Don't forget the Gaviscon.

At precisely 3.37AM on Saturday morning, the chicken vindaloo and five pints of lager that had been coexisting uneasily in Wayne Burkenshaw’s digestive tract, ended their truce and fell upon each other with unbridled ferocity.

Wayne, long since rendered insensible by the anesthetic properties of the lager, now awoke in alarm, emitting an unworldly raucous snort as the titanic clash between lager and vindaloo assaulted his chest with stiletto-sharp pains, while a deluge of curried bile engulfed his gullet. He sat up abruptly, sweating and palpitating, and overwhelmed by a violent bout of vindaloo hiccoughs

 “Sodding indigestion,” gasped Wayne, instinctively groping for the Gaviscon tablets, usually in residence on the bedside cabinet. They weren’t there.

He switched on the bedside lamp, truculently contemplated the Gaviscon-free cabinet, then remembered he’d put the tablets in his trouser pocket before leaving for the restaurant. He leaned down, fumbled for his trousers, concertinaed by the bed, and hastily explored the pockets. Not there, either.

 “Sod it,” said Wayne, now realising that on arriving home, he’d taken the tablets and his keys from his pocket, and left them on the coffee table. He left his bed, staggered along the landing, and flicking the light switch, discovered that the bulb had expired. He swore irritably, and still hiccoughing, started impatiently down the dark stairwell, tripped on the sleeping cat, and arms flailing desperately, descended head first to the sitting room.
                                                                 *
Wayne’s mate, Jason, alerted the police after Wayne failed to appear for three consecutive curry nights, and they found Wayne still clutching the pack of Gaviscon that he must have grasped involuntarily as he hit the coffee table.

 “Broken neck,” said the paramedic, “died instantly.”

“What a bloody pain,” said Jason, “the tight sod never paid me for his last curry.”

Happy Birthday Charles Dickens! (Part the First)

The Hop Pole, Tewkesbury

 Charles Dickens would have been 202 yesterday if he'd made a more determined effort to cling to life, and Charlie and me have a lot in common. Not just the obvious bit about about him being just about the greatest novelist this country has ever produced, with me a red-hot cert to run him a close second when I get round to publishing Brockberrow, but also a very similar taste in Inns and public houses, specifically those visited by Samuel Pickwick in the Pickwick Papers.

There is an inn in Tewkesbury, called the Hop Pole where Mr Pickwick and his companions stopped to dine en route from Bristol to Birmingham, They had previously lunched at The Bell at Berkley Heath, becoming marginally legless, and had continued tanking up at the Hop Pole, with bottled beer, Madeira and port along with some 'take out' to see them through to the finish at the Old Royal in Brum.

My first visit to the Hop Pole was on a beautiful early summer day in 1953. I had cycled down from Birmingham with Diane, to operate a checkpoint in a cycling club event. Diane was the epitome of an 'out door' girl, dark hair, rosy cheeks, and gorgeously plump. I can still see the buttons straining on her tartan shirt as her shapely, tanned, legs turned the pedals, and I was totally besotted by the time we reached Tewkesbury

I was only 16 and still very wet behind the ears and Diane, I guess, would have been 18 or 19 and totally beyond the reasonable aspirations of an acne scarred adolescent like me. I remember that we sat outside the Hop Pole and shared a big bag of cherries while I desperately tried to come up with a foolproof chat up line, but of course, I couldn't come close, and that was the only cherry-sharing we ever indulged in.

Mr Pickwick , however, had no such feminine distractions and eventually arrived in at the Old Royal in Birmingham, a hostelry with which I became well acquainted.

The Old Royal, Birmingham.

I used to go there on Thursday nights, straight after work, along with Johnse, Stockton and a guy I can only remember as The Mole Man, so called because he was short, squat and without anything that remotely resembled a neck,. He also squeaked rather spoke, although I'm not sure if squeaking is a moleish characteristic.

 We would stop at The Old Royal until kicking out time, getting steadily rat-arsed, consuming meat pies and pickled eggs and playing seven card brag and a card game called Stop the Bus, the object of which, apart from it being a speedy way of loosing money, I disremember We actually knew the Old Royal as 'George's', after the accommodating landlord whom we had followed there when he moved from the St Pauls Tavern in St Paul's Square, although our original watering hole had been The White Horse Cellars, from which we had been barred following an acrimonious dispute over the quality of the meat pies. Meat pies loomed large in those bygone days.

Charles Dickens stayed at The Old Royal whenever he visited Birmingham, but there is no record that he ever played Stop the Bus.

(Part the Second will concern itself with The Bull at Rochester and The Great White Horse at Ipswich.)

A Weekend Tinged with Sadness.

I spent last weekend at Llangrannog, Cardiganshire, with my niece, her husband, three dogs, two cats, three horses and a donkey.

     We were celebrating the birthday of my late brother, who would have been 89 this year and who might even have been there with us if he had taken a little more exercise and a little less Famous Grouse. The tight sod also failed to make provision for these gatherings when he ordered his affairs, so we spent the weekend in the Ship Inn and the Pentre Arms, entirely at our own expense.

The Pentre and the Ship are both extremely civilised hostelries with sensibly flexible opening hours and one can while away a whole day there if one has a mind. Both offer excellent real ales and the Ship, as I remember, once served wine in three glass sizes, the largest being ‘Oh Go On Then’.

The Ship Inn. Llangrannog

All day pub drinking is all very well, but best not indulged in if one has already downed a half bottle of red over lunch and follows it up with another half bottle over dinner as I did. Later, my attempt to access the bathroom, two steps before I got to the top of the stairs, resulted in unplanned contact with the landing carpet  and persuaded me that my days of serious carousing were over, so it was with some sadness that I later announced my permanent retirement from all day drinking.

This life-changing decision forced me to reflect on my long past bacchanalian adventures; adventures  that, if undertaken by anyone else, would have been regarded as a shameful catalogue of drunken degeneracy, rather than the youthful exuberance and (mostly) jolly good fun that they really were. It was a difficult choice, but one really has to know when to quit

The Pentre Arms, Llangrannog.

I am of course, left with a whole lifetimes memories. All night parties, some of which carried on to include a whole Bank Holiday weekend; people paddling in my fishpond on Christmas Eve, much to the distress of the neighbours: prowling Malvern YHA in the early hours of a winters morning in the vain search for a loo, and perhaps, most nostalgic of all, after a dreadful session in the Cabaret Andalus mislaying myself, along with three comrades, on a Baghdad traffic island to be eventually rescued and escorted back to the YMCA by a kindly local.

I could write a book, but no bugger would publish it, anymore than they publish anything else I write.