Conan the Barbarian

Yes, I know it’s been a while, and don’t think that I don’t feel horrible about it. Well, actually, do think that I don’t feel horrible about it, because I don’t feel horrible about it.

I’m sorry, but there it is.

I feel, at best, a mild passing regret of the sort I experience when I order the loin of pork instead of the Seabass in a restaurant.

Which is to say a little, but not much.

While, theoretically, I like the idea of ordering the Seabass instead of the pork loin (and regret, to an extent, not doing so), who are we fucking kidding here? I’m ordering the loin of pork.

Yes. I know. I’m a monster.

Anyway, I just came across this random review of the Kings’ Head which I couldn’t resist sharing with you (and which I copy – unedited below):

Only have the ale by a green king which no me like any this one beer the womans was friendly and we drink lager insted but a music was so loud i no hear speak maybe go back one time or no maybe Report this for removal Pineapple_The - 18 Oct 2013 13:29

Me like this review very much much. Me sure me met this reviewer banging head against wall in mans toilets on Friday. Me decide to no speak to strange mans next week.

Me probably will anyway.

That's Me In the Corner

So yes, that is me sat over there in the corner of the King’s Head. Beard, glasses, dishevelled and perpetually perturbed (and yes, those are scampi fries in my beard). And no, I never thought I’d see the day, and yes, I’m just as surprised about it as you, and no I don’t have an issue of some kind with Roxy. I think she’s done a great job and couldn’t have been friendlier and more accommodating to the regulars. But, nevertheless, here we find ourselves. Wherever that may be. And the Taps? Well the Taps remains…well I guess I’m not entirely sure what the Taps remains. I mean I still drink there on a Tuesday night, and should I be out on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday then that’s where I’ll be drinking. It’s still home. The Perryman is still the Perryman, and there’s still nowhere I’d rather be on a weekday evening. It’s just…well, it’s just that the world went and changed on me. Went and got young. Got young and loud, and I went and got old and tired. I just can’t deal with the noise, with the crowds, with the 15 minute walk to the toilets and back on a Saturday night. I just can’t deal with the…well…the youthfulness of it. I’ve always felt that the Perryman was insulation enough against the educationally subnormal scum who often frequent the Taps at the weekend, but it’s just not enough anymore. Well though the old girl’s served us, The Perryman wanes and her protective embrace weakens until now, at last, I just can’t bear looking at them, listening to them; watching them do their glass eyed, mouth breathing, slack jawed, nightly Jeremy Kyle dance of missed child support payments and missing links. And so, as I bid farewell to the Taps at the weekends, a few thoughts: - Look, ladies, greeting your female friends with hysterical, piercing, dog whistle, five decibel screeches isn’t an acceptable way of communicating that you haven’t seen them for two days (not counting the 47 texts you sent one another while you were getting ready to go out….and oh look you still managed to come out wearing the same thing: psychedelic orange tan). You make me want to kill myself. - Fellas, you and your twenty mates coming in and standing right in front of the door is not a sensible place to stand on a Saturday night. I just don’t believe you’re really that stupid. It’s impossible. You would have choked to death on urinal cakes by now if it were. - No, I’m not impressed that you can drink four Jaeger bombs in a row. I’m really not. I’m more impressed that you’ve somehow been able to negotiate whatever meagre skills you have into paid employment. Who says there’s a recession on? - Oh, your haircut cost £75, your jumper cost £125 and your trainers £150? Wow, do you know what that makes you? That’s right, a fucking retard. Now fuck off and die.

Iryna

It's completely typical this - completely bloody typical - the Russian's leaving that is; or at least the manner of it - so typically contrary - so typically contradictory; but it makes sense when you come to think about it doesn't it - it makes perfect sense. I mean everything she ever did while she was here was a contradiction, so why should her leaving be any different?

She is - I think - quite the rudest person I've ever met. In fact 'rude' isn't really the word, 'rude' doesn't quite do justice to the sheer unadulterated  contempt that she can express for someone's very being just because they've had the cheek - the motherfucking temerity - to ask for a pint of strongbow and black on a Monday night.

But, to her friends, I've also never met a more truthful person.  A more honest person. Honest even though it might cost her - even though she knows it isn't what the person she's talking to wants to hear and even though she knows that they might doubt her motives for saying what she's saying - and, indeed, not just her motives, but also doubt her friendship entirely for what she's said. But even so, she's still honest. Because that's what friendship is. Or at least the way she sees it, anyway.

And I admire that a great deal.

I also don't think that I've ever met a more judgemental person before - "really, is she actually wearing that dress? With those legs? How old is she? That is definitely not fresh."

But, to her friends, there's nobody quicker to help pick someone up when they fall - no matter the cause of their fall or their failing.

[As I said, she's a contradiction - well she's actually more like a contradiction, wrapped in a paradox balancing on ridiculously high heels and wearing an inappropriately short skirt].

There's nobody I know more dismissive of people's failings, their shortcoming and their weaknesses, than Iryna - but there's also nobody I know more fiercely loyal to the people she cares about. Come the zombie apocalypse I'll happily have her guarding my back any day….unless there are mirrors around, that is - if there are mirrors about all bets are off - she'll be checking herself out in a mirror and I'll be being turned into the Walking Dead by a horde of flesh eating zombies.

[Just on a side note: part of the reason that Iryna is so dismissive of people's failings is very much the thing which I love about her the most - and that reason is the fact that she herself is so resilient and courageous. There's no challenge she won't meet, no fight she won't fight; and I admire that a great deal - mainly because my own personal motto is more along the lines of 'no pie he won't eat, no challenge he won't back away from saying 'actually I think I'd better go and check if I left the iron on']

And so it makes sense that as she leaves we're caught in this paradox - this contradiction.

I'm incredibly happy - and proud - of her for doing what she's done. For giving herself this chance for a normal life - to get out there in the world and live beyond the pub - to do the things she's spent half her life wanting to get out and do; of course I am.

But at the same time I'm also tremendously sad to see her go. Look at it this way: apart from her one year break I've seen Iryna pretty much every day for the last 7 years - that's more than most of us see our family. Of course I'm sad….and happy.

And hence the contradiction.

(Even in leaving she still manages to be infuriating).

Of course that's all the gay personal stuff. What about Iryna as a manager, then?

Well, she could most definitely roll. Could roll hard, in fact.  Most definitely could do that. Could serve like a demon, flirt with the blokes (all of them - at once) and joke with the women. Run that pub like clockwork even in the middle of mayhem and chaos at quarter past one in the morning, with the glasses stacking up, the pot boy gone AWOL, the doormen on  strike and the drinkers on the edge of open thirsty revolt.

She could silence a crowd of great big six ft blokes who were about to start swinging punches - just with a word and a look; and get the most dour of old hardened drinkers showing her pictures of their grandchildren after a couple of minutes of chat.

When she was behind that bar it was hers - she owned it. She was the mad Russian captain of our little drunken ship.

Ladies and gentlemen - the Russian has left the building.

Salute her; we won't see her like again.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen

Friends, Enfieldians, Taps family, lend me your ears!
I come to bid farewell to Iryna, not to praise her.
The evil that people do lives after them,
The good is oft fogotten with their parting:
So let it be with Iryna. The noble Les and Sue
Hath told you that Iryna was rude;
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Iryna answered it.
Here, under leave of Les and Sue and the rest -
For Les is an honourable man,
Come I to speak in goodbye to Iryna.
She was my friend, faithful and just to me,
But Les says she was selfish,
And Les is an honourable man.
But Iryna hath bought many a round in the Perryman,
Did this in Iryna seem selfish and mean?
When the regulars have cried at last orders, Iryna hath wept:
Meanness should be made of sterner stuff;
Yet Les says she was mean,
And Les is an honourable man.
You all did see that on St Paddy's day
She thrice bought rounds of vodka jelly,
Was this meanness?
Yet Les says she was mean,
And sure he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Les and Sue and Walking Stick Tony spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love her once, not without cause;
What cause withholds you then to mourn for her departure now?
O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason! Bear with me,
My heart leaves through the door with Iryna,
And I must pause till it come back to me

Yid Army

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while, but just never got around to it for one reason or another; and it comes under the general heading of things which make me smile.

Iryna’s VISA party (back in…oh, October?) was held in the pub she was Assistant Manager in at the time (I forget it’s name and can’t be bothered to find out – yes, I can’t be bothered to do the only thing in the entire world that I’m actually any good at: looking shit up[1]) – which was in Tottenham – very, very near to the ground – and that being the case, very much a proper Spurs pub.

So it’s Iryna’s party and things are in full swing (implausibly drunkenness) and lots of the regulars at that pub, who were also at the party, begin that slow, low, rumbling  Spurs chant – the one which starts slowly and then gets faster and faster and louder and louder -  ‘Yids! Yids! Yids!’

So, given that Iryna’s pub at the time was a proper Spurs pub, this was clearly a fairly normal and unremarkable occurrence for them; but in Taps, if you start with the Spurs chants, you’ll be told to knock it off in fairly short order [obviously Taps is more a Spurs pub than anything other team, and it’s not as though any of the staff particularly object – especially when it’s regulars, but it’s just not really that kind of a pub – unless the match is actually on –  mainly because there’s just no point encouraging some of the bottom feeders who are in on a weekend].

So I’m sat in the corner (Perryman on tour) watching this happen with my usual lack of a normal socially adjusted life interest, and I look at Mark, Len, Adam and Gareth watching Iryna’s regulars with such rapt expressions of envy on their faces  that I could almost feel them straining to join in, but having been so conditioned (in a Pavlov’s dogs kind of a way) by years of being in Taps to not do so, they were all still – barely - at heel.

And then I see them – almost as one – turn to look at Iryna with these forlorn angelic pleading expressions of ‘please, can we, is it alright?’

And Iryna (who knows exactly what it is they’re asking),  smiles indulgently at them – like a mum watching her kids in a sweet shop, and nods at them, as though to say, ‘go on, you’re allowed.’

And their little faces actually light up with unalloyed happiness – like children being given the keys to the toy store, and they join in, jumping up and down ‘YIDS!’ ‘YIDS!’ ‘YIDS!’

I smile just thinking about it now.

---

[1] Which reminds me of one of my favourite exchanges from Frasier:

Niles: What do you know about Irish plays?
Frasier: Nothing. But not for long. There's one area where no man has ever bested me, Niles: homework!

Can I Ask You a Question?

Amongst my stock stable of annoying questions which I ask mainly because:

I like the sound of my own voice

I’m uncomfortable with silence 

I’m uncomfortable with questions about actual personal things related to myself

When I ask a question I’m actually just using it as a platform to tell you what I think. You know, just because I’m like that

I’m drunk

People like my questions

A combination of all of the above (not liking my questions though obviously; I only added that one because I actually am drunk)

I’m just genuinely interested in people’s views of the world (bingo!), is: what are your top five dream holiday destinations (the parameters being that you have to name a specific area – which is to say you can’t just say ‘America’ or ‘Australia’, and that you would be there for three weeks, and during that time money wouldn’t be an object)?

And as most of you know, my own top five is:

1. Alaska (mainly because it ticks pretty much all my boxes: very few people,  mountains, snow, bears, howling wolves in the ice cold night, warm fires and big steaks).
2. The Highlands of Scotland (see above).
3. New York (cool New York bars at 3 in the morning in the Empire State)
4. The London Borough of Barnet
5. Well, I don’t really have a #5

 Now those people who don’t really know me think that my fourth choice is a joke answer; while those who do know me realise that it’s absolutely not (at which point they generally tend to roll their eyes heavenwards, while wondering how their lives could have come to such a sorry lot that they’ve found themselves in the corner of a pub at 1 o’clock in the morning talking to a bearded half wit drinking Red Stagg out of an Egyptian shot glass and Jack Daniels and Coke out of a pint glass) and that I’m actually completely serious.

And here’s why (oh, I bet you just can’t wait for this one….what? You absolutely can? #RichardIsVeryHurt). I think one of the finest (if not the finest science fiction series of the last couple of decades) is Fringe. The premise of which is that most of the story arc for Fringe involves a parallel universe which mostly mirrors the prime universe (i.e. our universe), but with numerous large and small historical idiosyncrasies. A significant example of a large difference being that of the September 11 attacks; though this event also occurred in the parallel universe, the World Trade Centre was untouched by the attacks, leaving the buildings standing in the parallel universe. While there are numerous small differences, such at that airship travel is far more prevalent in the parallel universe than in our own (the prime universe) or that Coppola and not Scorcese directed Taxi Driver.

And to me that’s what Barnet is: our parallel universe; our though a mirror darkly; our Enfield but not Enfield.  The smudged parallel to our defined prime.

And I find the idea of it absolutely fascinating. That beside us, through the figurative corner of our eye, just over the metaphorical and existential horizon, is our parallel world. A universe so familiar, but so different. Their pubs alike, but unlike, their cinemas recognisable, but strangers, and their streets the same, but ever so slightly out of kilter.

And it fascinates me.

It’s science fiction brought to life, because what it means….oh, what it means… is that there’s no need for mankind to dream of journeying to the stars, to plunge the pitch black miles deep depths of the Marianas trench where no single ray of sunlight has pierced in four and a half billion years, to strive and strive again to unlock the cosmic mysteries of space and time, to – as a species – to ever look to the next horizon, the next mystery, the next glorious challenge….when we can just go to Barnet.

[That’s fucking right, Barnet]

Anyway, the reason I was prompted to recall that was because last night there were a load of blokes from Barnet in the pub – and they were very loud and annoying (but they were fine otherwise – which is to say, just some blokes out having a drink and a laugh) – although in all fairness two of them were genuinely quite funny and entertaining (in a ‘why can’t you just fall down the stairs and die’ kind of a way).

And I was struck that I’d just come face to face with the parallel universe Mark and Len. And that it was quite possible that it meant that our Mark and Len were in Barnet, and that the prime universe (ours) and the parallel universe (theirs) had had to balance things out by sending their Mark and Len to Enfield to balance our Mark and Len being in Barnet.

And it got me to thinking: does each of us have a doppelganger in Barnet, and if so what are they doing with their lives? Does each of us have a walking, breathing mirror to our soul? A living benchmark which we can never outgrow and against which our happiness and success will always – ever - be judged?

In Barnet we could find those answers, but perhaps there are some questions which should remained unanswered and some lines which should never be crossed.

An Ass Out of You and Me

I was just in the lift going downstairs for lunch and there were two people already in it - a man and a very attractive woman.

While I'm standing there, he goes to her:  Have you ever thought about doing some modelling?

[and I'm thinking, wow, this guy is seriously cheesy....cheesy, but audacious - chatting up some random woman in the lifts at the GMC with someone stood there listening to him]

And she goes: Thank you. You know I get that quite a lot from people actually; I've done quite a lot of modelling in the past

[and I'm thinking - oh God, here we go]

He goes: You know what, I could absolutely tell straight away

[at which point I'm frantically pushing the down button over and over, because it's either that or kill them both]

Then he goes: Your quarter three financial models were particularly effective I thought, would you mind e-mailing me your templates?

(Well I found it quite amusing, anyway).