One Day.....

WST is like a slinky - mainly useless but a lot of fun to push it down the stairs.

Nemesis

In Greek mythology Nemesis was the Goddess of divine retribution who met out her punishments against those who succumb to hubris – which is to say arrogance (in an existential kind of way towards life/the universe/God etc).  The Greeks being very big on punishing pride and hubris and all that (which, when you think about it, is actually quite an English trait in a red top tabloid kind of way).

And life being such as it is, and men’s (in a all mankind sense of the word) pride being such that it is, I have been brought low by Nemesis (in the many forms that she takes) on several occasions through my life. She has been a constant visitor for many years. Leaving often, but always, ever, returning…..

There's a guy in the Taps who hates me.

[yeah, why don't you try and narrow it down for us you dick]

This, I'm sure, won't come as any particular surprise to those of you who have met me and inevitably came away hating my guts. Indeed, as my favourite teacher once said to me, 'Richard, to know you is to hate you. Basically, you're a dick.'

[Which I thought was a little unfair for parents evening at a primary school]

Anyway, this guy - and shall we call him WST - really hates me.

Which I actually don't mind all that much - that is, I don't mind the idea of being hated. In fact I really don't even mind the actuality of being hated. But what I do mind is being hated for no good reason (particularly when there are so many good reasons to hate me).

WST hates me because he thinks I'm a thief.

(And just to be clear - for all my faults and failings - I'm not a thief)

Now, why does he think that? I genuinely have absolutely no idea. None at all. But he's 100% convinced of it, and he hates me for it. I mean this guy genuinely despises me. And, as I say, I have absolutely no problem with him hating me, but at least hate me for a proper reason. Not some completely spurious bollocks about me being a thief which he's vomited up from the fetid dark pits of his retarded northern brain - not some ridiculous hatred that's just come from absolutely no-where. In fact I was completely flabbergasted when I first found out about it. Particularly as I found out in such an odd fashion.

One Tuesday night I was sat at the hatch as usual and WST was sat at a table (we, along with Deon, were the only people in the pub), and he got up from the table to go outside for a cigarette. As he  walked past the hatch he stopped and put a tenner on the bar next to me and said to Deon, 'can you do me a Guinness, I'll leave the money there' then he walks off - stops in the middle of the pub, has a little think to himself - turns and looks at me for a long moment, then walks back, picks up the tenner and says to Deon 'oh, on second thoughts I'll give you the money when I come back' - glares meaningfully at me again for about five seconds and walks outside to smoke.

So I said to Deon, 'what the fuck was that all about?' and she goes: 'oh yeah, he told me and Irena that you're a thief.'

Quite aside from the fact that neither Irena or Deon thought this was information worth imparting to me, what…what the holy fuck?

How has he come to this bizarre conclusion that I'm a thief and that therefore he should hate me and strive to make my life a misery?

How?

Look, as you know, I'm no stranger to forming deep seated and long lasting [mainly irrational - the operative word being mainly] hatreds of people (in fact I hated Sophie for about two years…actually that's unfair, I didn't hate her…I despised her very being….and it was probably more like 3 years). I'm all for all encompassing mainly irrational hatreds. It’s healthy.

But there has to be a modicum, a kernel, a fucking fig leaf of logic about it. Not just random crap you make up on the spot.

It's just so entirely – so toweringly – so ridiculously - unjust.  Why can’t that stupid fuckhead just hate me for an actual real reason? Is that so much to ask? It’s not like there aren’t a few to choose from. But no, this guy’s decided to make my life a misery for no reason at all.

So now here I am, locked in a triple threat death match for control of the Perryman with a man with the body of a deformed monkey and all the charm of rape.

And why?

Why, my houseguest, Nemesis, and my downfall, pride.

New Windows

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, in which case, given the way in which it’s been my experience that windows usually function (this is in no way to be taken as an admission of furtive nocturnal voyeurism on my part…..definitely not an admission), it must surely follow then that the soul must also be the window to the eyes.

(Tenuous I know, but it’s with such fuzzy logic that I navigate life).

(Which, no doubt, explains quite a lot).

But hold your horses, I’m not done yet.

For what then does that make the window? The window through which one may peer into the dark recesses of a person’s soul? What of the window in this transaction, this equation, this profoundly intimate conversation between eyes and soul?

What properties must be invested upon the window when it is so used? So exposed to the deepest secrets and the darkest truths.

What then of the window? The window through which one may view a soul?

A person’s soul – or indeed a pub’s soul.

(You knew I’d get there in the end)

Windows which lay bare all.

Windows through which those of us who from time to time frequent the Perryman are gaped and gawped out at, like unfortunately limbed circus freaks, by the bottom feeding, morally bankrupt, intellectually stunted, pond scum who are to be found smoking outside of Taps on a Saturday night.

Windows through which the private becomes the public. The unknown known. The Perryman revealed.

Unmasked.

Fallen.

Which is all to say that I’m not really the world’s biggest fan of the new clear windows in the Taps.

In case you didn’t get that.

You Can Blame the BBC I-Player for This One

I’ve been told on two separate occasions by two separate people (each of whom you all know very well and will have varying degrees of respect for their insights and opinions), that when I ask a question of someone I do so only to, respectively, argue with the answer that I’ve been given, and to use it as a platform from which to wax lengthy and dull on the subject myself.

And to those charges I can only say: it’s a fair cop Guv. Slap on the old silver bracelets and haul me away to the clink. Won’t ‘cause no trouble, Mister, honest.

(That’s how I talk)

Anyway, I bring this up because….

Do you guys know what morphic resonance, is?

No?

Oh well then, allow me to explain. Some scientists (by some I mean one, and by scientist I mean Dr Who) postulate the idea that, through a telepathic effect or sympathetic vibration, an event at one point in the world (or anywhere within the field) or act can lead to similar simultaneous acts occurring somewhere else in the field then, or in the future, that an idea conceived in one mind can then arise in another – or more – people’s mind at exactly the same time somewhere else within the field.

Which is to say that human beings share a kind of low level sub-harmonic psychic field with one another in much the same way that we take for granted animals (e.g. migrating birds) do.

Cool stuff, no?

Ok, only me.

Anyway, I bring this up because I was recently talking to an old friend of mine and she mentioned that last Thursday night (in Hackney) she was absolutely and unaccountably hammered – and this got me thinking, because last Thursday I (in Enfield) was also absolutely and unaccountably hammered – as indeed were my brother, Charlie and Gareth.

Unaccountably.

In general things aren’t normally unaccountable. They’re improbably or implausible. They’re coincidental and pernicious.

But they’re not unaccountable.

They’re just…well they’re just difficult to explain.

And so, following Sherlock Holme’s famous aphorism, ‘when you have eliminated all that is impossible, then whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth’ – why then naturally the only possible explanation for different people who were all drinking in different pubs to all be more drunk than they’d originally intended, had – HAD - to be morphic resonance.

I mean it’s obvious innit Guv’nor.

Think about it.

Thursdays have taken on a lethal will of their own.

Like Skynet or Herbie the Love Bug (which we now know was actually an allegory about Aids).

This idea that ‘Thursdays are the start of the weekend’ has taken hold across the country even though Thursday is quite obviously not the start of the weekend.

Friday evening is the start of the weekend.

It’s like saying celery is the start of the weekend.

Or Bob from marketing.

Just saying it doesn’t make it true….what makes it true is people acting like it’s true. And all it takes is enough people somewhere within the field to act as though it’s true and to believe it to be true, and that idea will resonate all across the morphic field.

A quite literal self-fulfilling prophecy.

So my friends, next Friday morning when you roll into work at 9.50am, stinking of flavoured vodka [and shame] and wearing last night’s lamb kebab on your shoes, and your boss asks you what on earth you think you’re playing at, well you just look him straight in the eye and you reply: morphic resonance, boss, morphic resonance.

Geronimo

Ladies and gentlemen I give you our very own Charles Curtis.

Just how he rolls, I guess.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtppczPfBtA&feature=plcp

Dread

I once read that the overwhelming compulsion which people who suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) feel to do what they do, is mainly one of terrifying incomprehensible dread.

A dread that, for instance, if they don’t wash their hands ten times every half an hour, that all of their family – every single person they love - will immediately and inexplicably fall down dead.

A dread that if they don’t turn the light on and off three times whenever they enter a room, the earth will be hit by a giant meteorite and all life on the planet immediately extinguished.

A dread that…well you get the idea.

They know it’s illogical, improbably and deeply damaging/debilitating to their lives…..but…well… it’s just there nevertheless.

They feel it in their bones, to their core…and goodness it’s difficult to change the way you feel.

They live caught in a perpetual dichotomy – a nightmarish cognitive dissonance in which they both know that their compulsion is illogical and a product of their own rebellious consciousness – but they also feel absolutely and entirely convinced that their dread is real.

Frankly it must be bloody awful and I feel for the poor blighters, and…you know what….I sort of get it.

With me – as most of you know – it’s sitting at corners.

I’m nowhere near suffering what those poor buggers have to daily endure, but I do sort of understand where they’re coming from.

In Taps I have to sit at the corner of the bar; whether that be behind the hatch, at the hatch or in the Perryman.

Anything else and I feel like I have ants in my brain. An unreasonably rage – a back of the neck burning, ears ringing, rage.

And of course I know it’s unreasonable – I really do. Contrary to all evidence I’m only half as stupid as I look. But it is what it is. That’s just me. That’s just it.

It’s undoubtedly my own fault of course; for letting it get so far I mean – for not squashing it dead and flat when those feelings first arose, but…well… it’s done now.

It is. It had become. It has manifested.

The ridiculous thing is that I can sit anywhere in the Kings Head. Obviously I much prefer to sit near the hatch – but I can live without it – but when it comes to Taps all bets are off. Whenever someone – someone who isn’t Barry that is – is sat in the corner or at the hatch, I just can’t enjoy myself.

For all the time that I’m in there all I’m doing is waiting for them to go. That’s it. I’m waiting, I’m worrying, by God I’m worrying, and minute by minute I’m becoming more and more enraged.

You might think we’re having a moderately interesting conversation about your day, or my day, or your holiday, or my….well, your holiday, but that isn’t what’s happening.

What’s happening is that I’m eyeing the corner and plotting blue bloody murder. I’m chopping up limbs in bath tubs in my head. I’m wondering where I can buy limestone. I’m bludgeoning some poor aged motherfucker to death with his own walking stick.

And I really wish I wasn’t like that – genuinely I do – and I know it’s immensely annoying to many people, but as I said, it just is what it is.

So all I can ask is that you continue to indulge me…after all, who knows, maybe it really is all that stands between us and planetary destruction. 

LEGAL

Our little boozer has been going through some strange days. They’re not over but it feels like they are at least beginning to draw to a close, and not a moment too soon. It has been exhausting.

Ever since some mystery bastard made the conscious decision to actively try and ruin someone else’s whole life, it’s seemed like we’ve been lurching from one crisis to the next. OK, maybe that’s a little dramatic - we’ve been trudging from one mishap to another.

But as I said it’s been exhausting. Particularly for me and the rest of the staff, because in our position (i.e. behind the bar) people expect us to have some sort of inside track on what the hell’s going on. I rarely do. However, that doesn’t stop the questions from coming…

Where’s the Russian? Why is she gone? Where’s my pint? Who’s the new manager? Does he only have one shirt? Why is he being a knob? What do you mean no lime? Is it a boycott? Where did the new manager go? Where’s my pint? Have you got the Celtic game on? What’s your problem? Didn’t I give you a twenty? How much!? Where did Des and Terry go? Do you want a crisp? Can you turn it up a bit? Can I have a crisp? Can you turn it down a bit? Who’s in charge here? Where’s my pint? As I’m sure you can imagine… It’s been a living hell.

On Tuesday phase one of the recovery was initiated. With any luck, by Christmas everything will be back to normal and The Taps will rise from the ashes like a sausage that’s fallen through the grill. I, for one, couldn’t be happier for The Taps’ newest British citizen. And the sooner she stops skiving off the better – it’s been 10 months, already… GET BACK TO WORK!