Who's the lucky birthday blog?

Everybody's gonna sing!

A John Otway reference - in addition to his many other notable contributions to British music, the great man has penned probably the best-ever birthday song, "Who's the lucky birthday boy?"

Today, Barstool Blues comes of age. Well, it hits the 6-month mark anyway (a week or so behind its elder twin, Froogville).

Thank you for reading (both of you). Tell your friends (both of them).

Expect more of the same (and a little of the different) over the next six months.

HBH 20

This is actually quite an old one - inspired, I think, by memories of wild nights during or just after my college days (the reference to vinyl LPs dates it!); but the horrors of my recent Bob Marley party give it a kind of topicality.

After the party

Records out of sleeves,
Carpet stains and lost earrings.
Stale smoke aftertaste.

World's worst Irish joke??

This could be taken as a challenge! I'm sure many potential commenters out there could put forward their own candidates.

But, in honour of the imminent St Patrick's Day, here is one of my favourites.....



An Irishman is marooned on a tiny desert island.

As he walks disconsolately around and around his tropical prison, he happens on a small, exotically-coloured bottle half-buried in the sand.

The Irishman picks it up and examines it, removes the cork - and, YES, out puffs a Genie!

"Thank you for releasing me, Paddy," says the Genie, with something less than the deference that is customary with his kind. "In accordance with tradition, I must now grant you three magical wishes. You may have whatever your heart desires."

"What - anything?" boggles the Irishman.

"Yes, anything," repeats the Genie patiently.

"Well," says the Irishman (who is desperately parched, after spending a couple of days on the island without attempting to find water),"I could murder a Guinness!"

"Your wish be granted," says the Genie. And out of thin air there appears in the Irishman's hand a perfectly-poured, ice-cold pint of the black stuff.

The Irishman eagerly glugs it down, and smacks his lips in appreciation.

He is about to toss the empty glass into the ocean.... when he notices that it is suddenly full again with another creamy-headed, velvety smooth pint of the black beer.

"Saints preserve us!" he cries. "What's going on here?"

"It is a magical beer glass," explains the Genie. "It will always be full again one second after you empty it."

"Ah, man, yer havin' me on!"

"No, really, the glass will always fill itself with Guinness again."

"What - really?"

"Yes."

"Sure, that's a marvellous thing! I never seen the like."

"Well, that's what we call 'magic'," says the Genie modestly. "Now, what would you like for your other two wishes?"

"I'll have two more of these!" shouts the Irishman delightedly.

The Colton

I have been an irregular 'regular' at The Colton Arms in West London for, I suppose, a dozen or so years now. It is the local of an old Oxford buddy 'James the Nags' (or Billy Joe Jimbob, as the British Cowboy [alone] insists on calling him), who is usually kind enough to put me up on my occasional visits to the city.

It is directly behind the Queens tennis club, and opposite an upmarket apartment complex called Queens Club Gardens (a collection of elegant Victorian red-brick mansions surrounding a small private park), and is thus the sole high-tone enclave in what is otherwise a rather grim area of run-down council housing estates.

It is also what I call a Nexus Of Coincidence. Sure, everybody from The Gardens goes there; and they are mostly quite well-heeled, professional, University-educated types (like myself); and the number of friends and family visiting them casts the net even wider. But that does not adequately explain the experiences I've had there.

In that pub - I have run into a former Law School classmate (in fact, my partner for a major client interviewing competition); one of the kids I used to teach several years before in a private school down in Taunton (suddenly being called 'Sir!' in a crowded pub is a discombobulating experience); another old college chum, utterly unconnected to James; and a former girlfriend (who had subsequently 'gone over' to lesbianism - I swear it was nothing to do with me!). This is bizarre. It's not as if I go in there very often. And I think, for each of those chance encounters, it was their one and only visit to the place. Strange, strange.....

Disconcerting coincidences aside, it is a good pub (if fearfully expensive), and James - a bar prop there most nights - has been one of my most dependable friends for many years.

Also..... the canny landlord, John, has a shrewd eye for a barmaid. For a while he was recruiting them from the Medical School at St Mary's Hospital. Latterly, it's been all Polish girls (love the cheekbones!). Pretty, vivacious, and full of interesting conversation.... and they serve you beer. I have been 'in love' there many times!

The elements of a Good Night Out

Last Thursday was threatening to be a pretty dismal night out. Most of the people I'd been trying to round up to come out with me were unavailable. The one guy who did show wasn't able to make it till 9pm and had already eaten.... so, I was forced to eat alone at home. And then I discovered that my favourite jazz guitar duo, who were the planned centrepiece of the evening, were not playing after all. (Apparently, one of them may have told me at my Marley party the previous weekend that he was about to head back to the States for a month or so; but if he did, I had quite forgotten that in the alcohol & marijuana fug which ensued; no, I only discovered their regular Thursday night gig was suspended when I got to the venue....)

No, not at all a promising start.

But then..... well, Big Chris, the new American buddy who was free to join me, managed to travel down here from his University in the north of the city rather quicker than he'd anticipated, so we were able to kick our evening off at a reasonable time of 8.30ish.

Our first port of call was another favourite recent discovery of mine, an agreeably divey neighbourhood bar that has a half-way decent (FREE) pool table. Neither of us were quite on our game (The Chairman has been his sensei for the last year, so he's pretty damn good), but we had an enjoyable - if comprehensively defeated - few jousts with the formidable local sharks. And the beer was very cheap.

Then, an envigorating short walk to the music bar a mile or so away, where the beer is also cheap (though not quite AS cheap as in the Pool Bar). My guitar-playing buddies were disappointingly absent, and the place was quite deserted.... but we did get to hang with the replacement guitarist for the evening, an amiable young Quebecois. He couldn't actually be bothered to play his guitar - since we were the only punters in the place - but we did shoot the breeze for an hour or so, sharing numerous anecdotes and recommendations about the local music scene. Big Chris was particularly enthusiastic about all this because he is quite the music aficionado, a musician himself indeed - and eager to get back into his drumming.

Then, feeling suddenly peckish, we nipped into one of my favourite hole-in-the-wall restaurants for some cheap snacks and even cheaper beers.

Then we returned to the pool bar - which, we discovered, has become a favoured "after-hours" hangout (not that there are any "hours" around here, but you catch my drift) for various local bigwigs; to wit, the bar and restaurant owners from the 'strip' just around the corner. Good craic. More pool (we may even have won a few games this time - but damn, those 'regulars' are good). Many more cheap beers.

And a new musical discovery: at one point, the bar's boss was playing on the sound system a marvellously husky-voiced and soulful American female singer I'd never heard before, but who Big Chris immediately identified for me as Cat Power (stage name, of course!). Got to check out more of her stuff.

And so, despite all the initially unfavourable omens, it turned out to be a thoroughly Good Night Out. I didn't stagger home till 2.30 or 3.00am - and only quit that early because I'd been feeling ill and short of sleep for so long. Big Chris was still going strong when I left him there.....

I have had many such nights in this crazy city..... but this, this was one of them.....

Hot off the press.....

This morning's little frippery, result of a few moments' noodling in that strangely productive half-awake state.


musical history

I started playing truant
from my early years at school
then I moved on
to playing the fool
with a band of mates

for several years
I duetted with a girl
I played tough
while she played hard-to-get
then she switched
to playing away
and broke
our partnership up
citing 'artistic differences'

I went back
to playing the fool mostly
and moved
around the country a lot

now I play old fart most nights
in local bars
the regulars seem to like
my performances
they buy me drinks
sometimes
they make requests
they say:
"play 'Solitude' again.
we never get tired
of that." or
"what's that one
about the redhead?
that's good."
they even flatter me
they say: "wow, man,
you really got something,
you could've been
one of the greats."
I tell them
they're too kind
I say
I've only been playing old fart
a few years...
but I guess
I've been practising
all my life

Many a true word....

This week's 'bon mot':

"A beer makes everything OK. A woman makes everything a problem."

Yes, all right, I'm sorry - I did lift that from one of those '20 Reasons Why A Beer Is Better Than A Woman' gag lists, but.... just because it's on a poster in some sleazy bar doesn't mean it ain't true!

Another bench statue

This is Glenn Gould, on Front Street in Toronto, during the recent snow. I wonder when this was erected. I don't remember him being there when I was living in TO nearly a decade ago.

As well as being a wonderful - if considerably more eccentric-than-average - pianist (his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations is a must-have), GG was of course also immortalised by '32 Short Films About Glenn Gould', surely the weirdest tribute film ever made, but quite fascinating. This in turn inspired one of the greatest-ever Simpson's episodes, '22 Short Films About Springfield' (I particularly like the 'Pulp Fiction' pastiche in the KrustyBurger, and Apu's 'Bollywood' pool party scene).

However, I'm free-associating here..... brainfogged by a long and tedious afternoon of editing. I put this picture up purely as a comparison with the one below of Patrick Kavanagh's statue in Dublin.

The Gould picture comes from a favourite photoblog, Daily Dose Of Imagery - which, rather as you'd expect from the title, puts up one new picture each day. It's the baby of Sam Javanrouh, a professional photographer, originally from Iran but now living and working in Toronto. Well worth a look.

A bench beside the canal (that Kavanagh statue)

I think my favourite line in that Dublin poem of mine I posted the other day is the one about this statue on the banks of the Grand Canal - "And Kavanagh on his bench.... waiting patiently for the next poem, as if for a bus". (I am currently the top Google return for "Kavanagh on his bench" - I wonder if that will bring me any new readers?)

I believe the idea for this statue was inspired by one of Kavanagh's own poems, written for another commemorative bench by the canal.

Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin

'Erected to the memory of Mrs. Dermot O'Brien'

O commemorate me where there is water,
Canal water, preferably, so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer. Brother,
Commemorate me thus beautifully
Where by a lock niagarously roars
The falls for those who sit in the tremendous silence
Of mid-July. No one will speak in prose
Who finds his way to these Parnassian islands.
A swan goes by head low with many apologies,
Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges -
And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy
And other far-flung towns mythologies.
O commemorate me with no hero-courageous
Tomb - just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by.

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967)

Wistful, Waits-ful

Lazy morning, slow start to the day, listening to Tom Waits's 'Closing Time' for the first time in quite a while. God, I love this album. This is a perfect account of thwarted flirting in a bar, of fantasising about a woman and doing nothing about it. And then having another drink by way of consolation. A feeling I know only too well.

I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You

Well, I hope that I don't fall in love with you,
'Cause falling in love just makes me blue.
Well, the music plays and you display
Your heart for me to see.
I had a beer and now I hear you
Calling out for me.
And I hope that I don't fall in love with you.

Well, the room is crowded, people everywhere,
And I wonder, should I offer you a chair?
Well, if you sit down with this old clown,
Take that frown and break it,
Before the evening's gone away,
I think that we could make it.
And I hope that I don't fall in love with you.

Well, the night does funny things inside a man:
These old tomcat feelings you don't understand.
Well, I turn around to look at you;
You light a cigarette.
I wish I had the guts to bum one,
But we've never met.
And I hope that I don't fall in love with you.

I can see that you are lonesome just like me;
And it being late, you'd like some company.
Well, I turn around to look at you,
And you look back at me.
The guy you're with has up and split;
The chair next to you's free.
And I hope that you don't fall in love with me.

Now it's closing time; the music's fading out.
Last call for drinks - I'll have another stout.
Well, I turn around to look at you;
You're nowhere to be found.
I search the place for your lost face....
Guess I'll have another round.
And I think that I just fell in love with you.

HBH 19

Journey back in Time
Through meditative beer trance.
Drinking memories.

Mulligan's

On my first visit to Ireland, many years ago, I asked someone on my travels in the South and West if he would recommend a really good bar in Dublin (the city has a bewilderingly huge selection of them, but many of them are rather generic, soulless). And he said: Mulligan's - on Poolbeg Street, just behind TCD, around the corner from the Irish Times offices. It might have been a bum steer, a random recollection, a flawed recommendation - but it wasn't! I have since passed on the same advice a number of times to friends. And I make a point of always trying to nip back there for a quick visit whenever I am passing through (which, alas, has been only a very few times since).

It has a cosy intimacy - a small space divided up into lots of little nooks and corners by wooden partitions and booths. It has genuine, unreconstructed Victorian-era decor - dark wood, frosted windows, tiled floors. It has an interesting, garrulous, disreputable gaggle of regulars - many of them skiving journalists from the Times, one suspects. There always seems to be The Prettiest Girl In Ireland behind the bar or waiting on the tables. And the Guinness is perfection (it probably helps that they are only minutes away from the brewery; but they also do a very slow pour...).

Unfortunately, the place is now inextricably tied up in my mind with a Lost Love - a one-night stand (I don't do those!) that should have been something much more, but went disastrously wrong; though at least I have the recollection of one gorgeously romantic weekend spent with perhaps the most beautiful girl I have ever known.

Last Sunday

I have a camera in my head
Which keeps the snapshots
Of a strange weekend.

You, jogging across the street
To fetch the milk and papers,
Bowing your head into the gale.

And Kavanagh on his bench,
Haloed by the dazzle of the canal,
Waiting resignedly for the next poem
As if for a bus.

The sudden kiss
On Stephen's Green,
And passing strangers smiling
At the tenderness of it.

But most of all, a corner table in Mulligan's:
A glimpse of the blue morning behind,
As spring sunshine teemed through the frosted window
Finding strands of gold and copper in your hair;
And the light reflected back from the newspaper,
An amber glow, showing your face
More beautiful than I had ever seen.

But your thoughts, your troubled thoughts
Hung heavy about your head,
Visible as blue billows of cigarette smoke
Swirling in the slanted sunshafts....

While I sipped my Guinness slowly
To extend these moments,
This ecstasy of happy-sadness.

Wine Lake

Another of the things about the business of giving parties - apart from the enormity of the cleaning-up operations entailed afterwards - that tends to discourage me from continuing to throw them (and indeed somewhat saps the will to live altogether) is what we might broadly categorize as "bad guest behaviour". I have several gripes under this heading, but I'll let them lie.... or at least vent about them in some other forum.... except for:

People who bring wine to my parties.

There should be a special circle of hell for people who bring wine to my parties. Ideally, it should contain a wine lake (I could supply the wine to fill it!), in which they would be made to wallow for all eternity; a lake of wine so disgusting they could never hope to drain the lake and win their freedom by drinking the wretched stuff, no matter how hard they might try; wine so acidic that it sears their skin; wine so rife with dodgy chemicals and colourings that it stains their piss purple; wine like the wine they brought me, the c***s!

Am I being unreasonable, over-touchy? I don't think so!

Most of the people who came to the party on Saturday should have been aware that I scarcely drink wine myself any more - due to a worsening allergy, to red wine in particular. Furthermore, all guests had been expressly asked to bring beer or rum (or, in a few cases, some more specific party requirement such as ice or additional plastic cutlery) - not wine! And the local wine here - with a very few exceptions - is ABSOLUTELY FOUL. And you can be pretty sure that most of the people bringing wine were 're-gifting' an unwanted bottle that someone had brought to their home - so, in addition to their thoughtlessness and party-pooping, they were being cheap bastards as well.

You know who you are, cheap bastards! Luckily for you, I've forgotten. (Well, no, Chairman - I haven't forgotten you! You've got some major amends-making to do!!)

But please, PLEASE, if I ever have a party again and you are invited - DO NOT BRING ME A CHEAP BOTTLE OF LOCAL RED WINE..... unless you are fully prepared to have it smashed over your forehead! You have been warned.

Never again!!!

Every time I throw a party here (that one this weekend was my 4th in the two-and-a-half years I've been in my current apartment), I say it is going to be MY LAST - but this time I think I really mean it. The efforts involved beforehand wore me down too much; the mess left afterwards seems neverending.....

I have just left two posts, two looooonnng and anquished posts over on Froogville, explaining why it was all just so much more hassle than readers elsewhere might have realised owing to particular local circumstances.

And the final straw that snaps the spine of this overstressed camel - every glass, EVERY glass, every single bloody glass (about 80 of 'em, although at least nearly all of them were those disposable plastic jobs) was left one-third-full. Oh well, at least I don't have that old half-full/half-empty debate on my hands again. Funny how we don't say "two-thirds empty"; not often, anyway - is it an unsuspected core of optimism buried deep in our natures??

80 glasses with something left in them (oh, yeah, and the beer cans and the wine bottles too!)!!! Do you have any idea how much more difficult that makes the clean-up?! Can't just toss them straight in trash bags, have to gingerly ferry them in batches to a sink or a loo first to empty them: seems to make the process of rounding them all up about a million times more time-consuming!!!!

What's the matter with you people?? Drink up, for heaven's sake!!!

Traffic report - belated blog stats for Jan, Feb

Despite my taking a leave of absence towards the end of the month, January saw a freakishly high number of new posts here on Barstool Blues (a record 31). The wordcount, however, was only around 7,500, very slightly lower than in previous months. Hence we conclude that there were more short posts - partly down to the new "bon mot of the week" strand, and partly down to the series of pictures I posted of Jem Finer's wacky music/sculpture project. There were a paltry 237 'unique visitors'. Hmmm, I guess for half a month, that's not bad, but.......

In February, I was silent for the first half of the month, but have begun blogging in earnest again over the past couple of weeks - 19 posts and nearly 6,000 words. 'Unique visitors' recorded (by Statcounter) as 288.... picking up sharply at the end of the month.

What will March have in store?

Another 'day after' picture

The vanity of ambitions

I have mentioned before my once-upon-a-time weakness for the International Herald Tribune.... I had a particular fondness for the 'funny page'. One of the regular cartoons was 'The Wizard of Id', a strip by a couple of guys called Parker & Hart, set in medieval times. One of the stock characters was the court jester - who was a hopeless lush and spent his whole time in a bar.

One day the burly barman is chiding him, "You need to set goals and objectives to give your life meaning. What are yours?"

The jester looks up from his drink and says hopefully, "To be 'Customer of the Month'!"

Snapshot of a fleeting brainstate

I am not a fan of the 'diaristic' school of blogging - or of blogging in general, come to that.

However...... I find myself now in a dreamily-inattentive-yet-oddly-fixational kind of mood (rather like being stoned, in fact - perhaps it's just the lingering effects of Nico's A-grade cigarettes from last night...), analysing the pictures I just took of my trashed apartment, sipping a very large rum&coke, listening to Ella singing "I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair".... This is a very mellow feeling.

One of those things we keep on living for.

The alcoholic's concept of "tidying up"

Did you notice that dangerous statistic in the last post - 8.5 bottles of rum drunk last night?

Is that bottle half empty?? Half full??

Well, it's EMPTY now!

Actually, I honestly don't think I'm an alcoholic - I'm just a little bit obsessive compulsive in some respects (eccentrically, self-destructively so, perhaps).

Aftermath

This was not a great place to wake up in this morning! The clean-up might conceivably consume more hours than the preparation.... and that was a lot!!

The kitchen is particularly horrendous. The great comedy moment of the evening came when a lady turned up to read the water-meter under the sink.... and retreated in horror. Some people ignored that warning notice on the kitchen door; I was not amused; if their bodies are dredged out of the river next week, it's nothing to do with me.

Final facts & figures:

Well, fully one third of the expected guests failed to appear because of illness, last-minute 'work commitments'.... or just deterred from venturing out of their homes by the bad weather (rained all day, snowed around midnight!), but there were quite a few unannounced drop-ins (Martina, where have you been for the last two years?!)...... so the final headcount was around 50.

Consumed: 8.5 bottles of rum, 4 bottles of wine (who was drinking wine??), approximately 200 bottles/cans of beer..... and two cups of tea (David, Lydia, I hope you appreciated them - that was almost more trouble than everything else put together!). Quite a modest drinking spree, really! I still have an unreasonably large quantity of beer in my bath, as you can see in the picture above. Looks like I picked the wrong month to give up drinking.

Oh well, I'd better stop procrastinating and start tidying.....

Waking up in the wet patch...

I went to bed with a beer (instead of a woman) last night. Rather too much the 'story of my life' in recent years.

So, this morning, the first of my (many, MANY) clean-up tasks is to wash my sheets and to try to swab the beer-smell out of my mattress-cover.

Oiveh!

We're Jamming - yes, the 'Blog Party' is on....

Things are even more hectic here than I had anticipated.... thanks to succumbing to temptation, going to a party last night, staying out till 1am, crashing till 10 this morning..... thus leaving 4 hours less cooking time than I had planned for. Some things will have to go! Who really wants to try 'Johnny Cakes' anyway??

Anyway, the threatened 'Bob Marley (Late) Birthday Celebration' is now imminent, and this post is now open for business - I hope someone will say 'hi' to wish me well during the next few hours of madness.

Only TWO RULES....

1) Do not mention my real name (if you know it). Here in cyberspace I am known only as Froog.

2) Do not mention the city or country in which I live (if you know or think you can guess). This is also, for now, part of my veil of anonymity!

Of course, if you're here in person there are certain other 'commonsense' rules to follow, like: clean your hands first, keep drinks away from the computer, practise safe sex.....

What am I letting myself in for??

REMINDER: the party approaches!

My absurdly over-ambitious plans for a 'Bob Marley' party (which seem to have embroiled me in 100hrs of shopping & cooking & NO SLEEP) are nearing fruition: TOMORROW is the day!

I hope regular readers and casual visitors will 'look in on me' via cyberspace, say 'hi' in the Comments....

HBH 18

Endless 'to do' lists;
Anxieties multiply.
Before the party.

One Night in New York - Take 2

I may be guilty of some blurring of categories here, in that my companion-blog Froogville is usually home for my poetry. However, this is a companion piece to the long 'napkin poem' I posted on this site last week; and even though it doesn't involve drinking, it is about a 'Lost Love' (perhaps the greatest of them all, in fact..... well, it's not like there's been that many of them), which is another of the avowed themes here on Barstool Blues. And the scene, the mood here described did lead to drinking fairly shortly afterwards!

In fact - a curious case for comparison, this - it was written about the very same evening as the 'napkin poem', Siberia; but unlike that, which was composed on the night itself, deep in my cups, this little piece arrived some time afterwards - my sober mind's later reflections on the experience.

I wonder if New York still has this problem with its payphones being in permanent disrepair. I haven't had a need to use one for ages. However, back in the mid-90s I suffered with them a lot whenever I was passing through; it seemed theft and vandalism were rife, and the maintenance budget was non-existent.

I wasn't actually trying to phone the 'Lost Love' that night. I was trying - and failing - to phone the friend who was supposed to be putting me up for my 2 or 3 night layover in Manhattan.... but somewhere during the course of that fraught hour or two hauling my luggage around the centre of the city in search of a functioning phone, as my exhaustion and despair at the situation grew.... well, they seemed to morph into the melancholy that I was still feeling over my breakup with this woman (The Evil One, it was), and the thought occurred to me that I might phone her if I could, that I'd like to phone her; but then I checked myself, realised that it would have been foolhardy, was relieved that it appeared to be impossible. So I went off to that bar 'Siberia' (which I'd just read about in the inflight magazine) to drown my sorrows instead.

Anyway, enough background. Here's the poem:



Six weeks later, I nearly called her....


Every payphone in New York is broken
(no change there)

And you would never have heard me anyway

Not above the babble of starstruck tourists
Blundering about Times Square like dazed moths
Not above the ecstatic whoop of delinquent rollerbladers
Not above the demented bellowing of fire-trucks
Not above the cacophonous derision of taxi horns
Not above the immense sigh of steam
Seeping always from the city's volcanic innards

No, you would never have heard me anyway,
And no change there

Too much background noise:
That was always our problem