Hey readers,
We are about to go to the printers with Cockney Kung Fu so I thought I could re present a story of one of the side characters.
(This previously appeared in the mailer www.tinyletter.com/CockneyKungFu - so sign up!)
This is a little bit more of a back story of one of the CKF characters. I'm beginning to compile a load of prose relating to characters who turn up in the story so thought you could have a look at one of the pieces in advance.
Hope you enjoy it....
Why does no one write about those funny little moments in your life? Does comedy not translate well to the comic or prose world these days. The books that actually seem really funny are slim on the newly released shelves. All we seem to get are the obligatory 'name' or 'hot' comedian who is pushed into our faces like a cow turd at Scout Camp. I don't like many comedians. Even the ones that I enjoy on stand up like Stewart Lee and Frankie Boyle seem a little self satisfying and egomaniacal when translated to a page. So what are we left with.
Bring back Barry Cryer I say!
Has Amy Schumer EVER said anything remotely funny?
So here I sit. Back in a bar starring at a pint. For those that know me personally are painfully aware of what happens when I drink. Usually I find it hard to stop, I believe myself to be hilarious and I usually end up with a little voice somewhere in my brain shouting 'Let's do shots!' If you ever see me drinking then please just step away. Join the army and shoot some unarmed and naked foreigners because that may be slightly more life affirming than hearing me talk again about the time I did a shit in a bush with a horse watching me!
So I decided to start drinking alone. Maybe I secretly can't admit that I have no alternative - who the fuck knows? I actually looked at this like a freakish and self indulgent research project. I have wandered all over London looking for somewhere suitable. The selection of really bad and dirty clubs is sadly not as rich as it was in my prime days of 1976 to 1985. I don't want anywhere that is busy. I don't want to spend ages waiting to get served. I want a bar that I can sit at the actual counter with bar staff who I won't hit on when I've had a few (that's a whole other ass clenchingly embarrassing story that I may save for another time if ever). Like the old and smelling of piss man that I am I also don't want painfully noisy music or clanking 'pub grub' to annoy me. These are the places I can take a tatty old paperback, sit and hate everyone like all good Englishmen should.
And yes, before you ask the prospect of drinking at home is a non-starter. I couldn't cope with the judging eyes of my dog Stan....
So after some time and a number of half finished pints I found somewhere. No I'm not telling you where so that you can 'pop along' for a chat. You can fuck right off. This sad cunt drinks alone. I go there a couple of times a week. The barman is always the same young Irish kid. He has on occasion tried to tell me about a club he's been to or a girl he's seeing. I wave him away and point at the optics for a scotch. He probably thinks that I am an alcoholic. Of course as a pretend alcoholic I would never admit this and it only goes to reinforce his theory. One day this shit eating with turn us all inside out like a Bobby Sands modern art piece.
As the pints flow and I begin my every drunk pint trip to the toilet I begin to feel that loss of control creeping in. I think that we are all at our hearts self-destructive. We like to feel something and in the pain and desperation of a violent or dangerous moment we can feel at least something. So I occasionally get into the odd slanging match with the other regulars. They shout out about a football team or something they saw in the news and I immediately take the opposite opinion on purpose. This conversation goes from hasty debate to 'You're an ignorant black/Irish/bird/young/old/add descriptor here cunt'. We are told to calm down and I continue falling.
Things happen when you are in an inner-city pub. They always have and I hope that this never stops. You never get this type of entertainment in a Costa Coffee or a Starbucks, all you seem to get there is a pompous cunt behind the jump pointing out what a Caramel Latte is to a little old lady. The realm of the truly demented, criminal and violent still lays in the stinking and grubby council estate public house. I have seen all sort of stuff in these places over the years. Whatever happens is normally ignored with nothing more than a raised eyebrow by the staff and regulars and accompanied with an odd 'Get out!'
Recently I was in my local. Locked in after closing at 3am. I decided to take another piss and walked into the lean to shed of a toilet at the back. Bailey was another regular an old and skinny man who would be in the dictionary if there was a page for 'He will be dead soon'. He clearly wasn't feeling too well and that packet of artisan crisps he'd bought from a junkie shoplifter had obviously gone down the wrong way as I could see the post vomit dribble still hanging from his lips as he leaned against the bottom yellow lip of the urinal. Slunched over double on the floor I could see in his lap and on the floor around him was the black and yellow sick of a hardened drinker with no small amount of old blood in his stomach.
So like all good citizens I decided to ignore he was there and go for a piss in the cubicle. This is a cubicle that could never pass as a proper toilet in toilet heaven or Toilet World in Swindon. It has no door for starters. Builders fresh off a job and regulars would shit with the door open and shout at you if you looked. As I was pissing and complimenting myself on both my aim and the clear bloodless colour of my piss I noticed a pair of shit stained socks next the the white porcelain. What would be your immediate response to seeing socks with shit on them? You hipster fuckers would immediately think 'Ewwww, how common' or 'I feel sorry for the state of modern society and it's care of the mental or old!'
Me... I thought 'Clever'. They never have any toilet paper in this pub. They tried but everyone kept stealing it. So some clever fucker has needed a rush shit (the only kind suitable to an establishment such as this as I would rather take a shit in the middle of Victoria train station than this disease ridden hovel) and dropped it out of their arse before discovering there was no paper. Being a practical bugger they have then taken their socks off and wiped with them. Genius!
So back to the bar I wander. As I take my seat again at the bar I shout over at the barman 'Dave, there's a pair of socks with man-poo on them in the bog.' He makes a comment similar to 'Fuck, not again' and wanders off with a carrier bag to get them. The bag was one of those cheap ones you get off market stalls.
Dave retuned shortly afterwards with the cacky socks in the carrier bag that's tied off in the same way that you would with a dog turd you pick up on the morning walk. This is a bag with still some air trapped. Dave, because mostly he is a stupid cunt but also because he likes to break the boredom of the shift up with some humour on occasion then takes the bag and throws it as hard as he can at one of the other regulars at the bar. This regular is now chuckling and in turn then throws the bag as hard as he can at me. And on and on this goes until the bag finally bursts and someone gets a portion of a turd on them.
Oh how we laughed.
Who says that comedy is dead?
Stick that up your arse Michael MacIntyre!!!
Many thanks for reading.
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