I'm Back, Jack.

Whew – well I’m back; and what an absolutely, completely, God awful couple of weeks I’ve had at work (most of you already know this because I’ve spent the last two weeks complaining to you about it every night – for which comfort and sympathy I have received you have my thanks – apart from Irena who doesn’t know what comfort and sympathy is, but has a vague idea that it might have been written by Jane Austen).

So I thought that I’d just give you a run down on some of the things which I would have blogged about if I’d had the time.

And again, my sincere apologies for my slackness and forgive me if I miss anything.

1. Jade doing Irena’s hair on Tuesday night behind the bar. It made me smile. There was a wonderful warm easy familiarity to the scene.

Gerry, Pete and Dave, barely batting an eyelid at the sight, were sat up in the regulars corner and Irena was sitting on a stool behind the bar down near the hatch while Jade did her hair, and they happily chatted away while Jade kept half an eye on the bar.

[I didn’t understand why Jade was using ‘straighteners’ to curl Irena’s hair though. I don’t think she was using them correctly]

What I particularly liked about it wasn’t that it was odd or strange or unusual (though there’s no doubting that literally speaking, it was), what I liked about it was that it seemed completely right for all that it was unprecedented and (probably against several licensing laws).

2. The Saturday before last being one of those perfect Saturday afternoons that I value so much. Irena was working, and as has been the case over the last few weeks, many of the regulars had cleared off to the Kings Head. So I settled in for a pleasant afternoon of watching the rugby in relative peace, but as with all such well laid plans that never came to fruition as the rugby was on the same box as the Spurs game…

So I settled instead for watching the Wales game and trying to see if I could see Gareth in the crowd (who had gone to the Millennium with his dad to be all Welsh and sing about Bread and Heaven). In the end the Wales/South Africa match turned out to be a cracking game and I spent the time trying to explain the rules of the game to Irena (who I suspect was being deliberately annoying by refusing to understand even the most basic principles).

We were joined for most of that time by a slightly odd crowd of blokes (by which I just mean that the make up of the group and the dynamics of who was friends with whom in the group was slightly strange) who were out on a joint birthday/wetting the baby's head type affair (i.e. the same bloke who’s birthday it was, had also just had a kid), who were quite loud and slightly annoying, but ultimately harmless and intermittently amusing in their running banter and commentary on the football.

[On a side note, I should point out that I really don’t like large crowds of ‘event drinkers’ (that is to say people who are out during the day for a stag or a birthday or a going away party etc) – hell, I suspect that none of us do. Especially on a quiet Saturday afternoon; but you normally get two sets of those crowds: those who are completely obnoxious and those who are fairly amusing. And the choice of which one of those they are is completely and absolutely within their own gift to make. 

There’s no getting around the fact that they’re going to be annoying to some degree or another. That’s a given. Any random large groups of boisterous blokes – as it usually is – is going to be fairly annoying in a small regulars pub on a Saturday afternoon (and genuinely, even grumpy cumudgeon that I am, I don't begrudge them their rowdiness. They're out for a big day with their mates celebrating something important to them in a pub. They should be a bit loud and drunk and boisterous. It just is what it is), but there are things that can be done to mitigate against that annoyance factor. For instance: Don’t shout for no good reason. If someone says something funny then by all means laugh. But laugh or shout for a reason, not just because there’s loads of you and you know that you’re too intimidating a group for anyone to say anything.

Basically, don’t ruin it for everyone else just because you can.

Equally, fine, you’re out having a laugh with your mates, you’re drunk and celebrating, you’re going to have a bit of banter with the girls behind the bar – but don’t be creepy about it. 

Basically, just be nice. Be nice and funny and decent. When you leave, you want to be the people about whom people smile and shake their heads in rueful relief, not the people about whom people spit, ‘what a bunch of total cunts.’]

[This isn't a bad general life lesson]

[One day I even hope to learn it]

After a while Casey, who had, apparently, been at a baby shower turned up and we started on the crosswords. Irena stopped for a drink after work as well, and then my brother turned up, and Adam and Jim, until eventually the whole regulars corner was very drunk (as it should be on a Saturday. – There’s something really quite wonderful about the regulars corner around 11pm on a Saturday night.
It’s like its own little world hermetically cocooned off from the ridiculous scum who routinely fill the pub on a Saturday night. A world filled with people who have been drinking all day and who's eyes are barely focused and who's words barely articulated, but inhabited by the comradship and friendship of those who crew the HMS Taps through the sometimes chopping seas of the long quiet week) and all was well with the world.

That was a nice day.

3. Last Saturday for  the Spurs/Arsenal game

I have to say that I didn’t enjoy this Saturday as much as I did the last. And that’s mainly because by the late evening there was a slightly fraught atmosphere in the air which I haven’t sensed for a long time. I think that atmosphere was mainly due to the fact that most people had been drinking from 12:45 and that those people were then evenly divided between those who were ecstatic and those who were depressed. This was exacerbated by the fact that the cause of half of those people’s ecstasy was also the same cause for the other half’s depression.

All of which, by 7:30 or so led to the kind of atmosphere that you used to sometimes get in town when England were playing in the World Cup ten or so years ago.

Nothing happened and I really am only talking about the whiff or something potentially unpleasant, but it was there and I didn’t particularly like it.

Really, my main problem with Saturday was that everyone was a lot drunker than I was. First I got in at 2:30, when most people had started at 12:30, and then I was drinking slowly because I was far more hungover than I usually am (I’d finished early on Friday and got to the pub by 3:30, full intending to leave at 9:00 or so, but staying until 11pm).  So by 9 o’clock when I was nicely drunk, everyone else in the pub was totally paralytic.

Daryl told me the same story about arranging to tape Match of the Day at least 3 times (in – honestly – 3 minutes) and was rather loudly (I assume he thought he was speaking normally) discussing somebody, in not entirely complimentary terms, who was sitting right next to me, i.e also right next to Daryl.

Which is not even to start on Adam introducing everyone to his lunatic friend from Bush Hill Park.

However, it was still a nice day. Jo-Jo (who’s started working at the Kings Head) and John came in for a few drinks, and we had the sound on for the rugby for the first in the Autumn Internationals. Gareth was out for mainly the whole day (with only a few hours at the Kings Head and George) which was – I think – the first time that Gareth has ever done the all dayer on a Saturday purely as a customer rather than working the day shift and then staying to drink.

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Now, there were undoubtedly many other things – notably Holly’s leaving drinks – which I could write about (although there’s nothing to stop Jade from doing so – in fact it would seem completely appropriate for her to do the honours), but I realise that this post is growing to unwieldy lengths and I’m starting to ramble all over the place.

I’ll only say that if I’ve missed anything which should have been included just let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

On a general note though, regarding the pub as a whole, it’s been my impression that while the Kings Head has certainly (and understandably) had quite a large initial impact on the Taps, things are now slowly starting to stabilise, and a clearer picture of the future is emerging.

And while we’ve certainly lost some good folk for good, many have stayed, while it also seems that the majority of people have chosen to divide their (with varying eveness depending on their preferences and loyalties) time between the two. Which I think is an arrangement that can and will work to everyone's benefit.

Anyway, whatever else happens, you can always count on finding me at the bar.