Wednesday, 7 March 2018
Gracey spun
walking with trepidation, as one would, down Chip Wrapper Lane in Congealton, I try not to look ahead. Instead my gaze is drawn solely to the ground on which I walk, even then, occasionally slipping on a discarded sanitary towel, or puddle of vomit.
The side of the traverse is piled high with the flotsam of discarded hope and strangulated dreams, amassed of empty crisp packets, used nappies, syringes, cigarette butts and the tears of the realistic, peppered occasionally with a discarded scratchcard where somebody has scrawped away the silver foil with a comb to behold the wilting disappointment of a non winner. Reaching the dip between the two oleaginous slopes of Chip Wrapper Lane I gaze upon a suppurating sump of bitterness and dying flies. A bicycle track bisects this putrefacted quiche of misery, and trails the soiled slabber up towards the rough hewn crapstone blocks of the front wall of the greasy spoon.
Two Strokes Caff, not, as one might deduce, named after its style of paint application, but for the amount of sweeps of a spoon used in preparation of the indigestible soup on sale within, is the erratically beating heart of Congealton. With windows muddied brown by years of airborne grease like the world's longest falling sneeze, the floor is mopped with bleach weekly, an act which barely scrapes the grotty surface of mank on the lino. The walls are yellow black with cigarette smoke, and tea stews endlessly in a giant vat on the counter, and costs 20p a cup. Butties cook in grease on a sticky stove behind the counter where the gentle buoyancy of bickering between owners Doreen and Gary, known to each other, and those too slow to move away, as Dorr and Garreh, oftentimes shortened to Ga, continues unabated.
The fat encrusted human toblerones have run this joint, as one might a dying racehorse, for nearly 20 years - a fact shown by 20 separate lines of congealed fat starting from the glutinous dado rail to the bowed ceiling. Dorr has a rugged and simultaneously crestfallen look, with a face of crumbling make up and facial hair, a bunioned lip, and whom crowns the glory of her visage by wearing a near wafer thin T shirt, sweat marked under the armpits and showing off her sagging cleavage, under which two further puddles of exfoliated grime have left an indelible stain. Ga, a bulbous and only partially continent former fork lift driver, has a peculiar odour and wears a 1987 Barcelona shirt over his fat breasts and pendulous belly. His jogging bottoms are scarcely above his buttocks, and his slippers are stuck together with gaffer tape, and worse. He often feigns deafnesss when being squawked at by Dorr. They hate each other, but would never part. Instead they revel in their shared determination to outsee each other into a timely grave.
Every thirty minutes Garreh has to nip outside for a tab. He sits on a once white plastic garden chair with one of the formerly broken off legs nailed back on at the back, which bends, but remains unbuckled under his considerable weight. Picking up a copy of the Daily Star to ogle paparazzi long range shots of long forgotten celebrities cleavage, and to read the salacious details of their confused and desperate lives, he grunts an acknowledging word, though indecipherable, to anyone he knows, mainly the elderly, or socially inept. Dorr soon screams for him to come back in as the sink has become blocked by congealed fat once again. Its time to undo the pipe and shake out the oozing blockage into the bin. "can't reuse this luff, am gunnave to throw it" he barks. Its Dorr's turn to feign deafness now, followed by stubborn disphonia.
Today there are more flies than usual, two of which have made it into Margaret's omelette. She has been coming here for longer than Garreh and Dorr have been trying to run it into the ground, their desire to do so frustrated by reckless regular customers such as Margaret herself, a tone deaf lady in her sixties who wears the same cardigan every day, and is the only person ever known to have visited the in cafe toilet facilities and returned alive.
On the wall on the left is a pin board of light damaged, stained and corner curled photographs of the couple and now long dead former customers on holiday in Benidorm in the early eighties. A few faded and food splattered business cards advertising a local taxi firm, and an offer to earn up to £100 a day by working from home, with the caveats written so small at the bottom that one would need a microscope to read them, are also attached, stapled on, since people used to steal the drawing pins and sell them to the scrap merchant to melt down.
The radio is permanently tuned to Radio 1 and plays the latest chart topping hits, some of which Dorr recognises the sound of, but is incapable of attaching any remnant of the tune to in her catterwauling impressions of. The channel sometimes features interviews with successful celebrities, the like of whom's shiny, sugar coated lives could never be found in Two Strokes, not even on a used and unwashed tea spoon.
Two Strokes opens at 07.00 every morning, providing sustenance and some humanity to those returning from a late night boogie at the nearby Crystal nightclub, enabling them to warm up with a mug of yesterday's tea and a stomach lining breakfast special sandwich - made, as it happens, with stomach lining. And black pudding and tinned tomatoes, for a bit of class.
Its now 15.00 and Dorr and Ga have taken last orders and woken up a customer who has been asleep for the last four hours, telling him to "piss off orm y gret lazy twat" in that vernacular way which the socially deranged find strangely comforting, muttering something about "the dark place" and Mother as they shamble out. The last of the bacon and sausage is taken off the hob and wrapped in cling film, then placed in the fridge, along with the crumb heavy butter and the full fat milk. The baps and sliced loaves, hardened by the heat and stagnant air, are covered in a PG tips tea towel which predates their ownership, and once the till is added up and any notes pound coins and 50 pence pieces have been gathered up into bank bags, the lights are turned off and Dorr and Ga step out into the frightful fresh air of the real world, recoiling in horror at its harsh freshness and natural odours.
And tomorrow, glasses scrubbed clean and hair gel applied to both, they will return to this crusted horse gin of misery and repeat the whole sorry process all over again. Two folks, fighting for degradation, in Two Strokes.
Yannis
Wednesday, 14 February 2018
Elderly racist bingo
Hello,
I think I have spent enough time on the bus and in hospital over the last few years to have become well aware of the phenomena which is the Elderly racist bingo. Times of annoyance (the bus journey) or trauma (the hospital) seem to instill such people with a niggling worm in their heads which gradually unfurls its full rancid glory through their false toothed mouths.
I first started playing this game when I was going every day to hospital to receive intravenous antibiotics for a month, last year. Usually there for two hours, and driven there, its worth pointing out, by persons the elderly moaners would be thinking of in their short sighted espousals, this was the perfect playing field for a game of prejudice rugby. Flailing, stumbling, grunting, pushing and kicking....the boundaries of common sense, high, out of the stadium, with every caustic utterance.
Yesterday, returning from an altogether different visit to the hospital, I was on the bus wanting to get home quickly, since I was feeling a little hypoglycemic, but found I had nothing on me containing sugar. Luckily, the slow panic was tamed slightly by the lilting repeated melodies of the assembled elderly racists, with their symphony of misrepresentation.
To play racist Bingo you of course need to know the rules. This version of bingo does not include numbers, well, apart from those they make up, but cards are instead completed by mentions of themes throughout the expungance. Below, and based partly on the utterances of yesterday, I will list some of the common themes which must feature in order to claim a strike on the card. For information, the lucidity or logic displayed, or lack of, is a subject only for later amusement - no matter how preposterous their ideas, the named theme when mentioned counts. See the guide below to involved themes:
1. Them
e.g: "thi come orrear, claiming to escape from hughgander or hughgosslarbyer or wurrever, an thiv no intention of wukkin, thir ere forran easy ride"
2. Council
e.g: "n carrnsull gee um everyfin f nowt, jus cuss thi foreign, new ome, car, clotes, mobile fone. Ar carnt afford a mobile fone...."
Extra points can be held over to complete "house" if the elderly racist has a mobile phone which goes off at a later time during the symphony.....
3. Bus passes
e.g: "n thiv orl go tbus passes, the gerrum f free fromt Governmunt, cuss thi foreign, but we don't gerr any elp"
You must try and ignore the free travel for the elderly at this point. Its not their fault.
4. Work
e.g: "n thiv got no intention of workin, none of em, therrear ont scrarnge f benefits, cuss thi norr wirra soff touch in this country"
5 Established cultural differences
e.g: "n thi orl goo abart in them masks and flowing garns dunt thi, worra thi call em Bejams, or Hibabobs or summat I dornt chuffin norr...
6. Men
e.g: "n thirrorl unkempt wi massive beards arnt thi. And you rallis see um walking darnt street doin nothin - apart from chatting on thi morbile fones wot council uv ginnum cos thiv escaped from Rubarbistan....."
7. Us
e.g: "we would never av done that, and we would have stayed in bulgaslavia t fight like proper men un all. My Bert, got bles im is bin ded 70 year odd, he would have blown um up rather than go and live in France as a Refugee..."
8. Tax
e.g " arv wukked for 80 year in this country (I exaggerated this figure to blend in with the underlying theme of the piece) and have pait me tax n national insurance from day one. Un woddawar get from the Government, bloody nowt arl tell yer, bloody nowt. An I bet they don't pay any tax for th free ealthcare ont NHS"
9. Degrading of a once previously beautiful area
e.g: " Ooh Darnull's gon darnt shitter now, it used to be a playground of joy and opportunity before these moved in, nar this kids and dog shit all ort streets"
10. Legislative rights of abode
e.g: "thiv norr right to beere anyway, nonuvum, its ornly cuss wi too soff in this country to kick em art that thirarebl to stay at all...."
11 Et cetera.......
There are of course other themes specific perhaps to certain areas - in Sheffield its also essential to point out that "the foreigns never yust t work int Steel mills, and even if they had still bin oppen when thi came ere, thi never wouldve either." The joy of living in such a large and varied country is that themes of racism are interchangeable and subject to rapid revision, just like the facts that supposedly back up their infernal grumbling.
Luckily, the bus somehow managed to get me home before I slipped into a diabetic coma and so I was able to get home alive to think about how absurd this unending promlugation was, and how I had managed to predict about 7 of the above themes prior to their appearance in the symphony.
Thus far I have never, ever, in listening to such performances, shouted "House!". I fear that may cause actual rational debate which might, worse still, even call into question the accuracy of some of the claims that they have taken directly from la-la land. Its best just to quietly clench your fist and pull a bearing teeth celebratory face, before getting on with whatever else you should have been doing.
Please don't, by the way, think am specifically targeting the elderly, in an oldist way. Its simply that these are the people whose racist drivel I have to endure most often when I venture out of the house. Racism, alas, comes in all manner of different hues. Which is at best ironic...
Yannis
I think I have spent enough time on the bus and in hospital over the last few years to have become well aware of the phenomena which is the Elderly racist bingo. Times of annoyance (the bus journey) or trauma (the hospital) seem to instill such people with a niggling worm in their heads which gradually unfurls its full rancid glory through their false toothed mouths.
I first started playing this game when I was going every day to hospital to receive intravenous antibiotics for a month, last year. Usually there for two hours, and driven there, its worth pointing out, by persons the elderly moaners would be thinking of in their short sighted espousals, this was the perfect playing field for a game of prejudice rugby. Flailing, stumbling, grunting, pushing and kicking....the boundaries of common sense, high, out of the stadium, with every caustic utterance.
Yesterday, returning from an altogether different visit to the hospital, I was on the bus wanting to get home quickly, since I was feeling a little hypoglycemic, but found I had nothing on me containing sugar. Luckily, the slow panic was tamed slightly by the lilting repeated melodies of the assembled elderly racists, with their symphony of misrepresentation.
To play racist Bingo you of course need to know the rules. This version of bingo does not include numbers, well, apart from those they make up, but cards are instead completed by mentions of themes throughout the expungance. Below, and based partly on the utterances of yesterday, I will list some of the common themes which must feature in order to claim a strike on the card. For information, the lucidity or logic displayed, or lack of, is a subject only for later amusement - no matter how preposterous their ideas, the named theme when mentioned counts. See the guide below to involved themes:
1. Them
e.g: "thi come orrear, claiming to escape from hughgander or hughgosslarbyer or wurrever, an thiv no intention of wukkin, thir ere forran easy ride"
2. Council
e.g: "n carrnsull gee um everyfin f nowt, jus cuss thi foreign, new ome, car, clotes, mobile fone. Ar carnt afford a mobile fone...."
Extra points can be held over to complete "house" if the elderly racist has a mobile phone which goes off at a later time during the symphony.....
3. Bus passes
e.g: "n thiv orl go tbus passes, the gerrum f free fromt Governmunt, cuss thi foreign, but we don't gerr any elp"
You must try and ignore the free travel for the elderly at this point. Its not their fault.
4. Work
e.g: "n thiv got no intention of workin, none of em, therrear ont scrarnge f benefits, cuss thi norr wirra soff touch in this country"
5 Established cultural differences
e.g: "n thi orl goo abart in them masks and flowing garns dunt thi, worra thi call em Bejams, or Hibabobs or summat I dornt chuffin norr...
6. Men
e.g: "n thirrorl unkempt wi massive beards arnt thi. And you rallis see um walking darnt street doin nothin - apart from chatting on thi morbile fones wot council uv ginnum cos thiv escaped from Rubarbistan....."
7. Us
e.g: "we would never av done that, and we would have stayed in bulgaslavia t fight like proper men un all. My Bert, got bles im is bin ded 70 year odd, he would have blown um up rather than go and live in France as a Refugee..."
8. Tax
e.g " arv wukked for 80 year in this country (I exaggerated this figure to blend in with the underlying theme of the piece) and have pait me tax n national insurance from day one. Un woddawar get from the Government, bloody nowt arl tell yer, bloody nowt. An I bet they don't pay any tax for th free ealthcare ont NHS"
9. Degrading of a once previously beautiful area
e.g: " Ooh Darnull's gon darnt shitter now, it used to be a playground of joy and opportunity before these moved in, nar this kids and dog shit all ort streets"
10. Legislative rights of abode
e.g: "thiv norr right to beere anyway, nonuvum, its ornly cuss wi too soff in this country to kick em art that thirarebl to stay at all...."
11 Et cetera.......
There are of course other themes specific perhaps to certain areas - in Sheffield its also essential to point out that "the foreigns never yust t work int Steel mills, and even if they had still bin oppen when thi came ere, thi never wouldve either." The joy of living in such a large and varied country is that themes of racism are interchangeable and subject to rapid revision, just like the facts that supposedly back up their infernal grumbling.
Luckily, the bus somehow managed to get me home before I slipped into a diabetic coma and so I was able to get home alive to think about how absurd this unending promlugation was, and how I had managed to predict about 7 of the above themes prior to their appearance in the symphony.
Thus far I have never, ever, in listening to such performances, shouted "House!". I fear that may cause actual rational debate which might, worse still, even call into question the accuracy of some of the claims that they have taken directly from la-la land. Its best just to quietly clench your fist and pull a bearing teeth celebratory face, before getting on with whatever else you should have been doing.
Please don't, by the way, think am specifically targeting the elderly, in an oldist way. Its simply that these are the people whose racist drivel I have to endure most often when I venture out of the house. Racism, alas, comes in all manner of different hues. Which is at best ironic...
Yannis
Friday, 26 January 2018
Humour by repetition
Hello,
the second of no more or many more rememberances from the fuzzy haze of my employment on Joiner street in the 1990s.
Following a recommendation from myself (see Morning John post), my friend not Mark was employed with us doing packing and picking of exam papers. One regular employee was not Paul, who wasn't a sculptor and didn't live in Dronfield. Hopefully the word not will prevent anyone from identifying themselves or others in this post.....
Paul, sorry, not Paul, was a rather serious individual. Not Mark was a rather jolly chap with a determination to wind people up, at any length. He also possessed the world's most annoying high pitched and very loud laugh. If one, say, not Paul, was already annoyed by his wind ups, then his laughing at the same would hugely exacerbate the affects.
One day Paul* confided in us, for reason that given the above are unclear, that he was having issues with his latest sculpture. Mark** laughed. Paul was immediately annoyed and noticeably disappointed, and stated that he knew he shouldn't have tried to confide in us about his calling ( I made the last two words up....). I tried to assuage his discomfort with supportive mumblings but he said he didn't want to talk about it because Mark would laugh. Mark insisted this was not the case. And so it began...
M: "Paul, go on mate, tell us about your sculpture"
P " No, I already said no"
M "Goo on mate"
P " No"
M " Goo onnnnn"
P "No"
M "why not?"
P " because you'll laugh"
M "I wont".
P "You will"
M " Paul, mate, I wont"
P "You will"
M " I promise I wont....."
Ten minutes later.....
M "Goo on Paul, tell us"
P "NO!"
Myself and Mark had often talked about how immature and yet simultaneously amusing humour by repetition was. Taking this on board, Mark began a three month campaign of repeated queries about the nature or even name of Paul's sculpture. Every time Paul would steadfastly refuse to divulge any details about his handiwork.
Eventually, in the last week of his stint (we only worked until September in the main) and after having been asked approximately a thousand times in the preceding months, Mark asked Paul what the sculpture was of, about and called. Having asked Mark three times for his assurance that he wouldn't laugh, Paul decided to finally off load.
The thing is, after such a long time I can't remember what Paul said. I think he started by saying "It represents" and he went on to provide a reasonable, cogent, non outlandish description of its form and meaning.
I looked at Mark.
He laughed.
The loudest, highest pitched, most exaggerated laugh you have ever heard. For about ten minutes. With tears rolling down his face. And our colleagues also laughed.
Paul nearly laughed as well, before his serious face intensified and he looked down at the table in front of him, slowly shaking his head after a long, despairing sigh.
Its tribute to the overwhelming sad hilarity of Mark's persistence that I remember that, only, and not a word of Paul's painfully extricated admittance of inspiration or sculptured meaning. This was a victory for the power of repetition, and an event which sadly may have made Paul question the meaning of his work to the extent that he simply stopped creating claymotions. I genuinely hope that is not the case.
As much as I genuinely also hope that Paul now looks back on that moment with at least a wry smile.
Yannis
*Not
**Not
the second of no more or many more rememberances from the fuzzy haze of my employment on Joiner street in the 1990s.
Following a recommendation from myself (see Morning John post), my friend not Mark was employed with us doing packing and picking of exam papers. One regular employee was not Paul, who wasn't a sculptor and didn't live in Dronfield. Hopefully the word not will prevent anyone from identifying themselves or others in this post.....
Paul, sorry, not Paul, was a rather serious individual. Not Mark was a rather jolly chap with a determination to wind people up, at any length. He also possessed the world's most annoying high pitched and very loud laugh. If one, say, not Paul, was already annoyed by his wind ups, then his laughing at the same would hugely exacerbate the affects.
One day Paul* confided in us, for reason that given the above are unclear, that he was having issues with his latest sculpture. Mark** laughed. Paul was immediately annoyed and noticeably disappointed, and stated that he knew he shouldn't have tried to confide in us about his calling ( I made the last two words up....). I tried to assuage his discomfort with supportive mumblings but he said he didn't want to talk about it because Mark would laugh. Mark insisted this was not the case. And so it began...
M: "Paul, go on mate, tell us about your sculpture"
P " No, I already said no"
M "Goo on mate"
P " No"
M " Goo onnnnn"
P "No"
M "why not?"
P " because you'll laugh"
M "I wont".
P "You will"
M " Paul, mate, I wont"
P "You will"
M " I promise I wont....."
Ten minutes later.....
M "Goo on Paul, tell us"
P "NO!"
Myself and Mark had often talked about how immature and yet simultaneously amusing humour by repetition was. Taking this on board, Mark began a three month campaign of repeated queries about the nature or even name of Paul's sculpture. Every time Paul would steadfastly refuse to divulge any details about his handiwork.
Eventually, in the last week of his stint (we only worked until September in the main) and after having been asked approximately a thousand times in the preceding months, Mark asked Paul what the sculpture was of, about and called. Having asked Mark three times for his assurance that he wouldn't laugh, Paul decided to finally off load.
The thing is, after such a long time I can't remember what Paul said. I think he started by saying "It represents" and he went on to provide a reasonable, cogent, non outlandish description of its form and meaning.
I looked at Mark.
He laughed.
The loudest, highest pitched, most exaggerated laugh you have ever heard. For about ten minutes. With tears rolling down his face. And our colleagues also laughed.
Paul nearly laughed as well, before his serious face intensified and he looked down at the table in front of him, slowly shaking his head after a long, despairing sigh.
Its tribute to the overwhelming sad hilarity of Mark's persistence that I remember that, only, and not a word of Paul's painfully extricated admittance of inspiration or sculptured meaning. This was a victory for the power of repetition, and an event which sadly may have made Paul question the meaning of his work to the extent that he simply stopped creating claymotions. I genuinely hope that is not the case.
As much as I genuinely also hope that Paul now looks back on that moment with at least a wry smile.
Yannis
*Not
**Not
Wednesday, 3 January 2018
Wells
Hulloo,
in 2009 or 2010 I went to visit my Canadian relatives in Mundesley where they were staying, in Norfolk*. I say it was Mundesley, but am not 100% sure - none of my pics names the village or where we stayed or the restaurant we visited them at. En route we stopped at a pub called the Chequers at Binham, which was selling food and own brewed beers. To be honest it was too early to eat so we just had ale, but not long after leaving we wanted a bit of snap.
Wells next the sea is a "civil parish" according to Wikipedia, and a town according to Google, and had a pub selling Woodfordes ales on gravity according to the Good Beer Guide. We didn't go in as wanted a bite to eat, maybe a sandwich or soup. Within the conurbation we spotted a sign for a licensed tearoom selling cakes, sandwiches, soups and real ales. This sounded ideal. The venue was, indeed, a purveyor of all the listed. Once you had navigated your way though their incomprehensibly rigid and unbending application of the house rules that was. Thus....
Arriving at 13.40 they served food until 14.00 so we ordered straight away. The waitress said "you'll ave t ope thorven still on" and stalked off in disgust to check. Now, I'm not a catering professional, but my oven takes just over six minutes to heat to 200 degrees, and less time once its turned off, to reheat. At 13.48 she returned and grumpily conceded that the oven's warmth had been sufficiently maintained to cook, but we would have to order immediately since they stopped serving food at 14.00. Warmed by this jolly badinage we ordered simple dishes that would take little time to heat up, along with two Woodfordes bottled beers. We were told we could only have beer if we were eating. It was difficult, having just ordered food at great personal cost to the tea room, to know how to respond.
Whilst awaiting our tiring masticatory exercise to begin, a group nearby ordered three cream teas, which, as the board of truth made clear, comprised of a mug of tea, and a large homemade scone with jam and cream. One of the group of incomers asked if instead of tea she could have a coffee. "Year, but yull arv pay exstra forr it" was the enlightening response. No explanation of why the cup of tea could be replaced by coffee for the difference in price of the two alone, was provided. Since a cup of coffee cost £2.50 they were charged £4.50 for the scone and jam and cream and the £2.50 on top. Amazing!
Having eaten our luckily available food stuffs I got a couple of bottles of beer to take out and the waitress of unhappiness strode away with our plates, to meet a gentleman who had come in to the tearoom with his DOG. I expected the doilly-dour to pick up a shotgun but instead she barked "yurr carn aff yur dorg in eurr" to which the apparent miscreant replied he had simply come in for a cream tea and would happily take it to consume outside. He was informed that they couldn't take the china cups, plates or tea pots outside as it wasn't allowed (it was a private courtyard) so, undeterred, he said he would put the dog outside, wait for them to serve his cream tea and then take it outside himself. " Can't do thart neiver" was the response. He left.
At 14.05 a group of seven came in wanting food. Heathens! They had obviously in their impudence not read the sign, and were roundly rebuked for their unwarranted intransigence. Disappointed they opted to stay for a pint, but were firmly instructed that the pub (which did exist, at the back), was only open on days of the week with a "w" in and only opened at 19.00. Despite this, they all opted for a tea and piece of cake. Apparently that is not food. Who was to know?
I waited to pay by card with a card machine whose connection speed was comparable to the Arctic circle whilst the pissed off waitress was barked at rudely by managers. Seeing her ill treatment reminded me that actually, it was likely an establishment or owner led campaign of absurdity. The lass didn't want to be there any more than the put upon visitors. It was quite a sad scene.
I never cease to be surprised how many folk set up business in the catering and hospitality sector who don't appear to have an ounce of hospitality in them. I realise they often have any humanity drilled out of them by hoardes of dysfunctional simpletons, but if anything that just makes the whole situation even more sad.
The above is not why I have never returned to Wells nts, which am sure is lovely, but goes into my file of ridiculous rules and restrictions which appear to belong almost exclusively to cafes and tearooms in the UK.
Cheers!
Yannis
*to be fair, my friend Ade, who is from Norfolk, and whom even after reading this remains my friend, has posted a link to Norfolk dialect on my Faceache wall. So here it is, for your perusal.....
in 2009 or 2010 I went to visit my Canadian relatives in Mundesley where they were staying, in Norfolk*. I say it was Mundesley, but am not 100% sure - none of my pics names the village or where we stayed or the restaurant we visited them at. En route we stopped at a pub called the Chequers at Binham, which was selling food and own brewed beers. To be honest it was too early to eat so we just had ale, but not long after leaving we wanted a bit of snap.
Wells next the sea is a "civil parish" according to Wikipedia, and a town according to Google, and had a pub selling Woodfordes ales on gravity according to the Good Beer Guide. We didn't go in as wanted a bite to eat, maybe a sandwich or soup. Within the conurbation we spotted a sign for a licensed tearoom selling cakes, sandwiches, soups and real ales. This sounded ideal. The venue was, indeed, a purveyor of all the listed. Once you had navigated your way though their incomprehensibly rigid and unbending application of the house rules that was. Thus....
Arriving at 13.40 they served food until 14.00 so we ordered straight away. The waitress said "you'll ave t ope thorven still on" and stalked off in disgust to check. Now, I'm not a catering professional, but my oven takes just over six minutes to heat to 200 degrees, and less time once its turned off, to reheat. At 13.48 she returned and grumpily conceded that the oven's warmth had been sufficiently maintained to cook, but we would have to order immediately since they stopped serving food at 14.00. Warmed by this jolly badinage we ordered simple dishes that would take little time to heat up, along with two Woodfordes bottled beers. We were told we could only have beer if we were eating. It was difficult, having just ordered food at great personal cost to the tea room, to know how to respond.
Whilst awaiting our tiring masticatory exercise to begin, a group nearby ordered three cream teas, which, as the board of truth made clear, comprised of a mug of tea, and a large homemade scone with jam and cream. One of the group of incomers asked if instead of tea she could have a coffee. "Year, but yull arv pay exstra forr it" was the enlightening response. No explanation of why the cup of tea could be replaced by coffee for the difference in price of the two alone, was provided. Since a cup of coffee cost £2.50 they were charged £4.50 for the scone and jam and cream and the £2.50 on top. Amazing!
Having eaten our luckily available food stuffs I got a couple of bottles of beer to take out and the waitress of unhappiness strode away with our plates, to meet a gentleman who had come in to the tearoom with his DOG. I expected the doilly-dour to pick up a shotgun but instead she barked "yurr carn aff yur dorg in eurr" to which the apparent miscreant replied he had simply come in for a cream tea and would happily take it to consume outside. He was informed that they couldn't take the china cups, plates or tea pots outside as it wasn't allowed (it was a private courtyard) so, undeterred, he said he would put the dog outside, wait for them to serve his cream tea and then take it outside himself. " Can't do thart neiver" was the response. He left.
At 14.05 a group of seven came in wanting food. Heathens! They had obviously in their impudence not read the sign, and were roundly rebuked for their unwarranted intransigence. Disappointed they opted to stay for a pint, but were firmly instructed that the pub (which did exist, at the back), was only open on days of the week with a "w" in and only opened at 19.00. Despite this, they all opted for a tea and piece of cake. Apparently that is not food. Who was to know?
I waited to pay by card with a card machine whose connection speed was comparable to the Arctic circle whilst the pissed off waitress was barked at rudely by managers. Seeing her ill treatment reminded me that actually, it was likely an establishment or owner led campaign of absurdity. The lass didn't want to be there any more than the put upon visitors. It was quite a sad scene.
I never cease to be surprised how many folk set up business in the catering and hospitality sector who don't appear to have an ounce of hospitality in them. I realise they often have any humanity drilled out of them by hoardes of dysfunctional simpletons, but if anything that just makes the whole situation even more sad.
The above is not why I have never returned to Wells nts, which am sure is lovely, but goes into my file of ridiculous rules and restrictions which appear to belong almost exclusively to cafes and tearooms in the UK.
Cheers!
Yannis
*to be fair, my friend Ade, who is from Norfolk, and whom even after reading this remains my friend, has posted a link to Norfolk dialect on my Faceache wall. So here it is, for your perusal.....
Saturday, 23 December 2017
Morning John
Hello,
one of my first full time jobs was for a charity which carried out important work in the field of exams. One would expect the assessment board I worked for to be a Government Department but it was a registered charity who only took on temporary staff by existing staff recommendation, and advertised full time posts at any level with the requirement to have a degree (from 1994 onwards, am guessing this previously did not apply....)
I worked the majority of my periods of employment (since I did not have a degree) at Joiner Street in Sheffield and there were a small number of permanent staff who ran the show all year round, including quiet periods when it wasn't immediately obvious what it was they could have found to do. Although I did once find an answer machine message asking one of them to sort the elastic bands out into size order....
Dan, Christine, Alan, and Wotsit John were those thus tasked. If you are, or worked with and liked anyone there, I will apologise now. Am going to have to be honest about what went on.
Dan was in charge, Mrs Christine as I called her was in charge of office functionality, Alan wore a shiny blue coat, and John was a very thirsty fellow indeed. On my first day I didn't realise Dan was in charge because he was dressed in overalls unlike almost everyone else, but found out he was prior to making any terrible mistakes. Mrs Christine was friendly if a little unsteady, Alan was also friendly if a little over serious and John was paralytic. I initially thought he had a speech impediment. He did. His speech was severely impeded by excessive quantities of alcohol.
Over time I came to realise that Mrs Christine also liked a drop. The first female member of temporary staff of the year was surprised to find a box with bottles of gin in it in the Ladies toilet. Christine's unsteadiness was less obvious to link to frol but her wavering vocal tones belied the truth. Dan probably knew about both but seemed fairly relaxed, until one of the senior managers came down. He said to John, " Now then John can you just nip down to check if everything is alright in the warehouse in the yard please" in a cunning rouse to keep John from putting his foot in it or appearing as in his cups as he actually was. He ignored this request, and on seeing him, the senior manager Roger said "Oh, Morning John" to which John replied "Morning John". I get the feeling Roger also was aware.
Break times were an interesting affair involving interaction between yoot (including I) and the more experienced staff members. George and Howard were good friends of mine, and I tolerated BananaDon, a not yellow phallus shaped dinosaur, and to a far lesser extent, John. John often started his day's tale (oft repeated) with the line " Ehvum er wotshit. I er ad Sheppus pie lasht night". There followed an awkward pause whilst the wise chose to escape, and John tried to reassemble the disparate fragments of his memory to treat us to the next line, before he continued " Ehvum er, minsch beef, taties, massed, gravy...evhum, er...." after which salient facts the candle or his memory was snuffed out by his alcohol stream. He also told us many times about his mate's oven which he had offered to fix, about a fish which was 12 inches long (to his surprise, although there was no conclusion to this anecdote) and his favourite " Ehvum wotsit, a frenjaminesyjz daughter.....".
Alas as a nineteen year old my cup of sympathy did not overrun. I once coined the phrase at seeing someone fail to throw a parcel into a box by miles " What, on a scale of John to ten, was that?" and things got worse the day we discovered his stash.
We were clearing out one of the rooms downstairs, next to the one the band Longpigs used to practice in, and were asked to dismantle some shelving. In his crapulence, Wotsit John had clearly forgotten that his stash, or more likely one of his many stashs, of rum, was kept in the one we were dismantling. Imagine our surprise at finding three bottles of rum, two open, one half empty, with no sign of dust. "What are these doing here John?" we asked, knowingly. "Ehvurrm, er Wotsit um....ave ad a cold". That must have been some virus to require that much alcohol....
Am not proud to say this but we watched where John put his stash and went straight back down, found, and hid it. We then put up signs saying Rum - this way. John was understandably not amused, although neither were the managers (likewise understandably) so the signs, and my mate's hilarious caricature of John wearing a jumper saying Pisht on it in a sea of rum, were removed. Am not proud, but it still makes me laugh. Something Christine didn't do when John rang in sick one day and I asked if he'd had a rum do.
I left to take up a permanent job in 1998 or 99 shortly before all such work was moved to Manchester, but am still in touch with four of the people I worked with. It is still something that comes up in almost every conversation we have. There are many more tales from this place, but I will have to think very carefully about how, and indeed if, I can share them.
Cheers!
Yannis
one of my first full time jobs was for a charity which carried out important work in the field of exams. One would expect the assessment board I worked for to be a Government Department but it was a registered charity who only took on temporary staff by existing staff recommendation, and advertised full time posts at any level with the requirement to have a degree (from 1994 onwards, am guessing this previously did not apply....)
I worked the majority of my periods of employment (since I did not have a degree) at Joiner Street in Sheffield and there were a small number of permanent staff who ran the show all year round, including quiet periods when it wasn't immediately obvious what it was they could have found to do. Although I did once find an answer machine message asking one of them to sort the elastic bands out into size order....
Dan, Christine, Alan, and Wotsit John were those thus tasked. If you are, or worked with and liked anyone there, I will apologise now. Am going to have to be honest about what went on.
Dan was in charge, Mrs Christine as I called her was in charge of office functionality, Alan wore a shiny blue coat, and John was a very thirsty fellow indeed. On my first day I didn't realise Dan was in charge because he was dressed in overalls unlike almost everyone else, but found out he was prior to making any terrible mistakes. Mrs Christine was friendly if a little unsteady, Alan was also friendly if a little over serious and John was paralytic. I initially thought he had a speech impediment. He did. His speech was severely impeded by excessive quantities of alcohol.
Over time I came to realise that Mrs Christine also liked a drop. The first female member of temporary staff of the year was surprised to find a box with bottles of gin in it in the Ladies toilet. Christine's unsteadiness was less obvious to link to frol but her wavering vocal tones belied the truth. Dan probably knew about both but seemed fairly relaxed, until one of the senior managers came down. He said to John, " Now then John can you just nip down to check if everything is alright in the warehouse in the yard please" in a cunning rouse to keep John from putting his foot in it or appearing as in his cups as he actually was. He ignored this request, and on seeing him, the senior manager Roger said "Oh, Morning John" to which John replied "Morning John". I get the feeling Roger also was aware.
Break times were an interesting affair involving interaction between yoot (including I) and the more experienced staff members. George and Howard were good friends of mine, and I tolerated BananaDon, a not yellow phallus shaped dinosaur, and to a far lesser extent, John. John often started his day's tale (oft repeated) with the line " Ehvum er wotshit. I er ad Sheppus pie lasht night". There followed an awkward pause whilst the wise chose to escape, and John tried to reassemble the disparate fragments of his memory to treat us to the next line, before he continued " Ehvum er, minsch beef, taties, massed, gravy...evhum, er...." after which salient facts the candle or his memory was snuffed out by his alcohol stream. He also told us many times about his mate's oven which he had offered to fix, about a fish which was 12 inches long (to his surprise, although there was no conclusion to this anecdote) and his favourite " Ehvum wotsit, a frenjaminesyjz daughter.....".
Alas as a nineteen year old my cup of sympathy did not overrun. I once coined the phrase at seeing someone fail to throw a parcel into a box by miles " What, on a scale of John to ten, was that?" and things got worse the day we discovered his stash.
We were clearing out one of the rooms downstairs, next to the one the band Longpigs used to practice in, and were asked to dismantle some shelving. In his crapulence, Wotsit John had clearly forgotten that his stash, or more likely one of his many stashs, of rum, was kept in the one we were dismantling. Imagine our surprise at finding three bottles of rum, two open, one half empty, with no sign of dust. "What are these doing here John?" we asked, knowingly. "Ehvurrm, er Wotsit um....ave ad a cold". That must have been some virus to require that much alcohol....
Am not proud to say this but we watched where John put his stash and went straight back down, found, and hid it. We then put up signs saying Rum - this way. John was understandably not amused, although neither were the managers (likewise understandably) so the signs, and my mate's hilarious caricature of John wearing a jumper saying Pisht on it in a sea of rum, were removed. Am not proud, but it still makes me laugh. Something Christine didn't do when John rang in sick one day and I asked if he'd had a rum do.
I left to take up a permanent job in 1998 or 99 shortly before all such work was moved to Manchester, but am still in touch with four of the people I worked with. It is still something that comes up in almost every conversation we have. There are many more tales from this place, but I will have to think very carefully about how, and indeed if, I can share them.
Cheers!
Yannis
Saturday, 16 December 2017
Names
Now then,
have been inspired to write this short post partially as a nickname maker, and also based on having read people's experiences of mispronunciation and mis-spelling of their names this year. Ironically, am not willing to tell you my real name, but there are many people I know who have had their monikers mangled. Mark Conlan and Roxy Cram certainly had a hard time of people misunderstanding what they were called, as am sure Mr Colon and Roy Crumb would agree.....
Years ago I worked for a firm in Rotherham and one of the managers lived up the road from me. He told me the following story about his neighbour. I may have misremembered the names in this tale by the way. Which is at best ironic....
Every year he and his wife used to send a card to their neighbour, John, across the road. They noticed he didn't seem to leave the house much or have many visitors and I think they felt sorry for John. However, despite sending him a heartfelt cardboard missive every year for something like fifteen years they never once got one back. This was put down to him being shy or reclusive, and was never an issue.
Years passed by and cards were sent and one year, a card from someone new appeared on the mat. Sensing it may have been from John himself, it was opened with expectant glee. It read:
"Dear Bob and Linda,
thank you very much for your card.
Wishing you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
All the best
Frank.
AKA John....."
I am happy to admit that the above really tickled me. As Bob would have said "well al gu t't foot ur ar stairs". A great phrase that I learned during my employ in Rotherham....
Yannis
have been inspired to write this short post partially as a nickname maker, and also based on having read people's experiences of mispronunciation and mis-spelling of their names this year. Ironically, am not willing to tell you my real name, but there are many people I know who have had their monikers mangled. Mark Conlan and Roxy Cram certainly had a hard time of people misunderstanding what they were called, as am sure Mr Colon and Roy Crumb would agree.....
Years ago I worked for a firm in Rotherham and one of the managers lived up the road from me. He told me the following story about his neighbour. I may have misremembered the names in this tale by the way. Which is at best ironic....
Every year he and his wife used to send a card to their neighbour, John, across the road. They noticed he didn't seem to leave the house much or have many visitors and I think they felt sorry for John. However, despite sending him a heartfelt cardboard missive every year for something like fifteen years they never once got one back. This was put down to him being shy or reclusive, and was never an issue.
Years passed by and cards were sent and one year, a card from someone new appeared on the mat. Sensing it may have been from John himself, it was opened with expectant glee. It read:
"Dear Bob and Linda,
thank you very much for your card.
Wishing you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
All the best
Frank.
AKA John....."
I am happy to admit that the above really tickled me. As Bob would have said "well al gu t't foot ur ar stairs". A great phrase that I learned during my employ in Rotherham....
Yannis
Friday, 8 December 2017
Peanuts
Hellall,
the woman next door has an insanely annoying yapping shit hound of despair called Bobby, or as I have named him, Be-elzebobby. This cantankerous oversized barking rat yaps himself into a coma every time I leave, enter or make any noise or movement in my house. This, after two years, is incredibly annoying. Her ownership and tolerance of the little twat poses a good number of questions, of which I will share two ( I can hear him yapping now, no doubt irritated by my the resonance of my loud typing through the thin pot walls of our houses). Where in the name of Satan did she find this wholly nauseating creature, and why does she not realise, and also tolerate, just how chuffing annoying the thing is?
She still tells it that there is nobody there and to get back inside whenever I leave which is fairly annoying in itself. And Be-elzebobby steadfastly ignores her every instruction. When she does see me she says hello and asks in a charming way if am alright. I have not yet answered " I will be, when your bloody dog dies" because I fear this may make me look intolerant or rude.
Thinking how unavoidably frustrating the creature's existence is I recall living in lower Walkley next to a lovely lady with a white curly haired miniature or Highland terrier who hated cats. We had three. I don't know what his actual name was but am willing to bet it was a male human one - like David, Phillip, or Rupert. I myself used Chinese and American Indian influences to name him " Yap ping shite". And our youngest and most agile cat, Bruin used to love dancing about high up on the walls and at the fence where the dog could see him but not get though, which sent the white woolly creature insane.
The above may suggest I hate dogs or have similar sounding issues but in fact we had a dog when we lived in Scotland, a black and white collie who stayed with my Granddad when we moved. Arriving in Sheffield in 1978 aged nearly four we took on a dog from the RSPCA who was a cross of an Alsatian and a non yapping terrier. My Mum called her Peanuts after a stray dog they had featured on Play School or Blue Peter, of the same name. Probably for the best, since as a four year old I wanted to call her seaweed. Am not sure WF or my granddad would have wanted that.
Peanuts had been a stray and just wanted to be loved, and loved she was. She had a trapped nerve in her leg which made it shake so she often looked frightened, and coupled with her soul meltingly big brown eyes and fragile shaking she was essentially adorable. Granddad took her for a walk on the Bolehills every day until she died. I also took her walking with me, when I was fourteen but Mumraaah advised that this was not a good idea as I walked far and fast in all weathers. I never thought of Peanuts as being old but I think she was twelve when we had to sadly have her put to sleep.
She used to like having her face licked and washed by our cat sweep. Even though after two or three nudges from peanuts sweep would scratch her nose, hiss and then run off. Peanuts didn't seem to mind.
Since I started writing this the incessant yapping and barking has stropped, however am confident it will restart once I dare to leave my house. The hateful squawking overgrown hamster of hell still has its noisy hold over my every breath, it seems.
Yannis
the woman next door has an insanely annoying yapping shit hound of despair called Bobby, or as I have named him, Be-elzebobby. This cantankerous oversized barking rat yaps himself into a coma every time I leave, enter or make any noise or movement in my house. This, after two years, is incredibly annoying. Her ownership and tolerance of the little twat poses a good number of questions, of which I will share two ( I can hear him yapping now, no doubt irritated by my the resonance of my loud typing through the thin pot walls of our houses). Where in the name of Satan did she find this wholly nauseating creature, and why does she not realise, and also tolerate, just how chuffing annoying the thing is?
She still tells it that there is nobody there and to get back inside whenever I leave which is fairly annoying in itself. And Be-elzebobby steadfastly ignores her every instruction. When she does see me she says hello and asks in a charming way if am alright. I have not yet answered " I will be, when your bloody dog dies" because I fear this may make me look intolerant or rude.
Thinking how unavoidably frustrating the creature's existence is I recall living in lower Walkley next to a lovely lady with a white curly haired miniature or Highland terrier who hated cats. We had three. I don't know what his actual name was but am willing to bet it was a male human one - like David, Phillip, or Rupert. I myself used Chinese and American Indian influences to name him " Yap ping shite". And our youngest and most agile cat, Bruin used to love dancing about high up on the walls and at the fence where the dog could see him but not get though, which sent the white woolly creature insane.
The above may suggest I hate dogs or have similar sounding issues but in fact we had a dog when we lived in Scotland, a black and white collie who stayed with my Granddad when we moved. Arriving in Sheffield in 1978 aged nearly four we took on a dog from the RSPCA who was a cross of an Alsatian and a non yapping terrier. My Mum called her Peanuts after a stray dog they had featured on Play School or Blue Peter, of the same name. Probably for the best, since as a four year old I wanted to call her seaweed. Am not sure WF or my granddad would have wanted that.
Peanuts had been a stray and just wanted to be loved, and loved she was. She had a trapped nerve in her leg which made it shake so she often looked frightened, and coupled with her soul meltingly big brown eyes and fragile shaking she was essentially adorable. Granddad took her for a walk on the Bolehills every day until she died. I also took her walking with me, when I was fourteen but Mumraaah advised that this was not a good idea as I walked far and fast in all weathers. I never thought of Peanuts as being old but I think she was twelve when we had to sadly have her put to sleep.
She used to like having her face licked and washed by our cat sweep. Even though after two or three nudges from peanuts sweep would scratch her nose, hiss and then run off. Peanuts didn't seem to mind.
Since I started writing this the incessant yapping and barking has stropped, however am confident it will restart once I dare to leave my house. The hateful squawking overgrown hamster of hell still has its noisy hold over my every breath, it seems.
Yannis
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