Albie & The Knuckledusters Part 3. What Next?

Under normal circumstances, I quite enjoy watching cartoons. But not at two in the morning. And not when I'm in someone else's bedroom, lying in some strange bed. With somebody else's Grandma smoking Woodbines and cackling in the bed next to me. True, these weren't the original sleeping arrangements. Martin The Manager's painful encounter with the flying bottle and other collected stab wounds saw him rushed off to Hereford Hospital's A & E Department. Earlier in the day, he was to have picked up a camp bed and blankets from his cousin to comfort me through the cold night hours. Like all the panes of glass in the Gents, that arrangement had also been punched out of the window when the afternoon's blood sports had kicked off in the Function Room. What unspeakable event was about to happen next? I crossed fingers, crossed heart, crossed legs, turned to the wall and started counting tiny flower petals marching across the fading, peeling, nineteen-seventies wallpaper. Whether I was molested during the night I will never know. I was woken with a cup of tea served in a cracked mug and once again the sound of Bugs Bunny romping around the room. Someone else's Grandma was dressed, coughing and puffing at another Woodbine. She said that if I wanted some toast, to go into the Kitchen and help myself. With that she left. Bugs Bunny morphed into Roadrunner.

To forget the horrors and nightmares of the previous night I concentrated all effort on creating a variety of murals across the various walls, beams and blackboards. I remember the sun came out and I dared to venture outside, looking anxiously around in case another invitation to die without warning was concealed around the corner. I was comforted to see Police Cars and motorized Street Cleaners just about everywhere, mopping up bottles, lager cans and bloodstains after yet another Saturday night's mindless city centre violence.
Pleased to say that this time, McDonald's stayed open without incident. I worked the whole day and around 5 o'clock, something resembling an Egyptian Mummy came to see how I was getting on. "Hello Martin! I see they patched you up."
He apologised profusely about the previous night's bed and breakfast arrangements and said that tonight, I would be sleeping on a camp bed he was placing in the First Floor Banqueting Suite (which looking at it, had probably never been used since the pub was built). Because of budgets and my intense desire to finish and get back home, I worked late. Martin, his Partner and yet another person's Grandmother all came in to say they were locking up and going somewhere else and I was on my own except for the Lodger in Room 1. What Lodger? Who cared?
It was all deathly quiet at around 12.30am, so I decided to activate the wall mounted CD Player.
Press this button, that button, some other button. Silence.
Then a crashing sound as Motorhead started. And then restarted. And restarted. And restarted. The CD player was in totally stuck mode at full volume. I tried following wires back to plugs or switches. It had a life of its own. And this was happening in the area where I was due to sleep. It restarted. And restarted. And restarted. An hour or so of this saw me take the entire camp bed to a corridor where, even behind closed doors, I could still hear the full impact of Heavy Metal with hiccups. At around 6.30am in the morning Motorhead were still restarting every few seconds. I never saw the Lodger return but miraculously the noise ceased. Between 7am and 8pm, I fell into a heavy sleep before, at 9pm, I was awoken by the wet licks of a Labrador with terrible halitosis. "Sorry about that" said someone, who called the dog, then disappeared.

Later that day I was due to collect my money from another pub owned by the same group.
On the way, I popped into Hereford Cathedral where some hours later, a verger gently shook me awake. "You all right sir" he asked. I blinked at him with bloodshot eyes. "Please tell me you're not Lemmy from Motorhead," I muttered. Hereford Cathedral is actually a rather lovely, cosy place; nice wide pews with bright, cheery blue, red, green and yellow cushions made by the Friends of the Cathedral. Here you can fall into a deep, heavenly, undisturbed slumber. It occured to me later that my pale complexion, stubble and dishevelled clothing may have frightened some visitors believing me to be a ghost taking a break from the eternal darkness of some long forgotten family tomb. I sought out the verger, thanked him, donated a generous number of coins to the Restoration Fund and said farewell to its sanctuary. A little while later, I collected my fee, ambled back to the patiently waiting Ford Orion, tuned into Radio 4, and sped away. Please God, never, ever to return.

Albie & The Knuckledusters, Part Two

...and so I crossed the road and passed beneath the ruins of the old city walls.
A little way up on the left of the street was a McDonald's. I would have stayed longer watching predominately fat people with screaming children having heart attack competitions, but the police were called to an incident on the top floor and the restaurant was evacuated. As it seemed that whatever I did next would probably lead to my violent death, I decided to go back to the pub. "Ought to check out the car," I thought. It was an old Ford Orion. One of the last of its breed to accept leaded petrol. Just the sort of vehicle favoured by tattooed people with unsophisticated face furniture. Luckily it was intact. Which is more than could be said for the Gent's toilet window. More perturbing were the trails of blood leading from the Pub's back entrance. I dared to return to the saloon bar. Seated at a table by the window were two of the customers I'd seen earlier. No one else, just them. The one in the over sized, beige, beer-splashed cardigan got up, turned towards me and said, "what you be drinkin'?"
He then shambled over to behind the bar and stared at me with grey expressionless eyes.
"Yes. A pint of Stella please," I said.
"T'soff" he grunted, "Pikies 'ad it all"
"Right," I replied, examining the pump badges for any alternatives.
"I'll have the Carling then."
" 'Atsoff as well. Only got Banks' Bitter. Pikies 'ad everything."
So Banks rather awful Bitter it was. My temporary barman shuffled back to his seat, attempted to cough out his remaining lung and rolled another cigarette.
"Don't you want any money?" I asked.
"Martin (the Manager) said to 'ave it on the house. He's up the hospital," he wheezed.
"For that arm wound?"
"Nah, the head wound." He coughed violently once again and stroked some fallen ash from his long suffering cardigan.
So what did happen at the 3-Counties Traveller's Wedding?
Once upon a time there were three Traveller's Families. The Monmouth Family from the Welsh borders, The Glo'ster Forest Of Deans (regarded as rather backward) and the local Herefords. The bride's name was Rosalind, daughter of a Monmouth triple Transit-Van owner currently on remand for grievous bodily harm. The groom (the walking pin cushion) was called Albie in honour of his prize-fighting psychopathic grandfather. He came from the backward Forest Of Deans who resented being called backward but couldn't work out why. The best man was a Dec from the Herefords. All was going well until the cutting of the cake. A Herefords' family member made some comments suggesting past indiscretions concerning the bride's relationship with an older Monmouth uncle. True by all accounts but not the sort of thing you mention about your half sister. The knife being used to cut the cake transformed into a weapon of castration. From that point on no one quite knows what happened other than overturned tables, a blood soaked wedding breakfast and an entire back bar being robbed of wines, spirits and packets of peanuts. To make matters more interesting, a regular customer from a completely unrelated traveller family decided through a whisky haze to challenge all three factions to a "proper" fight. As he drunkenly put up his fists, he received a shower of wounds from plastic knives supplied for the buffet. Martin, the Manager, had bravely and stupidly tried to restore order before being hit by a flying bottle.
When did the Police arrive? They never did. Early on, the payphone had been ripped out and taken. And anyway, nobody called them. I later discovered that Martin The Manager's partner, Maria, was also of "Traveller's" stock. So, despite having a ruined Function Room with enough blood on the floor to fill a donor bank, she made sure the entire wedding party could "quietly" melt away. To return to those transit vans and trucks parked over the road. No flashing blue lights, no breathalyziers, no searches to find the missing payphone.
Even more mysterious was that two hours later (we're now talking 10.30pm),
every bit of glass, dried blood, dead egg, ham and cheese sandwiches; it was all meticulously cleaned up by an invisible squad of helpers.
Grandma, on Maria's side, appears to have had quite a few tricks up her sleeve. As I was to discover later that night when I finally found out where I was to sleep.

End of Part Two

Albie & The Knuckledusters

In the summer of '98, a small pub company "Hereford Country Inns," commissioned me to create a series of murals for the walls and beams to brighten up their dingy, unkempt pub, just outside Hereford city centre. As I'd been working in one of their other so-called country inns in Malvern, Worcestershire, I decided to drive down to Hereford on the Saturday morning. It was a glorious sunny day and I purposely took the back route along winding country lanes. Accommodation in the pub had been pre-arranged and usefully, there was a parking space close to the back entrance. I arrived at about midday and noticed a number of old transit vans and trucks in what appeared to be a temporary car park over the road. I found my space, collected my equipment from the trunk and went to introduce myself. Then I opened the saloon bar door...
Across most of the UK are various families of "travellers". These are not Romany Gypsies (though one suspects some interbreeding) but an offshoot that probably originated in Ireland for completely reasonable reasons; travelling to find work across each County. Good old Will Shakespeare knew about them as did the local parishes who described them as "light-fingered intinerants". The perjorative term "pikey" comes from "a turnpike traveller, a vagabond and generally low fellow"
As I swung open the Saloon Bar door that day, I found them all waiting to greet me. I was an uninvited guest at a 3-County Travelling Families' Wedding Reception. I was introduced to the bride. A tall, slim, attractive girl in her late teens with tumbling raven hair and a badly chipped front tooth. Her new husband obviously had a penchant for face furniture and on his wedding day, had decided to look like a pin cushion. Evidently festivities had begun a long time before my arrival. Every breath produced maladorous reeks of cheap lager, whisky, Old Holborn and gum disease. Who was I? "I'm here to do the blackboards"
Now think of all those times you regret opening your mouth in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pin cushion man wanted to see what was in my bag. Others came to help him. I held onto my holdall with the courage and pluck that only a true Englisman feels when the odds are hopeless and no one was offering to buy me a drink. And then the booming sound of the Manager's voice travelled across. "Can you all go down to the Function Room. Everything's ready."
It was then I met Albie. Albie was the grandfather of the groom. He was also the bare knuckle fighting champion of the Forest Of Dean Chapter, and currently the West Country Champion.
Albie was extremely drunk and hated my posh Southern accent. He wanted to alter certain parts of my face with a barrage of left hooks. He wanted to pulp me into Pit Bull Terrier food. His knuckleduster relatives were volunteering to help. Interestingly it was the pin cushion groom who came to my aid and with new chipped-tooth bride said, "'ere c'mon Grandad, leave the f***er alone." And with that, Albie punched my arm bruisingly hard, then grinned to display two rows of jagged yellow teeth punctuated by punched-out spaces. He cackled, turned and stumbled down the dark corridor leading to the Function Room.

The saloon bar was now virtually empty except for three or four local men, puffing at roll-ups.
And in a corner, a woman the size of Mount Snowdon displaying thin, dangling strands of unwashed brown hair. She wore a black dress embroidered with grease, ketchup, brown sauce and gravy stains. Her five-tiered wobbling chin was covered in moles, blackheads and pimples. Her nose was gargantuan. She was fostering tufts of black hair at strategic points around her face. And she fancied me. She got up from her seat. Part of the pub went dark as she eclipsed the sunlight and waddled over.
"'Ave a drink luv. 'Ere, you an artist 'en? Wanna do me picture? In the nuddy?" Her massive chest squashed me to the bar. "I'm nice int I. Heh, heh." And thankfully, this time the Manager's partner's Grandmother (it all gets very complicated) intervened, threw the hag a withering look and asked

"Mike, what can I get you?" allowing me to escape with a half lager...

Little time to calm down as the Manager then rushes in with blood seeping from a wound in his arm. He grabs a waiting pint of lager, downs it instantly and returns to the Function Room. His partner emerges and commands, "please everybody leave now. Pub's closing. Bit of a problem." The Bar evacuates. The only person remaining and still staring at me with bloated, dripping wet lips is the world's largest, ugliest woman looking dangerously as if she's about to breast bounce me into submission. I fumble out of the rear entrance to be blinded by mid-afternoon sunlight. Fresh air. Free. Not for long.
To be continued in Part 2 above