Take your Shots

“Who wants a shot? You want one? Good. You? Everyone else having one? No, go on have one. Go on, just a little shot. Go on, stop being such a bore. Why not? Don’t be stupid, I’m getting you one anyway. Jagers all round. Go on have one, its on me. Don’t have a Jager then have something else. Have a Sambuca. I’m buying. Three Jager bombs and a Sambuca please. You don’t want it, I’ve already ordered. Come on just drink it. Go on. Ready? Everyone ready? Come on, take your shot. Ready, 1-2-3 gulp.”

These people piss me off. They are a pub nuisance. Go take it to that poncy bar up the road. Wankers.

Rugger Boys Jagerbomb

What with it being played in New Zealand, therefore the matches kicking off in the morning, you might not have noticed that the rugby world cup has begun. If you’ve missed the start then don’t worry as it goes on for a whole seven weeks.
Many times I’ve given it a go, but I just can’t get into egg chasing. Mainly because there’s a huge flaw in the game.
Yes there’s constant scrums that are tedious and stop the flow of play, but my main issue is that when there’s an offense the other team then gets a chance to kick for three points (if its within the kickers range which is usually just in front of halfway). Too many games are decided by who committed the least amount of innocuous fouls.
Rugby league got rid of this flaw and the constant scrums and so in my opinion makes it a better sport than rugby union.

The other crap thing about rugby is rugger boys. Sure go out for a few drinks after the game but do you really have to challenge each other to a press up competition after a couple of pints?
Do you have to call each other by your nicknames all the time?
Do you have to put your arms around each others shoulders, sing Oasis songs and then throw up in the gutter?
Do you have to down Jagerbombs and cheer when you slam the glass down on the bar?

That brings me on to the latest drink craze that is Jaggerboms. It’s a not very strong single shot in half a glass of a bad smelling energy drink which you have to wait around for an eternity while the bartender lines them up to do a Jager-train.
If you are a rugger boy and want to act the big man then have a shot of whiskey will ya.

Harry Potter 'Fights Some Real Demons'

Never understood why people camp out to be the first in line. Whether its waiting for tickets for a sporting event, a new games console or like last week when people camped out to see the new Harry Potter film. Well they weren’t even camping out to see the film but to get a glimpse of Harry, the girl and the ginger one walking down the red carpet.
The three of them are of course out and about doing a lot of promotion for the film and from what I’ve seen a lot has been made of Daniel Radcliffe’s so called ‘problems with alcohol’.
Was he pouring a glass of whiskey to go with his morning coffee? Did he regularly miss work and end up sitting on a bench, guzzling down super strength cider and shouting at traffic?
From what I can tell it was more like what most teenagers do when they first discover alcohol which is to get very drunk in a short space of time, make a fool out of themselves and throw up. Then wake up in the morning feeling like death vowing to never drink again.
Unlike the vast majority Daniel Radcliffe decided that he really won’t drink again.
That’s applaudable for sure, but don’t call it a drinking problem.

An ex colleague of mine regularly turned up for the night shift even though he wasn’t due to work until the morning. He didn’t come in to do any actual work but to drink super strength larger and talk bollocks to whoever would pretend to listen. Then at about 4am he would go to the canteen and get his head down for a bit before his 5.30am start time.
His increasingly gaunt appearance was a clear indication that his health was rapidly in decline, and after a long time off sick and several warnings about turning up for work pissed or not turning up at all he lost his job.
Six months later I saw him sitting on a wall outside a supermarket drinking from a bottle. His skin was a light shade of yellow and he looked like death.
Now that certainly is a drinking problem. One that sadly took over his life.

Odd Pictures And Tickets In My Local Pub

The pub around the corner is a proper backstreet boozer. It’s a locals pub, that’s never empty but never too crowded. An Irishman and his Thai wife run it and their dog wanders about and lay’s down whoever she pleases. There’s friendly eastern European staff who know what everyone drinks and new folk are more than welcome as long as they don’t cause any bother.
Okay so its an old mans pub, but I’ve always liked them type of pubs. If you want to go out on the pull on a Friday night then go to the pub on the high road. If you’re retired and want a few cheep ale’s in the afternoon or you’re a teenager who drinks alco-pops followed by shots of Sambuca then go to the JD Wetherspoons at the top of the high road. I regally visit them places too, put the backstreet boozer is my pub of choice.
In this pub there’s a corner that has tickets and photos behind a plastic sheet of glass. The customers have put them there are mostly from sporting events or concerts. There’s U2 at Wembley Stadium, The Charlatans at Brixton Academy, West Ham United vs Birmingham City. Stuff like that.
But there are a few strange ones. Like Ken Dodd at the Dome Concert Hall in Brighton. Alright Maybe one of the old boys who always sit in the same place really liked Ken Dodd back in the 60s and 70s, when he was on TV “You know when real comedians were on the telly, not like all this rubbish on now.”
I will no doubt be saying the same thing in the future. Except I won’t because the comedians that are on the TV are not much good anymore. Not all of them but most of them, especially the smug ones on them panel shows - Just because you raise your voice then lower it and then speed it up and raise it again at the end of the sentence in typical Ian Hislop manner does not make it funny.
Also there’s a ticket for a live show of The Tweenies. Okay so someone has taken there kids to see it. That’s understandable.
But next to a ticket for Hawkwind is a signed picture of Timmy Mallett? I’m at a lost with this one.

Cut Price Booze

The price of a pint in my local pub has gone up. Its now £3.10. Its not the cheapest pint in the area, but then I would rather drink in my local backstreet boozer than the JD Wetherspoon’s on the high road. Its not the most expensive as that that title will always be held by the shiny bar on the high road that’s filled with coked up Essex boys.
Its getting to expensive to spend all Saturday night in the pub so now a lot more people stay at home a little longer to have a couple more drinks at before they go out. Pubs are suffering as a result, but its not the customers fault. The price of alcohol in a pub has increased far beyond the rate in the off-licence. I can buy a can of beer in the shop around the corner from me for a pound. A rise of about 20p from when I bought booze (underage) in the early 90s.
Then I heard that the Coalition Government are going to bring in minimum alcohol pricing. “No,” I thought, “now its going to cost a lot more to have a couple of beers at home!”
Then they implemented the law and all was okay. It turns out that a can of beer can not be sold for less than 38p a can. So it will only effect (if at all) the super special promotion bulk buys that they have at Christmas.
Health campaigners are not happy with the new law as it’s a watered down outcome. Well they can stick their morale high ground kill joy stance. There’s nothing wrong with a couple of beers at the end of the working day, and a good few more at the end of the working week at an affordable price. Not everyone that cracks open a bottle is a binge drinking ASBO that’s ends the night puking in the gutter.

The Second/Third Cheapest

Yet another series of MasterChef is starting again tonight. If I come across a cookery programme while in front of the telly then I will usually give it a bit of a watch, but I get annoyed with the way the medicine ball headed one on MasterChief tastes the food. He takes his fork to the plate, scoops up the food and then ever so slowly moves the fork to his mouth. When the fork is almost there he leans his big head slowly towards the fork then puts the fork in his mouth and holds it there for two or three seconds. This dramatised way of tasting food just grinds at me.
Also I usually find the food a bit too poncy. Poncy food in poncy restaurants doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve been to a couple and sure the food was good but about on par as the restaurant I went to a couple of weeks before where the main course cost as much as the fifteen percent tip that I left at the poncy restaurant.

When I was at this restaurant I ordered the second cheapest bottle of white wine. I would’ve ordered the cheapest but the girl I was with suggested the second cheapest and I didn’t want to look cheep. There was a bottle on the wine list for a grand. I found this obscene. The only reason someone would order that bottle is to show off that they can afford to blow money on a bottle of wine that costs as much as an round the world plane ticket. Is the taste in the twenty pound bottle and the thousand pound bottle really worth that greater margin in price range?
In my experience with wine there’s the dirt cheep wine from the off-licence that’s so foul you need a mixer with it. Then the second cheapest wine which is usually fine, and then the rest which all tastes a little better than the second cheapest. My experience with whiskey is the same. But to me the most over rated drink is champagne. It’s glorified cheep fizzy wine. Rather have a beer anytime.

Birthday Grime

I’m rapidly approaching my 34th birthday. Since being in my thirties I don’t think too much about upcoming birthdays. I used to. When I was in high school I never cared for the month of September. Back to school, the nights drawing in and my birthday just around the corner. Which meant a year closer to being an adult. Being an adult meant acting responsible, and acting responsible didn’t seem too much fun at all.

As a kid I can’t recall ever having any type of party for my birthday. On my 18th I remember going to a grimmy pub in Leytonstone with three mates where the barman made any drink that they told him to give me. I think that the tipping point was a pint of Guinness mixed with Gold Label. Gold label makes Super Tennants seem like a nice cold Red Stripe on a hot summer evening at the end of the working week.
I have no recollection of any other birthdays. Even last years.

But I’ve never been one to celebrate it. Usually I have to be dragged out for a few beers. Only this year it falls on a Saturday. Which means I have to go out anyway as its kind of the Saturday night law. And I guess that people will ask me what I want to do. Well I don’t want to go to the west end or on a pub crawl around Shoreditch or Camden. No I want to go to my local grimmy pub. The pub that gets filled out when a big football match is on but is then almost empty as soon as the final whistle goes because most people don’t want to stay there any longer than need be. But I genuinely like it there. If you want to pull then its no place to go as its not the sort of place that any right minded girl would drink. If you want to eat then its not the place to go. Apparently they do food, I’ve seen a menu on the wall. But the only food I’ve ever seen anyone eat there is bar snacks. If you want a good beer selection then its not the place to be. There’s no strawberry flavoured shit on tap. The toilet floor is never dry and it stinks awful. But it’s a cheep local working class pub with no pretensions and every suburb and town needs a place like that.

34, officially mid thirties, oh well at least if I make it to the beginning of next month then I outlived Jesus.

Angels Vs Devils

Last night I found out that the postal strike was called off. I was relived in a way because money is tight on a four day week.
But I found out around seven thirty and by this time I was already a few beers down and had it in my mind that I was going to get drunk and have the next day off.
Some options went through my mind.
1 Go in to work as normal.
2 Act like I hadn’t watched the news so was oblivious that the strike was off.
3 Go in late and say that I had only just found out the strike was off when I heard it on the radio.

Whatever way I was going to get drunk so I went to the pub and drunk a lot more.
Usually when I’m in the pub and I’ve got work in the morning the cartoon devil is on my shoulder telling me to stay out and drink more and the cartoon angel is telling me that it’s about time I went home to sober up and get a good nights sleep.
Well yesterday the angel didn’t get a look in. Not one bit.
I set my alarm but slept right through it. My manager phoned me up at 6.30 and said that the strike is off. “Is it? Okay I will be there in half an hour,” I said.

Sometimes you just got to got with what the devil says. If you listened to the angel all the time then life sure would be a bore.