Date: 12 Jul 96
It's happening again. I swear it's a conspiracy. I've got to wotk 'till 11 tonight, on a friday! That's cruel & unusual punishment by any decent standard... I envisage the following scenario: (excuse pin-yin)
11:00:01 Wild eyed man wearing blue striped shirt and "Droopy" cartoon tie (hey, they make me wear this "uniform", they didn't say I couldn't take the piss out of it) flags down cab.This has actually happened to me, but in Wanchai. Cabs here are even more of a lottery in terms of english speaker-driver communication than in New York. Most times a smattering of Cantoneese gets you by, some times you get a guy with a degree from the LSE who's filling in for his brother and is playing Bach on the car stereo, and once in a while you get some bloke who seems to be either a) deaf b) mongolian speaking or c) about to go off-shift and not interested in taking you any place by the nearest subway station."Sam sap yap obinson dough, heung gong mgoi" (excruciating rendition of "31 Robinson Road Hong Kong please" in Cantonese).
Cabbie (wincing at this torture being inficted on his mother tongue) "Cut the crap mate, where you want to go..."
Fifteen minutes and HK$200 later:
"Five pints of Stella please, in a bucket..."Reminds me of one of the legendary drinkers of my home town, Big Jim his name was. Six foot and 220 lbs of solid miner.
There he was in the local Working Men's Club one Sunday lunchtime (a liver crippling drink-sprint, it's only being open from 12-2pm in those dark days of the 70's). It's 12:45, he's on pint number five and someone says "Hey, Jim. Tha'd drink it out a bucket wouldn't tha?". Hey says "Aye, if some bugger else were paying".
Well, that's it. A 2 gallon slops bucket is produced from behind the bar, as the barman's filling it from the pump people are asking what he's doing, he's telling them it's for Big Jim, and they're all buying spirits and chucking them in there. This concoction is duly presented, and Jim spends the rest of the session sitting there, happy as larry, big grin on his face, taking swigs from the bucket.
Now to give him credit he finished it and he made it home. Apparantly, stumbled up stairs and collapsed into bed.
Now this was some time during December, and days get pretty short up in Yorkshire at that time of year. When Jim comes 'round it's about 6 in the evening, and dark. Jim's still that pissed he thinks its Monday morning and time for his shift "down t'Pit". So he puts his work clobber on and staggers down to the bus stop, which is fortuitously outside the WMC.
Now the Club opens at 7 on a Sunday, and the usual suspects are trudging in for their second bout of the day, still chuckling 'bout Jim and the bucket, when they find him standing there, dressed for work, drunk off-of his head, on Sunday evening. Jim is *convinced* that he's in the right and they've all got it wrong (Check. "been there, done that" :) ). It takes sveral minutes of heated argument to get him into the Club for another session. He allegedly only had about ar gallon.
R.I.P. Big Jim (Heart Attack last year. Aged 57)
- Steve K