The Big Sleep – Home for the Night
Thinker turned into the entrance to our hotel, up a sharp, curved hill, and parked. His parking wasn’t great but then nor was mine. Sunny and I got out and Thinker decided he’d have another go. He pulled out in a wide ark with the intention of trying to park a little tighter. But by the time he’d completed the circle, a car with two women sneaked in front of him and took the place he intended to re-park in…
It was typical of our luck that day. When Sunny left Stevenage to go to Beaconsfield to take the rest of the Journey in Thinker’s car, his Satnav packed in. It delayed Sunny as he needed to get directions off Thinker.
Then, when they picked me up in Swindon, there was an accident on the motorway that literally added hours to our journey.
Hey ho!
I got out of the back of the car having been locked in one position almost literally for nearly three hours. My knees were playing up and I walked a few yards like a Groucho Marx impersonator – sans cigar!
We were about thirty or forty feet up. A road leading towards the centre of the city, running parallel with the hotel and another went off straight ahead. Park Inn and Cineworld on the left and Motorpoint Arena on the right leading on to a multi-floored glass structured shopping mall.
I took a couple of photos then walked back to the entrance of the hotel. I smiled as I remembered the name. The Big Sleep – I resisted doing a Humphrey Bogart lisp when talking to Sunny and Thinker; it was best as nobody suddenly jumped out at us with a gun.
We checked in after about a five-minute wait. Reception wasn’t overly fancy or large. At the opposite end to the check in desk there were a couple of armchairs. Beyond that was a refrigerate cabinet with soft drinks in and a bar further to the right of that.
There were two lifts and both Thinker and Sunny stood beside them, Sunny pressing the lift-call button. I noticed the lift next to it had an out-of-order sign on it.
After a couple of minutes Sunny pressed the lift call button again.
‘Taking its time, isn’t it?’ said Sunny.
I nodded. ‘Perhaps it’s having the same trouble as the other one.’
I pointed out the note on the doors of the other lift.
‘Maybe,’ Sunny gave the button another push.
But two minutes later we were still waiting.
Thinker looked at the door behind us. ‘Perhaps we’d better take the stairs.’
‘Good idea,’ I responded, with a great deal of enthusiasm.
‘You don’t like lifts, do you,’ said Sunny.
‘Um. No.’
Sunny smiled.
I defended myself. ‘Let’s face it, what if the one we got into suddenly got a bout of what put the other one out of commission? And if it got this bout while we were halfway between floors?’
‘Well, we’d have to be rescued,’ replied Sunny. ‘Sure it wouldn’t happen, though.’
‘Well, I’m not so confident. People have been known to get stuck in lifts…’
‘We won’t because we’re using the stairs…’
By the time we reached out rooms, the old Fitrambler lungs were going like a set of electric bellows on over-drive.
My room was large with a bathroom tagged on. A window ran the whole length of the room and showed more or less what I saw when we parked earlier. It made sure there was plenty of light in the room.
I unpacked my overnight bag, then washed and changed ready to meet Sunny in the corridor. Thinker got to us about twenty minutes later and we found the way down to the street.
‘Do you remember the way from what Topman told us?’ asked Thinker.
‘Of course,’ I replied, confidently.
Find a pub, not a problem. I’d been on trips with the expert pub sniffer; ‘Maps’ Blameworthy.
It didn’t seem as far as it looked on the maps and we were at The Yard within ten minutes.
Thinker and Sunny looked at the menu boards outside.
‘Sight of food is making me feel quite hungry,’ I remarked.
They both looked at me. Sunny said: ‘That’s not unusual.’
‘Not going to do Tom Jones on me, are you?’
They both frowned. I explained slowly. ‘Not…Unusual?…a Tom…Jones…song….’
My words tapered off as the hard stares continued. Well, you can’t come out with a gem all the time.
The front of The Yard had a newness to it that worried me but I was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt.
We went inside. I got a sense of largeness, combined with a feel of lots of glittering metal around the bars. The pumps for the beer looked a little more like keg dispensers at first glance, which made me groan inside. There was a smell of food cooking, and I saw a metallic area where a couple of blokes in black t-shirts were cooking. Then to the right we saw Topman and Londontaff.
‘Londontaff’s in the chair,’ said Topman.
They weren’t too far into the beers that were in front of them, but how many were downed before we got there?
At the bar I decided to go with the Brains Dark.
Back at the table, Topman was talking of moving on.
‘I want you to taste Brains SA at its best, so as they haven’t got any on tonight, drink up, we’ll move on…’
We moved onto a place called The Cottage. A narrow-barred pub, more in line with what I considered to be a pub. They had Brains SA on. Londontaff and I found some seats while Thinker bought the round that Sunny and Topman brought back to the table.
The Cottage – The Second Pub
They did have brains SA; but only it only rated 9/10 as far as Topman was concerned.
Of course, the convert in the team is Sunny. He used to be lager drinker. The only black mark I could put against his normally good character; since erased, I might add. He now enjoys a variety of ales, bottled and draught.
The next pub Topman took us to was the City Arms.
The City Arms – The Best Of The Night
‘This one has been awarded CAMRA ‘Pub of the Year 2012’, and does serve a really good SA,’ Topman took delight in telling us
It was a packed pub with beers from Microbreweries as well as Brains, from which they sell Brains SA and Dark.
I have to say the SA was really good, much better than I’ve had anywhere else, even that night.
Later in the evening, when Topman, returned from buying a round at the bar, he said to me: ‘Can you do an American accent?’
It seemed a rather odd question.
‘Yes,’ I said, and demonstrated.
‘Good enough,’ he replied.
He didn’t explain himself at that moment in time, but brought up my second favourite subject after beer, food.
‘We’ve a few choices round here, and there is, the all-you-can-eat…does food from all over the world…’
My eyes probably glazed over at the last choice. ‘I quite like that one…’
‘Thought you might. Chinese, Indian, French, Japanese, Italian…Lots of variety…’
‘Actually, it was the ‘all you can eat’ bit that hooked me…To me, that’s like issuing a challenge…’
‘If we do go there, you will remember that other people will want to eat as well!’
Topman can be rather droll at times.
‘Yes, but at least if he’s eating he can’t do any of his jokes,’ said Thinker.
Once the latest round was drunk, we went out but not before Topman said: ‘See the woman at the stool by the bar…’ (I moved my eyes in the direction Topman was looking.) ‘Don’t look….’ (I wondered how I could see her if I didn’t look?) ‘But do the American accent as you go past.’
I still couldn’t work out what was going on, but I went along with it and used dialogue to suggest it was my first English pub and laid it on thick about the warm beer.
Once we were well away from the pub, Topman explained. ‘I saw her looking at you from the bar…’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, she reckoned she knew you, thought you were an American producer. Pro’bly the bow tie and jacket. So I went along with it and told her you were…’
‘As long as she doesn’t ask me for a job.’
We strolled around several pubs and places looking for somewhere to eat. Finally we settled where I would’ve been happy to go to all along. The All-You-Can-Eat.
(All you can eat – never get bored with hearing that.)
It was called Red Hot World.
Through a glass frontage in what is a shopping mall you are in a large room, rather like a big supermarket, but instead of shelves piled high with tins, packets and the like you there were tables and chairs in neat rows, in variety of reds. These ran for most of the floor ahead. To the left was a bar predominately in glass and silver, which served a nitro-keg beer and several lagers.
The chap who greeted us said there would be about a fifteen-minute wait. We chatted amongst ourselves and I noticed to the right of where we came was the food area. I could just see a few of the dishes through a wide entrance. The saliva glands went into overtime!
Time seemed to go by pretty quickly and we were shown a table on a Mezz floor. Once there we got a clean table, cutlery and told where to go for the food. Before the waiter could get the final word out, I was off and heading for the food.
The set up was shelves either side and sectioned off into cuisines of the world. The variety was stunning. The only disappointing thing for me was that even I couldn’t have a piece from every dish there. But I picked out mainly ones I hadn’t tried before, being an adventurous sort.
Unsurprisingly, I was the first one back to our table, my plate quite loaded (also unsurprisingly) and I was on my third mouthful by the time the others started to drift back.
Just A Few Odds and Ends To Get Me Started.
Topman, seeing the way the food was stacked on my plate, commented: ‘You can go back a second time!’
Just before I shovelled another mouthful in, I said: ‘I will.’
Topman shook his head, then carried on with his own food.
I did go down for a second time, but called a halt there, well, as far as the main courses were concerned. Once I polished off seconds I helped myself to three puddings…
Once finished, I waited patiently for the others to finish theirs and then it was back to the City Arms for more beer.
It was a lot more crowded this time round, and fewer seats but I used my ‘getting old card’ to get a seat. As we were into the second round, Topman went off to the toilet and Thinker was pulling a face at his beer.
I asked him what was wrong, as he took another pull at the pint.
‘Tastes different,’ he said.
I looked at the colour and it was a little darker. I knew he’d ordered the same as me and realised he’d picked up the wrong beer. I told him so.
‘Ah,’ he said, putting down what we now knew to be Topman’s pint. It was missing a third. I wasn’t sure how much Topman drank or how much Thinker did, but Topman hadn’t long put it down when he got the round in.
Topman came back in, picked up his pint, frowned a little and I thought he was going to say something. But no, just that slight pause before putting away another third.
It was then I mentioned about the hotel and Thinker and Sunny agreed it was a pretty good one.
‘The rooms are big,’ said Sunny.
‘Like a converted office block,’ suggested Sunny.
‘Wonder what the breakfasts are like…’
Eight pairs of eyes gave me four Padding Bear hard stares.
‘What?’ I asked, injecting as much innocence into the word as I could.
There was shaking of heads, a couple of mutterings before Topman came up with an idea.
‘How about breakfast at my place?’
‘You sure Mrs Topman would be alright with that?’ said Londontaff.
‘No problem.’
‘I think you ought to ring her,’ insisted Londontaff.
A little more prodding and Topman went outside and called his wife. So, within fifteen minutes it was all arranged, we’d breakfast at Topman Towers in the morning, aiming to get there between 9.30 and 10.30am.
The next round was the last and Londontaff and Topman had to get the train back to Newport. Once Sunny, Thinker and I finished our drinks we made the decision to go back to our hotel.
‘We’re relying on you to get us back there,’ said Sunny.
I wasn’t sure why that was but I do have a good homing instinct, even after substantial amounts of beer. Maybe there was a little homing pigeon in the family lineage?
TELLING TALES 
Very wise, Fitters. Let’s all agree to keep it firmly under our hats.
With regards to the last few emails concerning sperm distribution. Despite the temptation I have decide to display a great deal of self-control…..in every respect.
I’m sorry,GloomLaden, I misunderstood. I assumed you were revealing that YOU had been a little too free with your sperm distribution, which I found surprising in one who claims to find the whole issue of issue repellent. There are some who might suggest I have, perhaps, not been free enough wih mine.
But I’ll say no more for fear that Fitrambler might bring up the issue of kebabs again.
Well, Blameworthy, you must at least have broadcast to the extent of engendering Master Blameworthy. In the case of engendering childer, going any distance at all is going too far.
I say! Steady on.
The natural processes of childbirth are not susceptible to persuasion. If they were, the human race might have a good many less participants. As as for sperm; it ill behoves a man who has been a little too free with his to critique the distribution of another’s.
Was it a long and difficult birth? I can’t imagine it would have been easy to persuade you to come out into the world. If your father’s sperm had shared your lack of enthusiasm for life a state of unbeing could easily have been your lot. Perhaps all but one of them did. There’s always one!
No, I was not happy before I was born. I wasn’t unhappy, however, which would have made a nice change had their been anything for it to be a change from. Surely unbeing is the most desirable state.
(The Regular Reader might like to note that the above is me in holiday mood.)
I don’t recall ever having been in anyone’s womb or, indeed, anything much at all about life before I started work. I’m sure Fitrambler will remember every single day of the nine months before his birth, though. Were you happy before you were born, GloomLaden?
Neither, quite, the first of you either. Surely the memoirs should commence with the warm, red certitudes of the womb-bound months?
Your work is, indeed, completed, Mr.GloomLaden, sir; I must now move on to greater things. My mother has asked me to thank you before we depart for the shops where, I am told, we must purchase a new pair of long trousers in preparation for the big step up to my first term in junior school .
Be assured, you have not heard the last of me yet.
Ignoring the little matter of Blameworthy’s utter insincerity, I shall take his last comment – the one prior to this one, not the next, which he will want you to construe as his last – at face value and proclaim my work here done.
Ahhh, praise indeed, GloomLaden, praise indeed! I have been a difficult and inattentive pupil but you have taught me well and, over time, I have learned from a great master.
No. What I have noticed is that your always meaningless statements have, since your retirement, become ever more flamboyant, lengthy and linguistical.
What you need is a trip to Bristol next week, to lift your spirits, briefly, before they plummet further below the horizon once again with the onset of another unbearable, unremitting and unendurably bleak winter season, heralded as it inevitably is by yet another unwelcome, unmarked and unhoped-for birthday.
Have you noticed how, since retirement and Proust, my increasingly flamboyant and lengthy linguistics have become almost entirely meaningless?
Yes, Blameworthy, things have been unremittingly bleak throughout what has been a life of discounted winters uninterrupted by spring, summer, autumn or contentment. And I’m only just at the start of a week off work.
Your experience in these matters far exceeds ours, GloomLaden. Your own, personal, Winter of Discontent, which began much earlier, in the Wilson era, has fermented and festered malignantly ever since, unabated and unaffected by the numerous changes of the seasons which have occurred between then and now or, indeed, by the return of the five-day working week.
Ah, 1979! It is splendid to be – digitally, at least – in the company of chaps who were not only active during the Winter of Discontent but actually causing some of it.
(Yes, yes, Blameworthy, I do realist the Winter of Discontent actually straddled 1978 and 1979 so that Christmas 1979 wasn’t in it at all. Nevertheless.)
Thank you, Fitters. The whole point of my ‘who cares anyway?’ comment was that I knew you would. The reason for my confusion over dates is that I also drove to Devizes a couple of years earlier, with another work colleague (who, for the purposes of this blog, shall be nameless) in my beaten up, 12 year-old Cortina – which had somehow lost its shock absorbers – to collect a 36 pint wooden pin of Old Timer for my own consumption. As the cask was a smaller size than the firkin which you and I picked up before Christmas ’79, we were able to stand it on its end in the boot of the car. This caused us no problems until, while negotiating the series of sharp bends through Avebury, the barrel tipped over and continued to roll around behind us, on its belly, for the remainder of the journey. My memories are often accompanied by an internal soundtrack of music from the period and I can even recall the song playing on my cassette player as we tried desperately to avoid swerving into the ancient standing stones: it was ‘New York Shuffle’ by Graham Parker & The Rumour.
Of course, what will happen now is that the nameless former colleague will send in a comment stating that, in fact, he was driving; the car was actually an Escort; the beer was 6X and not Old Timer; we collected it from the off-licence in Hungerford not Devizes, so the incident couldn’t have happened in Avebury; and actually, the music playing was Elvis Costello’s ‘Watching the Detectives’.
Ahem! If I might interject here. Mr Blameworthy, it was indeed 1979 when you were entrusted with the Christmas party money. It was me who was with you when you bought the 9 gallon barrell of beer. However, it was my father’s Hilman Minix which took the burden of the barrell of.
If I remember correctly – and I usually do – I bought two blonde albums and one Kate Bush album in Devizes.
You were pressured – to put it mildly – by being accused of being selfish by buying the aforementioned barrell. In the end – as I’m sure you recollect – you get fed up and so bought it back so to speak and the Minx again transported the barrell.
At the Christmas party there was massive disappointment that the party was sans real ale – fame of the barrell had spread – and thus you were in my – possibly prejudiced opinion – entirely vindicated.
What’s wrong with Woody Allen? The trouble with you Proustians is that, after Proust – if not during – nothing else is good enough for you.
You miss the Proustian subtlety in my question, GloomLaden, which, far from being dismissive, is full of hope and should be interpreted more literally. Your cultural antennae, once proudly displayed, bling-like, purely for decorative purposes, now droop withered and wilted for want of gainful employment in the real world. Age and alcohol have blunted the sham sensitivity of your intellectual and emotional edge. Accept your limitations and ‘schtick’ with Woody Allen.
And I thought all your ‘Who cares anyway?’ schtick was the product of work related boredom and despair. Now you’re retired, I’m inclined to cut you even less slack.
Actually, it couldn’t have been 1979, because I didn’t have the Cortina by then…
Perhaps it wasn’t Fitrambler at all; I must have been with someone else…
Oh, I don’t know; who cares anyway?
I’ve been trying to remember the fine detail of the day in December 1979, when Fitrambler and I were handed the whole of the Christmas party collection and entrusted with the task of buying all the drinks – and food – for the section. We went to Devizes in our lunch hour and bought a 9 gallon wooden cask of Wadworth’s beer, which rolled around, on its side, in the boot of my ancient Ford Cortina, all the way back over the downs. I believe there was enough cash left to buy a small bottle of mineral water for those who didn’t appreciate good beer, and a packet of crisps.
The Regular Reader is still very much alive or, at least, he (or she) had better be or he (or she) will have me to answer to.
I’m just glad that there is to be some fine detail, Blameworthy. Ill recalled or not, it is in the fine detail that I suspect our lives are lost. If he weren’t both dead and repellent – though not repellent because dead – Proust would concur, as would the Regular Reader, who is neither dead (so far as I know) nor repellent (even if dead). Though on second thoughts, probably repellent if dead: I’m no Jimmy Savile.
With several years remaining until you reach the point in your career where you have to give serious consideration to the content of your own retirement speech, GloomLaden, I can fully understand why, in your complacency, you would not have mulled over the finer details of this issue quite as much as I have; your comments unwittingly reveal the very stumbling block which has prevented me from committing my career highlights to print. My memory is no longer what I – incorrectly – believe it once to have been; dulled as it is by decades of menial mental drudgery and more interminable sessions swilling pints of sweet, cloying ale and lethal cider than I care to remember. I had entirely forgotten the entirely forgotten FINCAT checking regime of the 1990s. By, initially, airing my memoirs verbally, whilst surrounded by all those friendly faces of the former colleagues I have known and respected in a lengthy and, disturbingly, unvaried career spanning millenia, I hope to open up my reminiscences for discussion, thus reaping the benefits of the, less addled, recollections of others. Perhaps an old friend, who’s name would, inivitably, escape me, might raise their hand at the back of the crowd and say ‘ I feel quite passionately that, at this juncture, mention should be made of the entirely forgotten FINCAT checking regime of the 1990s’, and go on to give a detailed resume of what was, at the time, a key development in the efficient management of departmental statistics. At some point during this fascinating aside, another of my former colleagues, the name of whom would, inevitably, escape the memory of the speaker, might interrupt with the words ‘I hope you don’t mind me interrupting, but I believe you may be confusing the FINCAT system with the, much earlier, MANFLAP regime, which I’m sure many of us will recall, used a colour-coded, manual index card system with tick boxes rather than the electronic data collection method which was developed in the early 1990s.’ Now, whilst these might seem like relatively minor details to a newcomer such as yourself, GloomLaden, I know that older colleagues – some of them long since retired and many, sadly, no longer with us – will consider accuracy of paramount importance if I am ever to iron out the discrepancies and complete the final draught of my autobiography. I’ll leave it at that for now, though. I know how much you are looking forward to my farewell speech and I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you by revealing too much of the finer detail before the big day.
You jest, Blameworthy, but it is a work of just this scope and nature I have been urging you – with some considerable opposition from yourself – to embark upon. You will doubtless show the influence of Proust a little too heavily, but these comments will offer ample extratextual evidence as to why. I look forward to those well remembered days stacking up in a literary monument, in spoken form at first but later, surely, in book form. Don’t hold book on those tiny details that were the very grist of your daily grind; the herbal teas, the attempts to spot Didcot power station from the tea room window, the content of an office meeting about the now entirely forgotten FINCAT checking regime circa 1990 – I can’t wait.
I must apologise for not having turned up at the trial run for the long-awaited event, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, GloomLaden, for going to all the trouble of making it a success. Fact is, I’m still working on my leaving speech, which I started writing during my first day at work. I feel I need to say a little something about every single day which I spent in the office so, as you can imagine, it’s been no easy task, especially as I recently decided to transfer the whole work into French. I ask for your patience and, with a following wind, by Christmas, I hope to make a start on the 1980s. When the event finally takes place, it will be open to all former work colleagues, not just those who were with me at the end. I know Fitrambler will be there; he’s never let me down.
I had your leaving do today. Even I didn’t turn up and the speeches were silent (a nice touch, the Deaf Bloke, who also wasn’t there, agreed). Of course, not being there also, you were surprisingly in the spirit of the thing.
That’s fine by me, providing you just hand over the cash to them, in the envelope, without placing a bet. I wouldn’t want you to have to sit through yet another pointless and tedious horse race, knowing the outcome will be the same. If you’re quick, you might catch this week’s recycling collection with the card.
Just remember that you cried off first. And that that your leaving present is consequently in the coffers at Ladbrokes.
Actually, I think I’ll give it a miss. After all, you junior office workers just don’t belong in proper pubs.
Ah, your leaving do. I can’t wait to spend the day conducting a post mortem of your long and life consuming career, then nailing down the lid on those thirty plus years of your life with some speculation as to the manner of your decline and eventual death, the road to which is now clear. I’m lining up special guests who worked with you but upon whom you made little impression to turn up (or more likely not) to shrug indifferently at the day progresses.
Oh! If only Tom Sharpe, instead of writing the Wilt series of books, had penned a seven-part French farce entitled ‘Proust’. In fact, it’s such a novel idea, I may even find time to write it myself later in the year. I’d need a snappier title though, for a first work…
‘Le Chapelier Brun’ perhaps… or ‘Fifty Shades of Brown’ ?
I’ll make a start on the first chapter when we get back from my leaving do next week.
I believe Du Cote De Chez Michelin is one of the finer volumes of Proust’s oeuvre, containing as it does an almost infinitely extended metaphor to the effect that life is an infinitely extended metaphor. The repellent scene in which little Marcel goes to a dinner with the tyre manufacturer and yearns to squeeze his inner tube is especially gripping.
I’ll be glad when you’re back to reading Tom Sharpe, where you belong.
Whilst purchasing some new car tyres today, Gloomers, I was faced with a predicament familiar to snobs and inverted snobs alike. When asking the price of Michelin products, should I reveal my Proustian credentials by pronouncing the French brand ‘Meesh-lann’, or aim to develop a more working class cameraderie by speaking as one would when knocking on the door of the Queen Vic and asking ‘Is Phil Mitchell in?’
Anxious to avoid any social friction I, wisely, opted instead for the popular Good Year brand and said to the receptionist ‘Might I ask the retail price of quatre Bonne Annee pneus, please?’
Perhaps, as the names are all similar in meaning, they should have been called the Thirty-One Tautologously Dubbed Dwarves. What was intended as a little light relief for the Regular Reader has, once again, been spoiled by your pedantic middle-brow musings.
I found your listing of miserable dwarves mildly entertaining until it struck me that Lachrymose and Tearful represent a tautology and the jape felt ill-hewn.
The (Rather More Than) Seven Depressed Dwarves : Gloomy, Miserable, Mournful, Wistful, Woebegone, Calamitous, Lachrymose, Tearful, Tragic, Joyless, Wretched, Grievous, Piteous, Sorrowful, Desolate, Disconsolate, Rueful, Dismal, Sombre, Cheerless, Crestfallen, Doleful, Downcast, Melancholy, Moody, Morose, Sullen, Dejected, Glum and – best of all – Funereal and Lugubrious.
Any mistakes are mine, not Bragg’s, as any blame is yours and any compensation due the Regular Reader’s.
Owing to my overarking smugness whilst inputting that last comment, I failed to include the second of three essential question marks. Let that be a lesson to us all.
Are you referring to the Chiltern Hills, Gloomers? Surely geographical accuracy is not beyond the boundaries of Bragg’s overwhelming intellectual superiority even if it plays little part in yours. As the Regular Reader will know, the Chilterns straddle the counties of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire and often feature in episodes of Midsomer Murders. Walking and pub sniffing: need you ask?
A rather off topic question, Blameworthy, but have you ever been walking or – dread phrase! – pub sniffing in the Chilton Hills? I ask because Melvyn Bragg sets a rather good honeymoon scene there in the novel I am reading and suggests that the walks and pubs are excellent.
The timing of my first comment was pure serendipity, Gloomers. As for the childish name calling: you started it.
I would never presume to criticize the Blogmeister on his choice of words. I assumed that Thinker had wisely pulled out in the wide ark in order to move it out of the way and create more space in which to park his car. I understand they often experience heavy rain in the Welsh Valleys, so the ark seemed a sensible precaution, especially in the car park of a large hotel near the River Taff.
The Regular Reader will rightly conclude that what has happened here is that Blameworthy has successfully brought me down to his level of childish games over who pens the first blog comment and mindless name calling. If this is so, the blame lies entirely with Blameworthy yet again. When he could have been using the comments function to point out Fitrambler’s error (paragraph 1) where he uses the word ‘ark’ rather than ‘arc’, Blameworthy instead chooses to pursue a line of discourse from some weeks back critiquing my cultural standards, thereby asserting his own supposed superiority over myself and making the self same error of which he accuses me. The Regular Reader will doubtless want to go off and do something else: I hear Lord of the Rings is a quite readable and much disliked by Blameworthy for some reason.
I have always maintained that inside every pretentious, would-be upper-crust, pompous toff there’s a low-life, foul-mouthed, incoherent internet troll lurking, menacingly, barely concealed beneath a thinly transparent veneer of superiority, silently screaming to expose itself.
Bastard!
Beaten you to the first comment slot at last, Blameworthy! Now, I’d best go back and read the Tale I’m supposed to be commenting on.
I was delighted by your use of the plural when referring to my cultural antennae in one of your recent comments, GloomLaden. It was magnanimous of you to draw attention to the wiry protrusions attached either side of my forehead which, through their primitive sensitivity, enable me to hold my hand firmly over the cultural pulse which throbs, urgently, unfulfilled, beneath the breast of the Regular Reader. They also provide the reason why I rarely wear a hat to protect my head from the hot summer sun.
Your, singularly inadequate, cultural antenna, which harks back to the short, thre-piece, telescopic aerials – all flaking chrome and flimsy base metals – atop those tiny 1960s plastic transistor radios, would be barely capable of receiving an interference-free broadcast of the omnibus edition of the Archers, even if transmitted from the drawing room beneath your dank, darkened bedchamber. You must get out there where it’s at, GloomLaden, and thrust you hips provocatively to the funky beat of a more up-to-the-minute cultural experience. Cease clutching anxiously to Ivy and Stan; clutch your crotch suggestively instead. Get on down and move with the times.
And, yes, I like to imagine the Odd Woman inhabitant of blogland who might easily read my words while nodding her head in unison and saying to herself ‘I know exactly where you’re coming from, Blameworthy. You’ve got it in one’