for my lack of co-ordination.  Anyway I eventually plucked up the courage to ask the potential suitor if she would like to have a date sometime to which she replied, “I don’t think my boyfriend would be very happy about that.”  

At least I have the Flagon but visits there are not without their challenges, especially when I converse with acquaintances of a certain age.  The youthless have a tendency to say things twice and drinkers generally have a penchant to repeat themselves so as far as ageing drinkers are concerned one tends to know their stories and reminiscences off by heart.   But I would imagine that I am as much of a broken record as anybody else in the Flagon and I am sure you could easily find at least a dozen Flagoners who would testify to this; the poor blighters wouldn’t mind but the anecdotes that I tell them are not even funny in the first place.  I could make it a New Year’s resolution to stop repeating myself but I gave up making resolutions long ago because the more you make the more you break. 

Luckily all the Christmas gifts that people kindly gave me were decent and things of use so the only Christmas turkey was on my dinner plate.  Ung Pirat bought his father the Pirate a DVD of the film Hitchcock, being a biopic of the legendary film director starring Anthony Hopkins, and Jolly D explained to me that when his father went to the cinema to see the Hitchcock thriller Psycho in the 1960’s the manager announced to the audience that the cinema doors were locked so viewers could not leave if the suspense got too much for them.   I suggested to the Pirate that he should lock us in the Flagon so that we can’t escape even if we wanted to.  Once news of our unlawful imprisonment gets out I can just see Amnesty International turning up to get us released and Jolly D shouting out of the letterbox (“f*ck off and leave us alone”.) 

Sadly the presents that I really wanted for Christmas didn’t materialise: an E-Lite pipe and a pair of Superman wellies, the latter of which I saw a toddler wearing in the Cornbow Precinct in Halesowen.  Although I am not trying to give up smoking I would like an E-Lite pipe to enable me to ponder matters like Sherlock Holmes and also point with it when someone asks me directions.  I can’t remember Christopher Reeves sporting a pair of wellies in Superman though any competent superhero would be wise to be dressed suitably if the weather turns inclement as if Superman gets his foot wet in a puddle it could severely hamper his mission to save the world.    Kryptonite is the one thing that that has a detrimental effect on Superman and makes him feel dreadful but it is another radioactive material that has such an effect on me in the form of beef fried rice and curry sauce from the Rhareli Peking.  However, I am glad to report that despite over eating like everyone else that I have managed to give the Baby Faced Assassin and Mr Ping at the Peking a wide berth during the festive period.  I am sure normal business will be resumed in the New Year and I will once more be ruing the evil offerings of Ping the Merciless.

Getting off the train to work on Monday morning was even more demoralising than usual but a kindly pre-recorded voice cautioned me, “when you alight please mind the gap between the platform and the train” but if the owner of the voice had been a student of the psychologist Edward Tory Higgins she might have more usefully advised, “when you get off the train please mind the gap between your perceived self and your actual self.”  In his self-discrepancy theory Higgins explained that if the way a person views himself is different to the way others view him then it can cause psychological distress.  That being the case I should be fine as the Pirate thinks I am a **** and as it happens so do I.

© Dominic Horton, December 2013.

Lowlife 50 – Yule be Miserable

Yule be Miserable

By Dominic Horton

People often use the phrase peace on Earth at Christmas but it would be more appropriate to talk about p*ss on Earth as at this festive time of year as the Earth is still the same old place with all its conflicts, wars and disagreements, the only difference being that at Christmas everyone is p*ssed.    So that being the case one might ponder what this Christmas Malarkey is all about.  The God Squad will of course bang on about the birth of little Jezza but it is generally agreed amongst the clever people that he was not born on 25^th December or anywhere near it and for the majority of people religion hardly features at all in their festive reckoning and habits. 

The central character in the story of Christmas is not the King of the Jews at all but the German philosopher, sociologist and political theorist Herbert Marcuse, who was most definitely one of the clever people.  Marcuse argued that modern industrial society creates false needs to satisfy the greed inherent in the capitalist system and there is no greater display or celebration of this than at this time of year.  Christmas is a vulgar display of rampant consumerism and if we were to be honest about it we would call it Consumermas.  But to make this vulgarity seem wholesome we still wrap Christmas up in a thin veneer of Christian swaddling clothes.  And stick a fairy on top.  But ultimately Christmas is a load of old baubles.

Notwithstanding the above, I did find myself having an extremely pleasant time within the confines of a church on Sunday.  I didn’t attend the church to confess my many minor sins as I prefer to divulge these to the high priest of the Flagon & Gorses, the Pirate, at my principal place of worship whilst drinking his holy water.   Rather I was at the church at the invitation of Mr & Mrs Phantom to witness the baptism of their lovely little new member of the club of life, Poppy and I have to say that the Vicar played an absolutely blinder carrying things off with warmth, good humour and a common touch; such an impressive religious performance has not been seen since Dick Emery played the buck toothed and sex starved vicar in his television show.

At one stage in the ceremony the Vic banged on about the importance of olive oil in the baptism ceremony and in Christianity generally at quite some length and I half expected him to whip out a suitcase of cut price Bertolli and start flogging it off to the congregation for last minute Christmas presents.  But alas there was no Derek Trotter action.   At one point the Vic implored Mr & Mrs Phantom and the God parents to denounce darkness but in their shoes I would be reluctant to do that as I am partial to a drop of stout.  Also a little bit of darkness in the shadows is not unwelcome and there is plenty of it lurking in the Flagon & Gorses and more so at Codger Mansions, where playful demons dwell.

After having attended a trio of funerals this year it was refreshing and poignant at the year’s end to be able to celebrate in a convivial atmosphere the happy event of a new life coming into the world.    The experience was made all the more comfortable as after some agonising I decided to dispense with my suit in favour of comfortable chinos and a sports jacket.   I was concerned by not wearing a suit that my standard of dress would not be up to scratch but I should not have worried as on arrival at the church I found that some of my slovenly work colleagues were wearing jeans, which I thought was a bit irreverential, even by my standards.

The last christening that I went to was that of my dear little niece Eva, the daughter of my younger brother Codger and his wife Mrs Codger.  I was honoured to be asked to be one of Eva’s God parents but being a devoted atheist I had concerns that I might find myself in a compromised position during the catholic ceremony so I decided to seek correspondence on the matter with Bishop John Sherrington, Bishop of the Diocese of Westminster, as he knows a thing or two about Catholicism.     By quoting chapter and verse from his club’s rules the Bish left me in no doubt whatsoever that as a non-believe I was not considered fit to be a God parent and that I should abdicate the role in favour of someone of a more pious bent: I communicated this information to the Codger but we spoke to the local Bishop who said, “look, this is not Westminster, it’s Halesowen. Don’t worry it will be alright.”  And that was that.  The only problem then was that the Codger had asked the Bishop if he could take a word or two out of the service but the Codg had edited it down so much that he had basically stripped out all of the religious content.  Negotiations ensued and a deal was clinched. 

Continuing the theme of matters ceremonial the Lowlife Christmas party went swimmingly well and was attended by the author, the editor, the publicity manager and the publisher: in other words it was attended by just me.  The Christmas cob and pint of bitter in the Flagon & Gorses was just the ticket.  Even the Pirate deserted me as he had to pop down the town to buy more sprouts, Chilli Willy having run out due to a rush on the catering front.  Mind you there were benefits to having a Christmas party on my own as there was no fear of waking up having regretted sleeping with the secretary and the quality of conversation was good as the voices in my head were in jolly festive form.   I did though have great difficulty in refraining from excitedly disclosing to myself what I had got for the secret Santa.

I see that plastic bank notes are being introduced by the Bank of England and they are apparently indestructible so next year we will be able to bung a fiver in our Christmas puddings.  This should improve things as despite inflation being seemingly through the roof the pay out to the lucky Christmas pudding winner has stayed static at sixpence since Charles Dickens’ time so it’s hardly worth the bother of chewing through a portion of the sickly dessert. 

I also learnt this week that the Queen is having trouble with her nuts.   The BBC reported that Betty is so fed up with Buck House policemen and security guards pilfering nuts and Bombay mix (or is it Mumbai mix now?) that she leaves lying around in bowls dotted all over her regal dwelling that she has started to mark the bowls to deter the peckish policemen.  The Queen could go the whole hog and install CCTV to monitor the nut bowls to catch the culprits red handed or alternatively she could stop indulging in the frankly crackpot behaviour of leaving savoury snacks placed all around the gaff.   It will at least give old Betty something useful to say in her Queen’s Speech on Christmas day instead of spouting forth about the Commonwealth like she does every year.

If the Queen’s Speech turns out to be too boring we can always turn over the television channel and watch a James Bond film as they always tend to be broadcast at Christmas.  A bunch of clever dick doctors from Derby and Nottingham with far too much time on their hands read all of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels and they revealed last week their findings that Bond should effectively be an impotent drunk given that he drinks the equivalent of one and a half bottles of wine a day.  If drinking the equivalent of one and a half bottles of wine a day leads to drunken impotence then all I can say is gawd help the Pirate.

While attending the Flagon & Gorses I was unexpectedly given an early Christmas present but the gift was not from the Pirate but from the jocular and entertaining Dick the Hook who palmed me off with an unwanted calendar from his local Chinese takeaway (which I am delighted to report for Dick’s sake is not the Rhareli Peking.)   The calendar informed us that Dick is a rat (so no surprise there) and that I am a boar which is nearly correct as readers of this column will know that I am a bore and one needs no more evidence of this fact than to read this edition as despite it being Christmas all I can think to bang on about is the work of a German philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, which is a subject that is dryer than the turkey that you will all be eating on the 25^th.   So make sure you slaver the festive meat with cranberry sauce to hydrate it as otherwise there is no doubt whatsoever that Yule be miserable.

© Dominic Horton, December 2013.

Lowlife 49 - Lord of the Mildgraines

Lord of the Mildgraines

By Dominic Horton

I have developed a new hobby this past week: having migraines (or in my case, given that I am partial to a drop of dark beer they would be better known as mildgraines.) Having reached my fourth decade without having indulged in a migraine it was not a pastime that I ever expected to partake in but on Tuesday last while I was sitting at my desk at work I suddenly experienced flashing lights and partial blindness; it was a little bit like watching the Aurora Borealis but unlike the Northern Lights it was not very pleasant. Being from Halesowen I should have said that it was like watching the Midlands lights but if I had told the doctor on Monday morning that I have suffered attacks of the Walsall Arboretums I would most likely have been diagnosed with another mental disorder to add to the collection.

In case it was important to her diagnosis I did tell the doctor that I have in the past had a complaint known as labyrinthitus (where the sufferer feels permanently dizzy [much like the members of the Spice Girls]) and that I suffer from anxiety disorder but she gave me that stare that I think most of us have experienced which seemed to say, “I'm the f*cking doctor here, not you pal.” Given that the surgery was packed with bodies like a busy London tube train the doc quickly took my blood pressure, looked into my eyes (which must have been a harrowing experience for her) and shooed me out of her surgery with a diagnosis of virus induced mildgraines advising me to take a few days off work and the mild and to rest.

There has been a proliferation in recent years of clothing, posters and goods of all manner on the “keep calm and carry on” theme but they are of little use to us suffers of anxiety disorder who need a different range of products to reflect the way we experience our lives. I did see a T-shirt at a beer festival a little while ago that read something like, “I don't want to keep calm and carry on so f*ck off” (I didn't buy it as the design was poor and substantially I don't wear T-shirts anyway as I prefer to wear a collar) but it would be more fitting if I had a T-shirt that states, “I would love to keep calm and carry on but I suffer from anxiety disorder so I find that difficult. So f*ck off.” I do however like to see Private Jones in the enduring and endearing comedy series Dad's Army counsel his superior, “Don't panic Mr Mainwaring!” while paradoxically going into a hysterical frenzy himself.

On his recent visit to these shores from Australia my fellow scribing crony DG Depardieu was uncharacteristically wearing a coat with a “No Fear” logo. I suspect DG had borrowed the coat from one of his brothers and had not heeded its design or make as he pays less attention to his appearance than Albert Steptoe. Again, the “No Fear” clothing range is hardly suitable for me given my anxiety and as the names of clothing brands need to be concise and punchy I suppose I would need it to be changed to something like “Brickin' it.” Fearlessness is a trait that is generally held in high esteem in society but it could lead to recklessness as the presence of fear can mean that one makes a more rational judgement. Additionally, bravery to my mind is undertaking an action despite being fearful, like going on a day out drinking with the Pirate, as notwithstanding all of his charms the man can be a social hand grenade.

One chap who seems like a fearless sort is Frodo Baggins and Friday night saw the Codger Mansions premier of the first film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which my dear son Kenteke watched wide eyed and transfixed. There was no red carpet treatment for the premier as I have laminate flooring at Codger Mansions and the best I could muster is a welcome mat that, like the Pirate, has seen better days. Baggins is of course tasked with the unenviable challenge of taking the bedevilled ring to be destroyed to save life in the Shire as they know it but if I had been in his shoes (metaphorically speaking of course as hobbits as you know do not wear shoes [or carpet slippers etc.]) I would have chucked the accursed ring in the cut and proceeded straight to Mordor Wetherspoons, which would have made for a short film I grant you. Frodo asks the wise old Gandalf how he will know where to take the ring and the sage replied, “just follow your nose”, which again in my case would have lead me to Mordor Wetherspoons, being blessed like most drinkers with being able to root out a pub like a pig in the Dordogne sniffing out truffles.

Given his half pint stature it is surprising that Frodo Baggins was chosen for such a momentous job. I wouldn't even trust the diminutive Fudgkins to go on a quest down the Rhareli Peking Chinese take away to get beef fried rice and curry sauce for me off my arch nemesis the Baby Faced Assassin. One character in the film who is anything but diminutive is the terrifying goodie turned baddie Saruman, played by the now nonagenarian actor Sir Christopher Lee. Poor old Lee is probably sick to his hind teeth (or fangs) of playing evil monsters and I can just see him turning up to the rehearsals of the film begging the films director Peter Jackson to let him play a kindly hobbit, only to be swiftly rebuffed.

 

At one point the wizardly Gandalf is having a bit of a barny with a malevolent monster who didn't seem in the best of moods and the elderly sorcerer suggests to the monster, “go back to the shadows” but disappointingly the slow witted monster missed out on retorting with what would have been the cheap line of, “who the f*ck do you think I am, Cliff Richard.” But it was certainly no summer holiday for the old duffer Gandalf.

Being full of sagacity Gandalph punctuates the movie with his philosophical insights and at one point he forewarns Baggins, “to bear a ring of power is to be alone.” Gandalph could well have substituted the words “to bear a ring of power” with “to be a writer” as writing is mostly by its very nature a lonely occupation and no doubt the underlying melancholy in this pages makes you miserable but I make no excuses as A J Carr explained in his book How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup, “An Englishman is partial to doom talk,” which certainly is the case with my younger brother and landlord Roger the Codger.

  

My other landlord the Pirate, being the governor of the Flagon & Gorses, has had an eventful week. Wednesday last the Pirate had an altercation with a chair in the bar of the Flagon after the staff Christmas meal, which left the chair minus an arm. Most pubs have a one arm bandit but the Flagon now has a one arm chair. At least you can't “do your boll*cks” (as the gambling phrase goes) on a one arm chair though I suppose you could hurt your boll*cks if you hastily sit down in an awkward fashion. The Pirate also had an unusual but not necessarily unpleasant dream where he was £14 overdrawn at the bank. I think the Pirate has hit on something as contrary to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is to be exactly £14 overdrawn at the bank and not £42 in credit. Incidentally, when Jimi Hendrix died in 1971 it was reported that after effectively being exploited by his management he only had £17 in his Martin's bank account; if only he had spent £31 he still might be alive today and sitting pretty in his red house over yonder.

 

I conclude this week by returning to an earlier theme; coincidentally the official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy companion by Neil Gaiman was entitled Don't Panic, which is something that I am desperately trying to do right now in my Codger Mansions bolt hole as I can feel the unwelcome and untimely onset of another dreaded and highly inconvenient mildgraine.

© Dominic Horton, December, 2013.

Email: lordhofr@gmail.com