The Missing Link

Tonight started with something a little bit different, having finished work early and with an invite to an office drink (thanks to Neil) we went to a pub called ‘The Rat and Parrot’. The venue is like a down market ‘Yates’ chain, something I never expected to see in my lifetime. The Rat and Parrot is a pub run for travellers that don’t travel, one word sums it up - ‘pikey’. The bar staff make no effort to disguise the lack of joy their job provides, although there is one pretty angel of a lass who looks out of place working there, but I guess every pub up and down the land has to have some token talent hired for eye candy. Initially only me and Neil along with the office staff (from the local travel industry) are present, Tim is soon to join us. I try in vain to persuade some of the girls from the gang to join us in Bar Med later, but they’re all locals and refuse to enter the place due to it’s poor reputation, apparently, which seems a little odd because Bar Med is a veritable cosmopolitan palace of couture and frivolity compared to the Rat and Parrot. Tim joins, introduces himself to the members of the gang, attempts the same futile arguments to get the girls to join us and then the three of us head into Bar Med.

The door men are as courteous as usual; they smile, wish us a good evening and usher everyone in, but then I’m stopped. “Are those steel toe cap boots?” I’m questioned by one of the bouncers, “No” I reply sincerely. “Do you mind if I just investigate for myself?” he asks, “No, not at all” I answer. Very gently he pushes his foot onto the toe tip of my boots, the leather slightly creases under the pressure, “thank you sir” he tells me with a satisfied tone leaving me to catch up with the lads. The place is busy, busier than I’ve seen it in a long time. In front of us are a circle of pleasant looking young ladies, all giggly and smiling. We move down to grab some beer from the lower bar, one of the girls from the circle approaches Neil, “My mate fancies you” she announces with a slip of a girl smiling behind her. With a sparkle in his eyes Neil delivers a top one liner to her “who can blame her, she’s only human after all”. The girl laughs and runs back to her mate; soon both of them are looking over and giggling. “She’s nice” Tim points out, “good body” he continues “but she has ‘Klingon’ teeth”, I look back at her squinting (I’m short sighted and it’s dark) and yes, she does have poor teeth. Some time passes and the girl comes back, directly behind her are all her mates, standing in formation, waiting expectantly like viper assassins. Neil turns to her, “are you going to do anything” she asks, “no” Neil tells her, “why” she asks, all humour has vanished from her tone. Neil slowly raises his hand, stretches his fingers and displays the glittering band of a gold wedding ring, as the first glint of light bounces off it I hear a high pitched ‘ping’ in my head. Imagine a cackle of vampire women confronted by a crucifix reflecting daylight, they shriek, cower and back away in furious anger, something similar happened here. The girl has a bit of a go at Neil for supposedly leading them on, turns and in time they all march away. Looking perplexed Neil looks back, turns and shrugs. We dance a bit when Neil points to something near the dance floor, I look over and see a guy wearing a Burberry shirt, complete check with the logo on the pocket, Neil scores ‘chav’ points for noticing that Tim tells me, “no” I argue “that’s the ‘ChavPot’!”. I wish I have the courage to take out my camera phone and ask him (with his kind permission) if I can capture his image, the shirt is hanging out and people are noticing it, all looking in unison. I can’t imagine what he must be thinking, but I sadly suspect he really believes he looks cool, he also sounds Eastern European.

We decide to go on to Ikon/Diva, although I’d prefer to stay at Bar Med and then head straight home, Bar Med really is that busy. Oddly as we leave Bar Med three of the girls from earlier (the Rat and Parrot gang) find us, sadly they can barely stand in their drunken state and refuse to come along to Ikon/Diva with us. Ikon/Diva by comparison is a little bit dead and certainly cock heavy. Tim sends a text message to a huge projector screen on the top floor, it should read “http://barmed.blogspot.com/” but after ten minutes we give up waiting and head off. Tim needs the toilet and hands me his bottle, we promise to wait. So we wait, I’m leaning on a stair rail with a bottle in both hands, Neil is standing to my left watching the dance floor and I’m looking down at the cigarette ends scattered across the floor when out of the corner of my eye I see a bald bloke approaching from my right “excuse me sir but could you follow me to my office” he grunts. I look up and see a bouncer, the missing link in a suit, my heart sinks. As I follow him I feel an anger rise, I haven’t done anything, nothing, so why are they singling me out? He leads me to some steps opposite where another bouncer stands, this one I recognise from a few weeks back, it’s the bouncer that ejected me. “Good evening” he begins “Do you know why I’m having this chat with you?” he reminds me of an old headmaster but with an IQ immeasurably smaller. “No” I answer with some defiance, “You were asleep” he tells me. “I’ll let it go this time, but if I see you asleep again I’ll have to ask you to leave” he finishes while giving me a threatening stare. “I wasn’t asleep!” I shout in despair, which I swear is the truth, could I sleep standing up with a bottle of beer in each hand I’d be worthy of a circus act. “Don’t do it again” is all he can say, so I shake my head and walk back to Neil. I explain to Neil what happened, Tim hasn’t come back from the toilet and a quick exploratory stroll around the top floor fails to locate him. I’m pissed off and wishing we were still back in Bar Med, we find Tim in the older area downstairs. “Wayne, don’t take this the wrong way, but, you have a shaved head and you’re not exactly small, you look, well, a bit rough” Neil tactfully tells me “I don’t think its personal”, but I feel persecuted, victimised with no good reason. I explain all this to Tim as we head back upstairs, guarding the door that allows the older generation to move backwards and forwards between the two floors and prevents the youngsters is the same bouncer. As we walk past him he calls back “and don’t get falling asleep again”, I turn to him “I wasn’t asleep” I scream exasperated, but my voice cracks in frustration and I sound more like Aled Jones singing ‘The Snowman’, Tim laughs. I’ve had enough, Neil wants to leave and although Tim concedes there is no chance of pulling he wishes to stay and drink, thankfully the democratic process prevails and we leave. It would be unfair to label all doormen and bouncers as idiots (the guys at Bar Med are great), but the power crazed gorillas at Ikon/Diva really don’t do the industry any justice, I say this with no fear because I very much doubt they have the capability to ever stumble across these words. Next time I’ll show them and stay at Bar Med, that’ll teach them… Tonight though belonged to Neil.

The Birthday Drink

Take a large pot; pour in a litre of cranberry, mixed summer fruit and blackcurrant juice mixing it all up. Add a bottle of cheap vodka, slices of fresh lemon, orange, lime and finally leave in the fridge to chill and marinate overnight. Next evening, before serving, throw in a bottle of strong medium or dry (not sweet – the juice has made it sweet enough) white wine, pour with plenty of ice. This was the recipe for my ‘punch’ drink, inspired by morning TV last week (I was off from work). It tastes pleasant, quickly inebriates and ensures your sick is a dark shade of purple. Tonight I have guests to accompany and celebrate with me, for this week it’s my birthday and tonight is ‘Bar Med’ night. The cast consists of regular and new faces. Amongst the regular faces are Tim, Neil, Dave, a girl called Nicki (aka Noo) and later Charlie (aka Choo) joins us. Two new faces are with us, both with the name Rebecca, which means one less name to remember, one is Noo’s flatmate (we will christen her ‘Boo’) and the other is the flat mate of an old friend who is sadly absent this evening. Two glasses of my punch later (three for me) and we head into town. As the birthday boy I get a lift in with Dave while the others part with a ‘bluey’ on the price of a cab. Instead of just me and Tim a throng of people congregate in our usual spot, changing the dynamics of the whole evening. We make polite chat and spend less time looking for potential women to unbalance with our charm. The bottles of Corona still go down with the same haste, coupled with the effects of my earlier punch and making me very drunk in a relatively short space of time. Soon my memories are a blur, if this was a screenplay there would be a close up of everyone’s laughing face with lots of tilting camera effects as beer bottle after bottle slowly floats across the main screen along with a round of glowing blue shots of something (they did actually glow like toxic waste). I do remember a couple of events; I remember Choo joining us and I remember slamming my bottle down hard onto the top of Noo’s beer bottle. Noo looked down at her bottle expecting the worst and she wasn’t disappointed, a fountain of white froth erupted and gushed forth forcing me and Tim to step back and thus avoid a soaking. Once it had stopped only a small fraction of the beer remained at the bottom of the bottle. I look down at it smiling like an idiot, somewhere in the back of my drunken mind I’m thinking how pretty the spectacle was; like a firework fountain or a Grand Prix winner with a bottle of spraying champagne. Because it’s my birthday no one reprimands my actions or berates me. Tim looks down at the puddle by our feet and silently shakes his head, stopping a glass collector he asks if someone could come along and mop it up. A few moments later a man with a mop does indeed appear to clean up the mess, “The mop man cometh” announces Tim.

I get to pick a track to play with a promised announcement from the DJ, telling all the inhabitants of Bar Med of my birthday, “Come on and choose a track” young Dave yells at me over the music, I look at him but I’m lost for any idea of what I want to hear. In the background I can hear the Black Eyed Peas belting out, then a track comes to me, something I’ve not heard for a while, that reminds me of my youth and brings a smile to my face; “Shakademis and Pliers, a track called ‘Tease Me’” I tell him. He looks at me blankly, “Who?” he asks and suddenly I feel every one of my thirty four years. I repeat it and he attempts to say it back to me with little success, he disappears and soon comes back with a pen and paper, forcing me to write it down. He looks at my hastily scribbled words and shrugs his shoulders, he isn’t sure if it’s something I’ve made up. But again he disappears and soon I hear the DJ announce “and this one is for Wayne, happy birthday Wayne” and then the track begins to plays. Relying on a mixture of ‘doing the twist’ while ‘grinding up and down’ I dance along to it, soon so does everyone else, except Tim. The track ends and smoothly mixes into another. Neil is talking to Choo a little away from the group, while I approach the girls and ask for a birthday favour. “Your challenge, if you decide to accept, is to get Tim dancing, I reckon you can’t pull it off” I tell the girls in the group while keeping my eyebrows raised with my best doubtful look. All heads turn to Tim as Choo walks back and rounds up the girls for the same challenge, because coincidently Neil had just been planting the same idea in Choo’s head (great minds and all that). Four girls grab Tim, who pulls away and raises his arm and hand in the universal ‘STOP’ sign, a little like a lollipop-man without a lollipop. They do not give up so easily and tentatively if not belligerently Tim moves near the dance floor and then a strange thing happens; in time to the music he puts his left leg out, then his left leg in, in, out, in, out and yes, indeed he does, shake it all about, thankfully he goes no further. Remembering the lollipops I reach into my breast pocket where a small stash has now accumulated from last week and tonight’s toilet trips (I always wash my hands), allowing me to hand each of the four girls a ‘Chupa’, sadly they never did have the promised effect.

Bar Med is still busy when we leave, prompting me to make a mental note that the first Friday of each month is probably the busiest. With the exception of Dave and Rebecca (not Boo) who have work in the morning, we all head over to Ikon\Diva. Boo was once a local lass but moved away to a better life, she keeps muttering her disbelief that she’s actually paying and entering Ikon\Diva on a Friday night, going back after many years, but sadly tonight ‘Jenny From The Block’ was going back to the block. I’m a little bit apprehensive that the bouncer from last week will prevent me from going in, Tim shares my concerns, but they prove to be unfounded and we manage to get in easily. We are in the older downstairs part of the club which happily seems to be a hit with Choo and Noo, and dare I say even seems to be winning Boo slowly round. Boo is a hit with the men and as the third one begins to pester her at our table I feel partially responsible, after all she didn’t want to come here. “I’m sorry if these guys are pestering you” I tell her “I could try and stop them” I continue. “And how would you do that?” she smiles. “Well I could pat you on the stomach and say aloud – I felt it kick, that should put them off” I laugh but she looks at me uncertain. Shit I’ve broken a cardinal rule, committed the worst of sins; I’ve inferred she may be fat. “Not that you have a stomach or anything, not at all, you have a great body” I try to reassure her, but now I sound like I’m coming on to her or something “Er, well, I’m just going over there…” pointing to a random area in the club I quickly run away.
The rest of the night is an uneventful blur; I’m drunk so don’t remember too much, the next thing I know, as if by magic, I’m home.

Me, Noo and Tim are the only ones going back to my place. Once home we decide a snack is in order, so I rustle up a little food. Firstly a toasted cheese sandwich each, followed by pasta with a spicy tomato sauce, with a finishing dessert of ‘Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough Ice Cream’ all washed down with coke and the punch from earlier. With our bellies full we retire to bed, but my stomach can’t take the pounding it’s had tonight and I soon run for the toilet. There is a knot in my stomach, a snake pressing from the inside causing a nagging cramp that needs to be released. Gripping the toilet I’m sick. My body goes through the usual changes, shakes and temperature increase, but the cold of the floor feels inviting and slowly everything fades. What feels like a few minutes pass and I awake in the foetal position on my bathroom floor, almost naked like a time travel from the future (as portrayed in the ‘Terminator’ films). Grabbing the closest thing at hand I try to pull myself up using the toilet roll holder, it promptly comes away in my grip along with a chunk of wall plaster, I curse. My legs manage to raise me with a wobble while the inside of my head thumps and pounds with a hangover, I curse again. Walking into my bedroom the daylight at the window confuses me, it can’t be daylight yet, but the clock tells me the time is 10:30am! I’ve slept the whole night on my bathroom floor, I can hardly believe it but my thirty four year old back is beginning to confirm this. Soon Noo and Tim awake and we share a coffee and tea in relative silence as we nurse sore heads before leaving and continuing our weekends. I'd booked that Friday off as a days holiday, I'd have called in sick on the Monday but I didn't want to do a neifion.

(Noo and Choo now refer to me as Woo, OK so it's a little girly, but I prefer to think that it makes me sound like a Chinese maffia Triad leader)