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

Haunting memories from The Smile Cabinet.

Back in the late 1980's various circumstances came together to force a slight change in career paths. At the suggestion of the marketing department of one of West London's leading Breweries, I became a contracted blackboard artist. Using the completely new graphics medium of acrylic pens, I was quickly able to develop an individual style which ultimately saw me travelling around the country to an assortment of venues: pubs, hotels, restaurants, wine bars, nightspots, day centres and care homes. To give you an idea, the illustration above was completed for a desserts board located in the Food Bar of the Village Hotel, Dudley, West Midlands (sadly, long since painted over). Having spent most of my previous creative life sitting behind the safety of an office desk, puffing cigarettes and gulping gallons of lukewarm coffee in between typewriter key assaults to meet impossible deadlines, this was an entirely new experience. Climbing unsafe ladders, working high up on dodgy planks where it's impossible to balance, and worst of all, coming down and enduring the odorous breath of very drunken customers telling awful jokes and growling menacingly if I didn't go ho,ho,ho at the right moment.

However, this bizarre episode of my life abounds with amusing episodes. One of my late Summer commissions was on the outskirts of Oxford, site of one of the gatehouses into this ancient, venerable, dusty City of Spires. As was often the case, the pub was being refurbished. It had been agreed that I would liaise with the Manager to sort out any precise messaging required for the parade of newly installed boards. During the briefing, one of the carpenters working upstairs ambled across to us and said "She's at it again." He didn't seem too perturbed and went to refill his cracked coffee mug from a paint splattered Thermos flask. Who was he talking about? Was there a roaming nymphomaniac on the premises? Was she under 45 years old? The Manager kindly obliged with the following information. "She seems to be the ghost of an ex-landlord's wife who is taking great exception to the fact that we're moving the old staircase. So she throws tacks and nails around while the men are working. They didn't like it at first but now they've got used to it."
"So what's the story?" I ask in anticipation. "Personally, I have no idea, but a few regulars will be coming in the back bar tonight and they might know something." I duly get on with work, leaving one board purposely empty.
Later, I am introduced to a regular who knows the pub intimately; its history...and apparently, the origins of this rather perplexing haunting. No phantom, just an empty space chucking screws and nails at innocent tradespeople trying to do an honest day's work. Try and imagine an Oxford accent with a slight burr and a drawl in between sups taken from pints of bitter paid for by me.
"She was the landlord's wife. Every Sunday he made her dress up in her finest clothes, stand at the bottom of the stairs ( the staircase they're currently removing) wait for him to return, usually violently drunk from a pub up the road, then force her upstairs to make love on the Sabbath. She was a deeply religious woman and then finally one day, she threw herself down that very staircase (now being removed) and has haunted this pub ever since..."
The vacant board could now be completed! A true ghost story to captivate customers. A poignant, ghostly tale to make it into alternative Oxford tourist guidebooks.
I worked feverishly for over 2 hours and many marvelled at its heart-wrenching detail. I was due to return and finish other boards 3 days later. When I did, I immediately saw that the board had been completely blacked out. Confused and rather angry I finally found the Manager's Deputy.
"Sorry Mike" he said, "what nobody told you is that this isn't an old ghost story.
The ex-Landlord is still a regular here and apparently spends absolute fortunes behind the bar...."

In the village of Thundersley, Essex, there is a pathway known as "Screaming Boy Lane".

On the corner of this lane is a Pub. Whilst working on their boards during the day, a local came up to me and said, "if you hear a tapping on the window tonight, that will be young Will"...

Will he, won't he? No he didn't. But with too much information, it doesn't lead to a good night's sleep in the room off the cellar. Why, you ask, was it called "Screaming Boy Lane"? Because, yes, there was a murder in the 18th Century involving a young farm boy who screamed a lot and woke up the neighbours before he was brutally throttled by a person or persons unknown.

All credit to the local Council at the time for listening and believing all the local gossip about screaming ghosts of murdered boys and not renaming the lane Acacia Avenue.

The third ghostly haunt I was never frightened by was in a pub/hotel just outside Southampton.

Conveniently, the guy from the IT company installing the computerised tills was a psychic. So when the newly recruited bar staff emerged from the cellar as white as sheets having been met with a malevolent icy blast, he was able to calm their nerves with news that the whole cellar region was haunted by at least two agitated spectres, both aged around 12 or 13 years old. These two poor souls were still inhabiting an astral moment, desperately trying to dig out their smuggler mates from a tunnel collapse that had occurred some 300 years previously. According to our psychic IT genius, behind an old bricked up wall probably lay the forgotten corpses of up to 18 felons who were inept at tunnel building. Our happy guide to the supernatural also told us that room 16 in the main block was on the site of a previous room where a musketeer blasted his young mistress to kingdom come and some 145 years later,was still regretting his hasty actions, which is why the lights kept flickering on and off. Oh, and I nearly forgot...a monk kept passing through room 2 on his way to a long gone abbey up the road.

Having a smashing time with the wife's BMW 33i Sport. What a silly place to put a tree stump.

I was going to entitle this,

"3 Good Things About Smashing Up The Wife's Car" then realised that writing notes from an assortment of hiding places: under tables, in downstairs cupboards, from the depths of wardrobes surrounded by mouldering old socks, and using a straw to breathe through whilst submerged in a freezing cold water tank in the loft, was all rather pointless. "Be a man" I kept telling my quivering carcass, face the consequences. Tell her that it's all her fault for having a very silly car without proper gears. So how, while she slept, did I demolish the wife's treasured BMW33i Sport, in a Car Park, on a sunny Sunday morning, with no one around as I pondered without my reading glasses the reason why a strange yellow light kept appearing on the dashboard? I could have consulted the Manual certainly, but I repeat, I didn't have my reading glasses. "Let's save an exorbitant BMW Dealer bill" I said to myself as I went Back and Forth. Forth and Back. Back and Forth. Back then Forward into a tree stump. Not just into it. On top of it, thus demolishing the automatic gear box which caused the entire auto lever console to leap into my left hand. Shiny pieces of car decorating the sprawl of bramble bushes. In my diary of embarassingly crass episodes in life, this now comes in at Number One. I should never, ever have tried to be an expert BMW mechanic on a Sunday, especially without my reading glasses. And on reflection, the big clod-hopping shoes didn't help either. I'll never know why that little yellow warning light came on as the vehicle has now been declared a write-off. I've actually buried the spare key just by the tree stump as a mark of respect. BMW33i. 2002-2010. RIP.

Of course God exists. He just happens to be rather busy.

Recently, the scientist Stephen Hawking declared that God doesn't exist. Tell that to a Muggletonian. In 1651, Lodowick Muggleton and his cousin were glancing through the Book of Revelations when, lo...they discovered that, contrary to popular belief, God is far too busy to listen to idle prayers. This must have been disturbing news to the prayer mat industry and to anyone admonishing little children for not saying their prayers before bedtime. Indeed, Muggletonians were so convinced that God wasn't listening, they tried to silence all other Evangelicals disturbing His afternoon nap. They were known as the "Ranters"...and indeed they ranted at anyone - Quakers in particular - who kept muttering praises to God. So what did the Muggletonians reckon God was doing? He was preparing for the end of the earth, of the universe, of time, of absolutely everything. And just before this spectacular event, he was scheduled to appear, warn everyone and make his apologies. The Muggletonians never had a precise plan of action for this event, other than the fact that they'd been very good, never been a nuisance, and would have been on hand to fetch God his slippers and make Him a cup of cocoa at bedtime had it been required. There was another interesting truth they discovered at the back end of the Book: God was only 5ft-6ft tall. Also, Heaven was located just 6 miles above the Earth.
But think they were a bunch of loonies at your peril! The author and poet Sir Walter Scott did just that and died a horrible death as a result of the Muggletonian curse. And indeed, the wag of a pointed finger from a Muggletonian could easily spell doom to anyone who doubted the truth of their beliefs. God only knows what happened to the 6 mile above theory when the Apollo Moon Mission crashed up through Heaven's floorboards...

When you suffer from extreme vertigo, don't go on cable cars

Why do normally intelligent human beings jettison all common sense when they go on holiday? Example: If you know you suffer from vertigo, you would never apply to become a steeplejack. Equally, doing the tango across The Bristol Suspension Bridge in a gale would never be on your list of must-do's. So why on earth did my wife and I, who suffers even more than I do, decide to go on a cable-car in Madeira? It wasn't even a spur of the moment decision. It was planned the previous day. It's like saying to each other..."d'you know, I fancy having a severe panic attack tomorrow. How about you?"

As you enter the small cable-car at the Funchal Town station, a young lady armed with a digital camera aims at your happy, smiling, English tourist faces. Interestingly, the two sickly, marble-white expressions and 1-stone weight loss on arrival at the summit station must be more common than I anticipated. No one rushed up with stretchers, tranquilisers or psychiatrists. Instead they tried to flog us the over-priced picture of ourselves taken before we entered the jaws of living hell. Our ticket included a visit to the tropical gardens, which that day (as were all the days on our holiday) shrouded in a cold, damp mist. Be honest. Would you normally visit any botanical gardens knowing full well in advance that it would be covered in a thick blanket of fog? No. But we did. And so did many other British tourists in silly shorts wearing goosebumps in the mountain gloom. "Never mind," we said to each other, "going back down probably won't be quite so bad..."

Stiff upper lip...resolve...

Another 1 stone weight loss back at the Funchal Station, there was at least some partial sunshine to soothe our shattered senses and warm our corpse-like body temperatures.

In our case, there was never any opportunity to get sunburnt, but returning to my original point...what can possibly drive fair-skinned people (usually British) who are normally quite sensible at home, to strip down to their new swimming costumes on the first day of their Mediterranean holiday, bathe in the fiercest midday sun, and then emerge covered head to toe in gallons of calomine lotion the next?

And food. There's a sense of adventure and there's crass stupidity. Why try a foreign dish you know instinctively is going to make you vomit? Why eat in a local back-street restaurant that even the cockroaches refuse to inhabit? And why are we, as tourists, attracted to buying sheer

rubbish in exorbitantly-priced shops staffed by rude people; always things we don't need and that we'd normally give to a charity shop back home? The whole idea of any holiday is that you relax and refresh your mind. You certainly don't want to expose yourself to a week or two of bleeding credit cards or to rely on the grim reaper to be your holiday rep...

"Being alive is bad for you" scientists warned today...

Don't eat this, don't breathe that, don't go there.. scientists are forever warning us about the dangers of simply existing. "Oh you mustn't blink" they say, "tests in Copenhagen have shown that blinking is dangerous. You'll wear out your eyelids and your eye sockets will turn to jam." Or waking up in the middle of the night and going to the bathroom. "You mustn't do that", warn a group of scientists, "tests have shown that you'll wear out your feet prematurely. Feet need uninterrupted sleep." They also warn, for once quite sensibly, that peeing in the bed whilst your feet are asleep is both unhygenic and, if you and your partner sleep together, extremely anti-social. Unfortunately, because all these scientific warnings appear in the newspapers, they must be true. If, right now, you "Google" feetmustsleep@nuttyscientist.com, I guarantee you'll find hundreds of websites dealing with every aspect of snoozing, snoring tootsies: from curing feet with insomnia to downloadable i-lullabys for toes, heels and soles suffering sleep deprivation...also quite probably, the name of a Canadian rock band from Calgary.
You then realise that for every Scientist's grim warning, some corporate bank account is swelling ever larger from each nurtured public panic. So, what would your scientific warning be? Answers please to the editorial departments of the world's popular press. Let's get everyone neurotic about installing cat flaps...

Meanwhile, back at the Vicarage...

...The morning sun was glinting dangerously on the sherry decanter. Mrs Bark-Slackbottom, the Housekeeper, was watching clouds of dust dancing in the sunshine. "What's the point of it all?" she pondered as a particularly large length of wiry purple fluff performed serene somersaults and then headed for the side table next to the bookshelf. The one she'd just meticulously polished. "You bastard" she screamed, then remembered that she was in a House of God. Well sort of...it was the Vicarage.
"You called?" replied the Vicar, standing at the door in his blue-striped pyjamas, a blessed cup of organic Bredon Hill Plum Wine in his hand. "Sorry Vicar" she replied, flushed and flustered, "I just can't keep on top of it all...soon as you dust a surface, it all settles down again, and you have to go over it, and over it. I tell you, it's not doing my tennis elbow any good in the slightest...the bastards."
"Do calm yourself Mrs Bark-Slackbottom. Life is much too short to worry about...
oh dear, you've missed a bit on the sideboard over there. And look at the window ledge. All those dead flies. And Fraulein Zonda von Krebb will be here shortly to discuss some of her very efficient, tried and trusted ways we can get more parishioners out of the Dog and Catbasket and into Evensong every Wednesday.
She's virtually guaranteeing a packed house.... although she's warning that the hymn singing may be a bit high-pitched. Really Mrs Bark-Slackbottom, you must be more diligent in your cleaning endevours! God will not be pleased! Incidentally, the cord has gone in my pyjamas. I don't suppose you can fix it before Fraulein von Krebb arrives. That silly salute she always performs when she sees me. I get so carried away by the moment I'm bound to let go of my pyjama bottoms and wouldn't that be embarrassing."
"What sort of tried and trusted ways Vicar?. You want to be careful. These Johnny Foreigners..."
"She's female Mrs Bark-Slackbottom. That makes her a Janet. Or a Jordan with massive mammaries and an obscene bulging bank account to match. Please get your genders right."
"And she's a Lutheran. You can't trust a Lutheran. Bastards, all of them!"
"In the eyes of our Lord, we are all equal Mrs Bark-Slackbottom. Now, please would you repair the cord in my pyjamas. Oh dear, look at the time. She'll be putting her fist through the front door any minute. My God, that's her approaching now...the drinks cabinet is locking itself!"

TO BE CONTINUED....(by You?)
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