It has been remarked by a friend, albeit in passing, that I have yet to conclude the tales of what I did on my holiday. They’re right of course, but now thanks to the passage of time and my increasingly short term memory, remembering what happened a week ago is a little more difficult. But here goes……
Thursday
I was still giddy about the day before and I think that’s what drove me into willingly suggesting that we go into Peterborough
To be fair I had vouchers to spend and still high on time travelling escapades I eagerly swept into HMV and bundled to the counter clutching Doctor Who DVD box sets, plus a Blu-Ray disc of Sherlock as well, just for good measure. Ruthlessly efficient as ever, that was my shopping done in the space of about five minutes, so I did what any sensible man does in this situation and retired to the pub.
The pub I chose was The Drapers Arms. It was close by and, better still, it was cheap. For the Drapers is a Wetherspoons pub, booze emporiums for the unemployed, the retired, the sick notes, the feckless, the man of minimal wealth, the shopper, and the real ale drinker. I’m being harsh, The Drapers Arms, unlike its sister pub in the more hectic part of town, is actually quite pleasant and relaxed.
The ‘spoons over the other side of town tends to attract the less respectable elements of society due to its proximity to the Job Centre. I used to work in the Job Centre in Southampton and it used to freak our jobseekers out when I and my good friend Ned, a Job Centre employee of many years now, wandered in to the nearby Wetherspoons for our lunchtime pint. You would literally see grown men diving under tables and hiding behind newspapers to avoid being spotted, it was a tragic thing to behold. We didn’t care how they spent their money and our excuse was the Government paid us peanuts so financially we weren’t much better off than those who were signing on once a fortnight.
The Drapers sees all manner of life walk through its doors. When I looked around I could see young and old enjoying a drink. There were girls drinking wine, some old codgers drinking bitter, and a couple of Poles on bottles of red WKD and shots of Apple Sours, quite ambitious for 2 in the afternoon. In through one door came an office worker in a suit, in the other came a guy with a faded Manchester United top. There was a large TV on the wall showing the Cheltenham Festival but the sound was muted, the only thing to be heard was convivial chatter. I had a couple of beers, one light and hoppy, the other dark and malty. Both were good.
One person I know claimed that they’d once been harangued by a prostitute in this very pub but such salacious activities obviously don’t occur on a Thursday afternoon and, to be fair, I doubted the story from the start. It doesn’t seem to be that sort of pub.
That evening Mrs Hayward treated me to a meal out at Smiths. They have a restaurant out the back these days and the food is excellent. Anywhere that has a ‘Pie of the Day’ gets my vote.
Friday
I’d like to say I did something productive but I think we were both a little hungover and I’d picked up a crocked knee from somewhere. At least I didn’t come home with a traffic come or a pocketful of Daffodils, both of which happened to me in my younger days.
Every time I stood up I howled with pain and waddled about like a 900 year old but this was getting little sympathy from Mrs Hayward. I scaled back to just making the occasional “oof” noise but staggered around a bit more. This too gained little reaction so I gave up. As the day went on my knee improved but my running plans had been knocked back a little. I realised the only way I could help my knee was to give it some exercise by getting out and about…..and possibly imbibe another ale or two.
I had arranged to meet with one half of our friends from the home of brewing on Friday evening. We hit upon this plan when we stumbled into The Golden Lion in Bourne the Saturday before. We loved the pub, it was a real old fashioned local, but our other halves disagreed and instead of thinking that it was quaint and charming they thought it was a rat infested hell hole which they wanted to leave at the earliest opportunity.
We therefore took their disapproval as a sign of quality and vowed that we would return without the women the following Friday for much drinking and bawdy conversation. As it was, in the cold light of day we decided that maybe we would start in the safe haven of Smiths and see how the evening progressed.
After a few ales we got brave and decided to extract ourselves from our comfort zone and explore. Exploration number one was to the local kebab shop. Many years ago it used to be called ‘Bourne Greedy’. These days it has a crap name without even the whiff of a pun. It’s not the only kebab shop in Bourne, in fact we have an embarrassment of them.
The local town council are the usual bunch of self serving, small minded, local business types who are always incredibly resistant to big names coming to Bourne. They are still in the throes of resisting Costa Coffee’s advances as they would rather shop units stayed empty until a local entrepreneur takes it, which they rarely do, however they seem to be very welcoming to kebab shops. Bourne has five of them, and a new one has opened just recently within vomiting distance of another. This is on top of four Chinese takeaways, three curry houses and four chip shops. There’s only about 12,000 people in the whole town so heaven only knows who’s eating all this takeaway food.
On this particular evening, and in this particular kebab house, we got an insight to Friday nights in the life of the average teenager in Bourne. Two lads were propped up in the window eating a burger and chips and some screechy girls were “with them”. I have reluctantly put that in inverted commas as the girls obviously believed that they were with the boys but the boys were displaying as much disinterest in them as they could without totally ignoring them.
As we ordered our own greasy feast the girls left briefly, but soon returned with another young mimsy who was sobbing her heart out as her boyfriend had dumped her. There was much discussion about this in a strange high-pitched garbled language I didn’t quite understand. This makes me feel very old indeed. One of the girls eventually tried to engage one of the lads in this drama. He didn’t even look up from his burger as he wearily uttered the words, “I couldn’t give a shit”. I admired his honesty. The girl wasn’t offended by this comment, she just went twittering back to the group.
The lads finished their meals and left, without the girls noticing. When they did they suddenly screeched their way out in pursuit of them, leaving their tearful friend stood alone in the kebab shop, much to her surprise. She must have looked around through her tears of sorrow to find her only companions were a couple of 30 something blokes and a kebab shop owner. Not surprisingly she also decided to leave.
After consuming our food we felt brave enough to venture back to The Golden Lion. Say what you like about it, the beer is good and it’s very, very cheap. There’s not many places where you get two pints for less than £4. If there’s a Samuel Smith’s pub near you then you should go and visit it. Tell them I sent you.
The Golden Lion is very much a local’s pub and the lounge bar is the hub of this. I sent my partner-in-drinking to go and see if there was a seat. He came back to confirm there was and I asked if everyone had stared at him. “What do you think?” he asked.
Many moons ago I went in there by accident with Mrs Hayward, her best friend and her gloomy boyfriend at the time. Gloomy boyfriend liked to play on the fruit machines so to avoid talking to us he sloped off. Within a few short minutes it was apparent that he’d won the jackpot as the silence of the lounge bar was shattered by the clattering sound of pound coins pumping out of the machine. One old boy in the corner quickly emptied his glass and made his way to the bar. He seemed to be looking at us expectantly. We’re not sure to this day if there was a tradition for the winner to buy a round for the whole pub but we couldn’t miss the accusing stares and quiet muttering as we hastily departed to safer climes.
Last Friday nothing so embarrassing occurred. We politely drank our beer and discussed the matters of the day before deciding that if we had made it into this establishment then we should seek out and invade another local boozer, The Masons Arms. I’ve been to The Masons before and I quite like it, it’s quite small and homely. I’ve played darts there although I’m terrible at it, and I’ve also done my Tom Jones impression on karaoke there, whether they liked it or not.
So, as the evening drew to a close we supped an exceptional pint of Deuchars IPA and were satisfied that our explorations had been fruitful. My drinking friend then realised that he hadn’t told his better half that he’d be out this late so we headed off. These are the perils of coming out drinking with me, there’s always room for another swift half. I was taught well.
Saturday & Sunday
The weekend was fairly unmemorable. Saturday was spent mostly at home bimbling about followed by a brief wander into town and then home again. Sunday was very similar but I cooked a roast in-between. Before I knew it, it was time to go to bed and therefore the holiday was over.
So that was it. One week spent doing very little. How long is it until Easter exactly?
Very kind of you to have welcomed the present Mrs Hayward's gloomy boyfriend out that time. Hope he bought you a pint with his winnings! Easter is 4 weeks Terence, or 19 working days. Which is the shorter?
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