That's Rock 'n Roll
Since my voluntary glass washing stint at the Eight Bells Charity Gig I have been roped into working a few shifts at the Bells. SAB has become a good friend and we work well together. Also as a result of the Charity Gig I ended up playing harmonica with the Pete Fryer Band at the Magdaline Arms on Friday night. Special Needs drove me there which meant I could have a drink and not worry about driving. It was like a sauna in the Magdaline when we arrived. Sparky was propping up the bar watching Canadian ice hockey on the pub’s cable TV. Special and I sat in the garden for a while; it seemed to be full of care in the community cases. I wondered how this gig would pan out. When I got up to perform I realised they didn’t have any monitors and it is nearly impossible to play if you can’t hear yourself. I mentioned this to the guitarist who just said, “That’s rock ‘n roll man, just blow!”. I didn’t know most of the numbers I played on but I think I got away with it. By the end of the evening everyone was up dancing, including yours truly, and having what looked like a lot of fun. By the end of the evening I was drunk, not slaughtered but happy-drunk. I was happy to be driven home, very happy.
There is much more to working behind a bar than meets the eye. You need to know what you are doing and it can be hard I did an evening shift and a Sunday shift at the Bells. I also did a Saturday shift at the Half Moon. There was the biggest storm and the hardest rain for many years that Saturday. So bad it was that water gushed in under the front doors of the pub. The boat took a bit of a soaking too but I didn’t find out about that until Sunday night when I eventually got home. After the afternoon shift at the Moon I went round to see my mate SB who has just had a bad motorcycle accident. Which has left him with: a 15” pin in his shin bone; a fractured vertebra; a chipped vertebra; and numerous metal staples in his legs. He had hit a freshly gravelled bend on his Suzuki at some speed and the back wheel span out sending him into a ditch at the side of the road. In an attempt to stabilise the machine, and try to stay on, he instinctively pulled back on the throttle. This wasn’t the best thing to do as the 11,000 racing engine responded, instantly throwing SB another 25 yards and through a double barbed wire fence, narrowly missing a solid metal farm gate. The barbs tore the shit out of him and one leg, the one that has the pin now, got badly busted up, not to mention the cracks and chips in the neck. SB was thrown through the fence and into a field; the Suzuki wasn’t far behind him. Fortunately he had his mobile on him as he could no longer be seen from the road. He called an ambulance and his wife and waited, passing the time by taking photo’s of himself and his injuries on his mobile. He saw the ambulance go by without noticing him. A cyclist eventually spotted him and after about an hour of laying in the filed he was being morphined up and strtchered out by the paramedics. Amazingly SB was in fine spirits; we got an Indian meal delivered and watched the Bourne Conspiracy on DVD.
I left his place at about 10:30 and went over to see Special Needs. Things have grown with that situations and before I knew it I am now having what you may call a relationship. It is a good time though and I am even happier than I was. She came from out of the blue and at a very difficult time for me but has become a silver lining to that cloud that descended on me when mum died.. We are taking it as it comes and enjoying the moment. What will happen and where it will go? Only time will tell. I think it is now an appropriate juncture for me to tie up loose ends with those other women that have been floating about in my recent life: I never did get back to the Zimbabwe Army Captain I met via that useless dating service on the internet. Maybe I should, I wouldn’t like to be dropped like that, but then again that is what it is like in that virtual reality; if you can’t take the heat stay out of the cyber space kitchen. I dumped my subscription to all that cyber-shit; it may work for some people but it wasn’t for me. Call me old fashioned but I would much rather meet people face to face then get to know them. I wrote to Yahoo Personals, canning my subscription, and basically telling them what I have just said. They wrote back saying that they were pleased I had met someone one through their service and understood that I no longer wished to use them. What part of ‘virtual dating got me virtually nowhere’ didn’t they understand! Still, it was fun for a week or two. Sylvie: I haven’t seen much of but she did sing some beautiful songs in the Half Moon the other week. She has a boyfriend now and seems happy; we were really only just friends, and still are, so no worries there. My ex-girlfriend I have seen a couple of times; she was at the Bells on Sunday when I was working. No pasa nada with her and best let it lay in the past. We have both moved on. SAB, as I have already mentioned, has become a good friend and workmate. I had a couple of emails from my other ex-girlfriend, the one I hadn’t seen for 23 years who turned up in the Half Moon the other week, but our days of passion date back that far too and we are now friends catching up with each other. Anyway, she is married now and has three kids and I don’t do that affair with married women thing, and more to the point I have checked in with Special and I am a straight player. So, I have made a few new friends, reacquainted myself with some old ones, and met a lovely, beautiful person and am very happy. Not bad for a month’s work, even by water gipsy standards!
Sunday morning I woke up at Special Need’s, we had some tea and toast and marmalade, showered and both went our different way. She had things to do and so did I. My shift at the Bells was starting at midday. But it was still only 10am so I called Jamie and we met in town at St Giles for breakfast. I waited for him in the St Giles Café but it was full of American summer students wining away and that was the last thing I needed on a Sunday morning whilst having breakfast. So when Jamie arrived we headed off with our choice of newspapers to Café Rouge. French don’t really do English breakfast but it was on the menu and it turned out to be something approaching acceptability The eggs were a bit hard, the sausage was a bit fancy, the toast was butterless, and they had no brown sauce for Jamie, but other than that it did the trick, all be it a tad on the pricey side. We took a seat by an open window at the front of the place and poured two large cups of tea. Jamie ran an idea by me for a small film script he had been working on. It incorporated some of my poetry and I wasn’t really sure about the idea; he will need to pitch it too me again, it was Sunday morning after all.
I got to the Bells at just after midday. It started quiet but there were a lot of people eating so I lent a hand with the dishes. They go through a dish washer but still need to be wash quickly first. I seemed to spend the next three hours with my hands in warm soapy water! We had a few customers in the bar but not as many as most other Sundays. At the end of my shift I pulled myself a cold pint of 1664 and sat in the garden. Tricky had turned up, Socket had been there all day, Silly Billy had been coming and going, Bob the Builder and few other were milling around outside, Jamie was with his daughter and her small lad, chucking a few lazy Aunt Sally sticks at the practice doll. It was about 7:30 when I left.
I grabbed a Pizza on the way back to the boat and sat by the edge of the canal eating it. I was beginning to feel very tired. The boat had been locked up since Saturday morning and was, consequently, very warm. I opened up all the windows then laid on the roof watching the evening slowly turn into night. I fell asleep up there for a while and it was nearly midnight when I got into bed. I don’t remember setting my alarm; I don’t remember anything else.
There is much more to working behind a bar than meets the eye. You need to know what you are doing and it can be hard I did an evening shift and a Sunday shift at the Bells. I also did a Saturday shift at the Half Moon. There was the biggest storm and the hardest rain for many years that Saturday. So bad it was that water gushed in under the front doors of the pub. The boat took a bit of a soaking too but I didn’t find out about that until Sunday night when I eventually got home. After the afternoon shift at the Moon I went round to see my mate SB who has just had a bad motorcycle accident. Which has left him with: a 15” pin in his shin bone; a fractured vertebra; a chipped vertebra; and numerous metal staples in his legs. He had hit a freshly gravelled bend on his Suzuki at some speed and the back wheel span out sending him into a ditch at the side of the road. In an attempt to stabilise the machine, and try to stay on, he instinctively pulled back on the throttle. This wasn’t the best thing to do as the 11,000 racing engine responded, instantly throwing SB another 25 yards and through a double barbed wire fence, narrowly missing a solid metal farm gate. The barbs tore the shit out of him and one leg, the one that has the pin now, got badly busted up, not to mention the cracks and chips in the neck. SB was thrown through the fence and into a field; the Suzuki wasn’t far behind him. Fortunately he had his mobile on him as he could no longer be seen from the road. He called an ambulance and his wife and waited, passing the time by taking photo’s of himself and his injuries on his mobile. He saw the ambulance go by without noticing him. A cyclist eventually spotted him and after about an hour of laying in the filed he was being morphined up and strtchered out by the paramedics. Amazingly SB was in fine spirits; we got an Indian meal delivered and watched the Bourne Conspiracy on DVD.
I left his place at about 10:30 and went over to see Special Needs. Things have grown with that situations and before I knew it I am now having what you may call a relationship. It is a good time though and I am even happier than I was. She came from out of the blue and at a very difficult time for me but has become a silver lining to that cloud that descended on me when mum died.. We are taking it as it comes and enjoying the moment. What will happen and where it will go? Only time will tell. I think it is now an appropriate juncture for me to tie up loose ends with those other women that have been floating about in my recent life: I never did get back to the Zimbabwe Army Captain I met via that useless dating service on the internet. Maybe I should, I wouldn’t like to be dropped like that, but then again that is what it is like in that virtual reality; if you can’t take the heat stay out of the cyber space kitchen. I dumped my subscription to all that cyber-shit; it may work for some people but it wasn’t for me. Call me old fashioned but I would much rather meet people face to face then get to know them. I wrote to Yahoo Personals, canning my subscription, and basically telling them what I have just said. They wrote back saying that they were pleased I had met someone one through their service and understood that I no longer wished to use them. What part of ‘virtual dating got me virtually nowhere’ didn’t they understand! Still, it was fun for a week or two. Sylvie: I haven’t seen much of but she did sing some beautiful songs in the Half Moon the other week. She has a boyfriend now and seems happy; we were really only just friends, and still are, so no worries there. My ex-girlfriend I have seen a couple of times; she was at the Bells on Sunday when I was working. No pasa nada with her and best let it lay in the past. We have both moved on. SAB, as I have already mentioned, has become a good friend and workmate. I had a couple of emails from my other ex-girlfriend, the one I hadn’t seen for 23 years who turned up in the Half Moon the other week, but our days of passion date back that far too and we are now friends catching up with each other. Anyway, she is married now and has three kids and I don’t do that affair with married women thing, and more to the point I have checked in with Special and I am a straight player. So, I have made a few new friends, reacquainted myself with some old ones, and met a lovely, beautiful person and am very happy. Not bad for a month’s work, even by water gipsy standards!
Sunday morning I woke up at Special Need’s, we had some tea and toast and marmalade, showered and both went our different way. She had things to do and so did I. My shift at the Bells was starting at midday. But it was still only 10am so I called Jamie and we met in town at St Giles for breakfast. I waited for him in the St Giles Café but it was full of American summer students wining away and that was the last thing I needed on a Sunday morning whilst having breakfast. So when Jamie arrived we headed off with our choice of newspapers to Café Rouge. French don’t really do English breakfast but it was on the menu and it turned out to be something approaching acceptability The eggs were a bit hard, the sausage was a bit fancy, the toast was butterless, and they had no brown sauce for Jamie, but other than that it did the trick, all be it a tad on the pricey side. We took a seat by an open window at the front of the place and poured two large cups of tea. Jamie ran an idea by me for a small film script he had been working on. It incorporated some of my poetry and I wasn’t really sure about the idea; he will need to pitch it too me again, it was Sunday morning after all.
I got to the Bells at just after midday. It started quiet but there were a lot of people eating so I lent a hand with the dishes. They go through a dish washer but still need to be wash quickly first. I seemed to spend the next three hours with my hands in warm soapy water! We had a few customers in the bar but not as many as most other Sundays. At the end of my shift I pulled myself a cold pint of 1664 and sat in the garden. Tricky had turned up, Socket had been there all day, Silly Billy had been coming and going, Bob the Builder and few other were milling around outside, Jamie was with his daughter and her small lad, chucking a few lazy Aunt Sally sticks at the practice doll. It was about 7:30 when I left.
I grabbed a Pizza on the way back to the boat and sat by the edge of the canal eating it. I was beginning to feel very tired. The boat had been locked up since Saturday morning and was, consequently, very warm. I opened up all the windows then laid on the roof watching the evening slowly turn into night. I fell asleep up there for a while and it was nearly midnight when I got into bed. I don’t remember setting my alarm; I don’t remember anything else.
posted by Outcast Poet | 12:27 pm
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