The rapture day had finally come. I had won the lottery, I had bought Taps and refurbished it to my specifications, and Taps (as it was foretold two years ago long ago in the Steve Perryman ancient prophecy) had at least become Super Taps.
And lo it was beautiful
And verily was I pleased.
[In my dream the bar looked something like the above].
But all was not well.
Beautiful though she undoubtedly was, comfortable as the stools were, and universally sitting down and being quiet were the customers, it just didn’t feel right.
The essence – the spirit – of Taps had been lost and none of us liked it anymore.
And so, because of my pride and hubris in attempting to perfect Taps....
In Baseball, Americans have a concept of a Starting Rotation, which is to say that [leaning rather heavily on Wikipedia for this]a starting pitcher in baseball usually rests three or four days after pitching a game, before pitching another (Baseball teams can play three or four games on consecutive days). Therefore, most professional baseball teams have four or five starting pitchers on their rosters. These pitchers, and the sequence in which they pitch, is known as the rotation. In modern baseball, a five-man rotation is most common.
And I’ve always applied this idea of a set starting rotation in my mind when it comes to the weeknight Taps staff.
So before what happened, happened, my starting rotation was π on a Monday [as you no doubt know, π is the mathematical symbol for Pi which is at once a mathematical constant and both an irrational and transcendental number and therefore of central importance to everything, even though you can’t see it! – I have to say, I’m rather pleased with that, and have no idea where it came from as I’m mainly completely innumerate], Deon on a Tuesday, Jade on a Wednesday and then a mixture of people on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
And I was happy with that starting rotation. It threw real heat. Each of the starters brought something unique to their respective evenings.
And all was well in the garden of The Taps.
Settled and understood.
Content.
And then Jade went and got herself a proper job (which we were all happy for her about), but we were able to go straight to the Bullpen (which is the area where relief pitchers warm up before entering the game) and we were able to call on the big guns – and in came Gareth to take over the Wednesday.
Sure it was different, but it was still all cool.
I adjusted. I settled down.
I was once more content
π Mondays, Deon Tuesdays, Gareth Wednesday.
And then into the garden of the The Taps came a snake, and...well we all know how that story ends.
And so the starting rotation was shuffled once more, we went into the Bullpen and for a while the Mondays and Wednesdays were covered on an ad hoc basis by the Bullpen, until eventually Chelsie was drafted in and Gareth went back into the regular starting rotation such that we had:
Gareth Monday, Deon Tuesday (oh, the anchor which is Deon, our pillar of consistency throughout), Gareth Wednesday.
And once again we settled down.
Now, I write all of this because yesterday Charlie worked the Monday night (yes, that’s right. All of that. It was interesting, don’t complain)
And yesterday was notable for two things, first that we spent half the evening listening to famous film scores (really loudly) – The Magnificent Seven, The Big Country, Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather etc etc.
And second that we invented a brand new game.
Basically the aim of the game is to design a scene and then from that scene extrapolate a movie idea.
And the way it works is by picking three people, one prop and then a single line of Direction for them to improvise.
So for example:
Charlie starts: Edward Norton:
Richard: Christian Bale
[At this point you try and think about what you can do with these two guys. They’re both tremendous high powered actors who can chew scenery with the best of them, but who do you throw in to add in to create an interesting story/drama? You could throw in another high powered actor, but then what do you have? Three blokes in a room and what? A bank heists or something? Ok, you could do that, but it’s frankly boring].
Charlie: Jason Bateman – now this makes things interesting.Jason Bateman’s an everyman and clearly no match in charisma for the other two, so you start to think about the prop and what’s going on.
Richard: A phone
Direction: Bateman is a hostage who slowly plays Bale and Norton off against one another.
That’s it.
Now, no it’s not the Godfather or anything – or super imaginative and clever, but it’s not a horrendous idea.
And that’s basically how the game works. The point being to actively try to paint yourself into difficult positions (by picking for, instance, implausible combinations for the first two actors, e.g. Denzel Washington and Martin Freeman) so that you have to then think imaginatively about how, with which third actor, and with which prop and direction, you can come up with something at least reasonably plausible and workable.
All I can say is that those of you who used to regularly read the Blog will know why I really haven’t wanted to Blog since what happened, happened.
And that those some same of you who used to read the Blog have also been instrumental in persuading me to metaphorically take down the shutters, dust down the bar, and re-open for boring tirades nobody’s interested in business.
And so, Aragorn in Hidalgo The Lord of the Rings fashion, I return.
As is [was] often my habit I was recently reading the latest reviews on Beer in the Evening, and came across this gem regarding The George:
Best avoided at weekends especially if over 30. Cheap beer but clientele best described as vermin. I keep waiting for Ray Winstone to smack someone with a pool ball in a sock like in 'scum'
2 Mar 2012 05:26
Now clearly the commenter, whoever he/she might be, is a man/woman after my own heart.
[It’s likely, I suspect, that we both share an affinity for wearing Corduroy and mentally barring people for not sitting down].
But it’s absolutely true that on any given weekend night there are people walking God’s own country the streets of Enfield Town who are actual vermin.
ver·min
n.pl.vermin
1. Various small animals or insects, such as rats or cockroaches, that are destructive, annoying, or injurious to health.
2.
a. A person considered loathsome or highly offensive.
b. Such people considered as a group.
In fact, these are people upon whom rats and cockroaches would cast distain. These are people who actual sewer living rats look at, shrug their shoulders, give each other rueful significant glances, and walk away shaking their heads.
I give you an example:
On Saturday night I was in the Perryman/Times Square[1]with Daryl and Jude (who had come in for a few drinks before going to dinner), and Jade and Charlie behind the bar, when a friend of Daryl’s [I can actually picture Daryl sitting at his desk at work right at this moment reading this and swearing at the screen ‘she isn’t my fucking friend’] from the Kings Head came in with two random blokes.
So this woman [she’s 18/19 yrs old, but wearing her years hard. Crack head thin/pale, and with the slightly feral, vacant look of a race horse) comes in (the pub is virtually empty at this point), and sees Daryl and stops to talk to him.
And this part is worth describing in more detail.
She stops, leans in quite close to him, and says, ‘Hello Derek.’
Derek Daryl slightly uncomfortably says hello back, while Charlie, Jade, myself and Jude all look at one another for a long drawn out silent moment while we digest this – then look back at Derek Daryl and the woman – then back to one another - and then take a wordless joint decision to carry on our conversation and totally ignore Derek Daryl and the woman.
This goes on for a while and eventually the woman (who is the daughter of someone who drinks around town) says that she’s slightly wary of drinking in Taps because she gets up to all sorts [we didn’t realise that we were supposed to take this literally] when she’s out on an evening out.
Jude having told her [being unable to avoid getting drawn into the conversation at this piont] that she knows her mum.
At this point the woman departs and we continue with our evening [which mainly consisted of asking Daryl why he’d constructed an alternate persona for himself in the Kings Head, and that why if he was going to do so would he choose to call himself Derek?]
About forty minutes later Jade comes over to us and tells us that she’s had to ask Derek’s Daryl’s friend to leave because she’d been caught [I say caught, but it wasn’t actually caught and I really don’t want to go into the details of it. If you really must know ask Jade, I’m sure she’ll appreciate it] having sex in the ladies toilets with one of the blokes.
Jade also added that by the looks of things if they hadn’t have been caught she fully expected the other bloke to go down to the toilets with her afterwards.
[yes, my Taps friends, eeeeewwww]
Now am I being overly harsh regarding the young Lady in question? Well yes, almost certainly.
In fact, when it really comes down to it, I’m probably simply just being cruel to and about someone in no position to respond, for cruelty’s sake.
[I genuinely do try to be a good and decent person – I really do, but sometimes a target environment is too rich and sometimes I’m just too morally destitute to resist].
But sometimes....sometimes just the sheer fucking feral state of some of these people actually boggles the mind.
It amazes and appals me.
And she – Derek’s Daryl’s friend – is just one more example of it. One more person spitting on the stairs. One more person putting her foot on the bar. One more person being rude to the staff. One more person trying to start a fight with anyone and everyone. One more person not sitting down. One more person coked up and drunk beyond reason.
One more person unreconstructed, de-evolved and one Jaeger bomb away from throwing up on their own shoes.
One more person....oh, what does it matter.
Welcome back everyone!
[1] A welcome addition since last I posed supplied by our very own Ms Jones
