The Kings Today
Movenon celebrated his 50th birthday last Saturday. Some time ago he told me and the rest of the Wednesday Group he intended to have a party.
He’s the last of us old school chums to get to 50. At least of the little group that still keeps in contact. I was the first to hit that number in 2007. It doesn’t seem all that long ago but 53 is hovering gloatingly over the horizon.
Movenon decided he would hold the celebration in the Kings and asked us to clear our calendars and attend, although his actual birthday isn’t until later in the month. But it was a convenient time for him to get his family and friends together.
Knowing that he’s got quite a large family and quite a group of friends, I knew it would be quite a big party. I’m not over keen on big parties these days, not so sure I ever was. When he handed out the invitations a couple of months back, I tried not to commit, being that I’m rarely free on Saturdays.
Getting nearer to the date I still my doubts but the way my Saturday panned out, I decided to go. Admittedly, it wasn’t a decision finalised until a few hours before the event.
When I got there around 9pm, I remembered what Mr Pointyview told me about the Kings these days. He’d been there over the Easter Weekend and while other places were heaving with people celebrating the extra days off, there was hardly anyone in the Kings.
It was like that this Saturday. Although going into heaving pubs wasn’t something I enjoyed, seeing a pub as large as the Kings with only about four or five customers made me feel rather self-conscious.
I headed out the back way, near to the toilets, because I thought Movenon’s party would be there, but most of the spare rooms were darkened. It was another of those times I wished I’d paid more attention when being given instructions.
Neatentidy said he would be there around 9pm, so I texted him to see where I needed to go.
As I strolled back towards the bar a few memories stirred. I don’t know why that night of all nights. I’d been there often enough in the past…
The Kings, or Kings Arms as it’d been then, back in 1974, was the first pub Neatentidy and I visited on a regular basis; and that was due to a touch of serendipity. In that year, mid-teens but out of the pubescent acne stage, I had a weekend job in a shop now long gone. G.J. Handy’s.
It was a hardware shop and initially I worked there Saturdays. The following summer I worked during there during the school holidays.
Not long after I got the job Neatentidy got himself a Saturday job as well; in his case a grocer’s around the corner. It was convenient, we sometimes met up lunchtime.
However, some months later Neatentidy left school and I decided to stay on to take a couple of A Levels. Although I expected at the time we would lose touch, Daddy Fitrambler found that to be the case when he left school.
Fortunately, it never happened that way as Neatentidy and I – after a gap of a few weeks – began meeting up on Tuesdays. Being about 16 we tended to just stroll around talking.
Then one weekend, I agreed to help with stock-taking at Handy’s – extra money always welcome – and as it was an all day job, the boss would provide the lunch.
On the day I found out that lunch was to be at the Kings Arms. I wasn’t really keen on drinking in those days, but come lunchtime, a colleague, some twenty years older than me, ordered a half of lager and lime. I did the same.
In those days I didn’t use pubs except when with the parents, so my knowledge of beer wasn’t all that good. What little knowledge I did have, came (frighteningly) through tv adverts. So I took the lead from my co-worker – my senior by around twenty or more years – and followed his lead. What he ordered was good enough for me; or at least it would have to be as I was unlikely to go through all the keg taps until I found something more agreeable. (That sort of thing was to come later in life; 1977 springs to mind but that’s another story.)
I drank about a pint that lunchtime and felt very light-headed for many hours afterwards, but managed to do an afternoon’s work; a possible trial run for later dinnertime sessions of the late 70s at my current employer.
It was that lunchtime dinner and drink that gave me a good idea; I’m occasionally prone to them. So on our usual Tuesday meeting, I put it to Neatentidy that we could go there for a drink. He was quite keen on the idea. I suppose to be fair and honest, I believe something like that was what he wanted to do all along, he’d probably suggested it but I hadn’t been keen.
Yes we were only 16, so underage, but dressed a little more like adults in jackets and ties, we got into the Kings Arms and were ordered two halves of lager and lime. We drank a further two halves each and left at around 9pm to get home by 9.30pm at the latest.
We felt quite light-headed, merry and things became a lot funnier than normal.
The King’s Arms wasn’t the same then, internally. As you walked through the doors you could go straight ahead to the toilets, dining room, to the left a reception, to the right was a long room, a bar away from the rest of the place.
On most Tuesdays over the next few months we were mainly served by a rather rotund barman, balding, the little hair he did have was grey. His face was a smiling face, a cheerful chap, but with some of his teeth missing at the sides of his mouth, only obvious when he grinned.
He was a nice bloke, but we found him a little amusing; or to be more precise, his name was amusing.
Cyril!
I suppose Cyril isn’t the most amusing name in the world and thinking purely about the name, it still isn’t but it was the context, I suppose, the history of the time.
You see, around this time there were these adverts on the box about Wonderloaf, a sliced bread nationally available. The commercials were set, unsurprisingly, in a bakery. The baker – dressed in white with the cap shovelling loaves in and out of ovens, presenting them to the cameras – was called Cyril. His grinning face and the loaf were in turn presented a few times to the audience accompanied by a jingle; something to plant itself in the minds of the viewers as in so many adverts then and now.
It went: “Nice one, Cyril, Nice one son, Nice one Cyril, Let’s have another one…”
I daresay you’d be hard pushed to really latch onto a belly laugh from that. But Neatentidy and I did. We racked our brains to see how many times we could use Cyril or better still ‘Nice one, Cyril,’ in our conversations or brief bar encounters with him, when buying a round.
After handed over our halves…”Nice one, Cyril…” or going up to the bar with empty glasses. “Yes? Another round?” he’d asked pleasantly .”yeah, let’s have another one…”
You get the drift…
Yeah, ok, you had to be there!
I rather liked that old layout with the separate bar, rather than its open plan look. I reflected on that as I got back into the bar.
Wonderloaf Magazine Advert
I suspected the ‘do’ for Movenon would be upstairs and I could hear the loudness of music as I approached the bar. Neatentidy probably wouldn’t have been able to hear the text alert, so I asked about the party at the bar.
A couple of minutes later I was upstairs and in a small room with a bar, which led to a larger room. The music was really blaring out now and I was beginning to wish I hadn’t decided to come. After all, I had a blog to write and I could have used the time to do it. But that was unfair.
Neatentidy was at the bar, with Mrs Neatentidy. We greeted each other and that meant I was trapped, I couldn’t sidle off. With normal lights of the room, being invaded every so often by multicoloured lights from the disco room, the 70s music and the dance floor populated with the over the top 70s costumed guests along with some bewildered old ‘uns (and apprentice old ‘uns like me).
Neatentidy suggested a move to the Disco room. I went along with it but I groaned, inwardly. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to help Movenon celebrate the half-century, but the flashing lights and the noise…
TELLING TALES 
Anything by Weather Report or The Weathermen. I can’t be bothered with titles; I only did this to claim the fiftieth comment on this post.
Anything from Snow Patrol
The sun will come out tomorrow – Annie
Somewhere over the rainbow – Wizard of Oz
Anything from Ice Maiden
Why Does It Always Rain On Me? – Travis
A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall – Bob Dylan / Bryan Ferry
Fire & Rain – James Taylor
Here Comes The Rain Again – Eurythmics
I Wish It Would Rain Down – Phil Collins
Laughter In The Rain – Neil Sedaka
Purple Rain – Prince
Rainy Days And Mondays – Carpenters
Who’ll Stop The Rain – Creedence Clearwater Revival
Would you agree with the name I have given her though. As her friend you must have seen the brighter side of her personality. It seems to me that GloomLaden just brings out the worst in everybody. Naturally Mrs. Sunshine was all sweetness and light in my company! He never seems to see people at their best. I wonder why. There’s a whole load of discussion material here for next week.
I mentioned the blond, because, 1 she was my friend and 2 because she was there with us on a lot of trips over the country side looking for pubs.
Why restrict ourselves to just Sunshine, when there must be a whole host of songs about the weather.
Hi Ho Silver Lining –
Oh what a beautiful morning – Oklahoma
On cloud number nine – Brian Adams
Stary,Stary night, paint your palette blue and grey – Don Mclean
Smoke gets in my eyes
HEAVY CLOUD NO RAIN – STING
‘In The Cage’ from ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway – Genesis – 1974.
There’s sunshine in my stomach
Like I just rocked my baby to sleep.
There’s sunshine in my stomach
And I can’t keep me from creeping sleep,
Sleep, deep in the deep.
There are eight more verses of an ever increasing degree of complexity. Almost makes you long for a Phil Collins lyric doesn’t it? But how much more than merely human were these characteristics which you chose to ascribe to Mrs.Sunshine? Are we talking angelic or alien here? If you’re suggesting you might have sunshine in your stomach perhaps we can look forward to the day of resurrection at Chippenham on Saturday! I think I preferred my earlier showcasing of my romantic credentials.
Blameworthy, the characteristics I ascribed to the erroneously monikered Mrs Sunshine were more than merely human: therein lay the problem.
Sunshine Superman by Donovan
Good Day Sunshine by The Beatles
Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles
And isn’t there a Peter Gabriel period Genesis song that commences with the dyspeptic lyric ‘I’ve got sunshine in my stomach’?
You may think you have successfully changed the subject GloomLaden, but you know it’s not as easy as that. It does bring me full circle back to song titles though:
‘Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
It’s not warm when she’s away.
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
And she’s always gone too long
Anytime she goes away’
(Bill Withers – 1971)
‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are grey.
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away.’
(Pine Ridge Boys – 1939)
(Rice Brothers Gang – 1939)
(Bryan Ferry – 1974)
That’s better. No danger of any human characteristics there at all; ascribed or otherwise.
To change the subject: Nick Clegg
Now see what you have done Mrs.Gowithit. Why, oh why, did you have to mention the blonde woman?
GloomLaden is probably revising his definition of romance as we speak. Now there was a woman to whom he most certainly did ascribe human characteristics!
Once again GloomLaden, it seems you have only seen the side of a person’s personality which connects with yours.
Mrs Sunshine? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Stalin has nothing on Blameworthy when it comes to airbrushing history.
I used the term engagement loosely. Anything will suffice, as long as it means I can avoid ever drinking with you again. Your diction really has gone to pot, hasn’t it GloomLaden? That sentence appears to be suggesting that Blamewotthy is a bigamy. Actually I rather like the name Blamewotthy.
Funny how things come back to you when you are not thinking about them. I opened the curtains; looked out of the window, and remembered her name instantly. It was Mrs. Sunshine. Just like the old song.
A series of pressing engagements? Does this suggest that you are soon to add bigamy to the list of things of which you are Blamewotthy?
Sorry about that final I in the last reply. It was caused by me banging my head on the keyboard in despair at the same moment as I submitted the message.
Do you know GloomLaden, try as I might, her name just won’t come to me. I had a vivid recollection of her, only the other night, but by the following morning I couldn’t remember a thing. One or two names spring to mind but I cannot be sure if they are correct and I’d rather not commit myself without consulting with you first, in private. I’ll be round in a few minutes to disable your internet connection. Can I just take this opportunity to say how much I enjoyed all those drinking sessions with you, over the years. Sadly, I won’t be able to come with you again…ever. I have a series of pressing engagements. I am glad you have recovered from your recent illness. I note that your response contained two words with more than one syllable. Just goes to show how much one can convey in short sentences, with a few simple words, instead of all that interminable, flowery waffle. I am, however, already looking back with fondness on those former times when nobody knew what the hell you were going on about.
I
What’s the blonde woman called, that’s what I want to know, Blameworthy.
I heard the sad news this morning that Mr. GloomLaden has suffered from, what is known as, a literary aneurysm. In layman’s terms this means that the vessels which transported his ostentatious, ornamented enunciations from the part of his brain which contains the vocabulary to the mouth or hand, had silted up with the glutinous plaque-like deposits formulated by his pertinaceous persistence in the dissemination of over elaborate verbal and literary spoutings.
This has an effect similar to a sealed scrabble box imploding in the brain and spilling its contents in an inwardly random fashion amongst the fleshy protrusions and delicate sensory receptors of his pseudo-intellectual mind. I wish him a speedy recovery, and look forward to his monosyllabic response.
Go to bed GloomLaden; this is not for the likes of you.
Blameworthy and Gowithit, I wonder why you ever went on those trips. Neither of you seem able to recall them with the slightest accuracy and one cannot but conclude the petrol money was wasted; you could have stayed where you were put and spent it on drink. And a tie.
Can I just make it clear, once and for all, that the pub in Fernham is not, and never has been, known as the Mad Axeman.
The pub up the dirt track with the snake in the tank and the horses in the paddock was not on the Oxfordshire run either. That was the Tunnel House at Coates in Gloucestershire. I can only remember going there once with you and I know the late, blonde one was with us then. That was an evening trip after work and I was driving. See, my memory is not as bad as I make out. Although that probably isn’t the occasion you were referring to; or the same pub for that matter.
And what’s all this about me being refused service?
This is were the memories get blurred, there are so many times where the different events merged into one another, but I don’t think the blond one was with us on the Oxford run.
Wait a moment! Wasn’t I the one driving to the pub down the dirt track, and wasn’t the blonde mutual colleague with us then as well? Or was that another occasion?
I’ll get you a menu.
I have only once been refused service in a pub and that was in London. The rest of you must have been misbehaving, especially the blonde one. When are you going back to the tropical island Gowithit? This is all getting too revealing, I may have to return to my former policy of simply denying everything. Although in this case I genuinely don’t remember it.
I thought I was the perfect gentleman during the tour of the Oxfordshire countryside,. I can remember the pubs but very little else, apart from something to do with a hedge in Henley-on-Thames. On reflection I think I may have been a little tipsy. I remember the snake in the tank, with his long pointy tongue and stripy head poking out of the gun turret. Wasn’t that somewhere on Salisbury Plain? Most of those pubs are probably closed now; the snake is dead and I doubt if the old yellow Capri is still on the road. Were there horses in a paddock at the pub down the long, dirt track or was that just another dream?
Fitrambler and GloomLaden could happy cater for me anytime.
Or there is the time I drove (I think it was me) and a young Blameworthy and a mutual blond friend went to the Mad Axeman pub in Fernham and a young Blameworthy was refused service. Thinking back the 1st Mr Gowithit was driving.
There are the rare occasion when I have driven a less then sober work colleague around the Oxford countryside visiting pubs that I will never find again. One I can remember with sofas or are they Settees, (before that became trendy) and a snake in tank, it was down a long dirt track.
All is not lost: Fitrambler and GloomLaden will doubtless cater for your every need now you have returned. A finer pair of caterers you could not wish for. Or have the virile manservants returned with you? What made you come back? Could it be that you were missing the stimulating debate on the blog? Perhaps those tropical islands are not all they are cracked up to be.
How much is your fare back to that Paradise Island. I will willingly cough up rather than have you spill the beans. But hang on a minute, I don’t remember you having been sober at all, outside of working hours.
I have return from my paradise island with young, muscular, verile manservants teading to me every need. Reality is such a shit.
I have no idea what Blameworthy or GloomLaden is going on about. As for my own young drunken youth I can only remember very little and most of it was at someone leaving do, I think my own but I could not have left work that often I only remember 1 P45. I have to remind both of you there have been times when I have drunk less and seen both of you worth for wear and like an elephant I have a long memory.
Should any of you be wondering why there have been no recent comments from Mrs.Gowithit, I have heard a rumour today that she has left our virtual world and is now living on a tropical island where handmaidens and manservants are attending to her every need. A well deserved reward in my opinion.
I shall miss her contributions to the blog. They provided much needed lighthearted relief from the coagulated dark mass of pretentious gobbledygook that issues from the murky depths of the GloomLaden soul and gloops its way through cyberspace to pollute our happy homes with its spirit-throttling negativity. I was not given the opportunity to reply in the correct sequence to his last scathing comments about the young Blameworthy, but would merely say that whilst I may have started at the bottom of the slippery slope, after a long struggle, I have now reached the sunnier uplands; all the while remaining tieless. I apologise for my occasional drunkenness, which has been intermittent rather than habitual.
But there was a young Blameworthy, one assumes. I conjecture a young, prematurely bearded oik who eschewed the sunnier uplands of the slippery slope for its horrible depths, sluicing down pints like the bitter old man he now is. Not for him the redemptive melancholy of youth, just the belated childishness of that nastily biting squirrel, itself a malignant ur-child of God alone knows what dark significance.
If you’d only worn a tie.
I am struggling to decipher this message, which has percolated slowly through your own fake patina of intellectualism, GloomLaden. Fitrambler already blames me for his demise, but who was responsible for your own descent into the gutter. If you continue to spout this self righteous venom from your lofty perch I shall be forced to write my own blog article detailing the full uncensored horror of the Worcester Beer Festival 2002. I consider my attempts to decorate my ‘habitual drunkeness’ to be more successful than your thunderous gut-heaving efforts to decorate a racecourse. So don’t lecture me on revealing demonstrations of low character. I also do not believe there ever was a ‘young Fitrambler’ any more than there was once a young GloomLaden.
hello 1nce again…. i’m really thankful to you that you’ve supported my blog… i’ve dedicated a post with some words and your comments… please check it out…
Thank you…
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It is good to read that youths of the 1970s sported jackets and ties. Shame Blameworthy – whose disdain for ties is especially revealing of his low character – didn’t pick up this good habit from young Fitrambler, rather than infecting him with his own bad habit of habitual drunkenness, a sin worsened by the fake patina of connoisseurship with which he always decorates it.
That’s The Way (I Like It) – K.C. & The Sunshine Band – 1974
Ladies Night – Kool & The Gang – 1979
We Are Family – Sister Sledge – 1979
Funkytown – Lipps Inc. – 1979
Get Up And Boogie – Silver Convention – 1976
No.
Blameworthy, do you really not remember the character of your early drinking escapades, those which took place before an ever thickening crust of cruel urbanity sealed your mind into its now habitual sneer?
Disco Inferno – The Tramps – 1976
Best Disco in Town – Ritchie Family – 1976
D.I.S.C.O. – Ottawan – 1979
Disco Nights – G.Q. – 1979
You are fortunate GloomLaden, in having never become an experienced drinker. Presumably this allows you to recreate the experience every evening after work. The sale of LSD to sixteen year olds in the Greyhound may well have had a bearing on its eventual closure. I have never experienced a luminous lunchtime. Were you wearing a high-vis jacket?
Ah, there’s nothing like those early sessions when hardly any alcohol at all can cause you to experience a euphoric intoxication you’ll never be able to recreate when an experienced drinker. I recall a luminous luchtime at The Greyhound in Purton which had on my sixteen year old self the sort of effect that LSD had on the Beatles’ music. Kingsley Amis, in his excellent book Every Day Drinking, remarks on these epiphanies, wondering if entire drinking careers are little more than an attempt to recapture something of the frisson of those times. Early promise and life’s failure to live up to it, eh? (Sighs wistfully).
Yes, I’m afraid I do….
Car Wash by Rose Royce.
Native New Yorker by Odyssey.
Night Fever by The Bee Gees.
Stayin’ Alive by The Bee Gees.
The Hustle by Van McCoy
Anyone remember any 70’s disco songs? I know I do…