You realise, looking around, in the den, Sunday night Fuck me, toots. No, no, no, quit that shit. I mean "What the fuck is going on?" It's been weeks. Literally weeks. It's not like your bar staff here don't care, don't ever think that. In fact, we have some whispers to respond to, a couple of reviews to cover and it looks as though Mr Once-A-Month wants a word as well. He's joined by Debs (although not to Debs, not yet), Shy Steve and 'Knackered' Jack, so called because he's just about dead. Bless him, he's got a shortened lung, a liver that won't live and a long-term brain sprain that makes every thought in vain. Every so often he has his veins drained, which causes heart strain, so he takes his fill of pain killers, they make him retch, fetch up blood in a flood that splashes his knees, he gnashes his teeth, gashes his tongue. He's thinning on top and slacking, can't stop himself going, if he's not losing his hair he's hosing his lair, he's a mess, he can't dress and yet he's not stressed. You hear that, kids? This dilapidated, run-down motherfucker is as happy as it gets. There's no point to me telling you that, except when he sits and he winces, shuts his eyes and looks all glum, don't ask what's wrong just then, or he'll talk about his other problem.
Okey. We have some holiday reviews now. Just to bring a little non-local colour into the bar, this week we are not confining our recommendations to Jack Daniels (although it's the finest damn drink on God's green earth, you silly-livered motherfuckers) and Lucky Strikes (although they get you laid - honest). First off, we have some cigarettes from Kenya. I shit you not, these babies are called Crown Bird. Although they bear the BAT legend and are therefore endorsed by no less of a James Dean smoke-alike than Kenneth Clarke, they taste like burned shoes. They go extraordinarily well, in fact, with a tipple that swung its way into the review box from Sri Lanka. It's called Arrack, and the method of its mixing was described to your barman thus: A whole is drilled in the side of a coconut and the milk bled off. It's left to curdle in the humid, mosquito-troubled air of the God-forsaken Sri Lankan rainforests. After a couple of weeks, the natural sugars and extreme heat have made it curdle into a fizzy, yeasty pus which they use for beer. (We tried that too. It says, eight percent, but I think it lied to get a cheap fare on the express from barman to Thames it hijacked.) Leave it for another couple of months or so and you can skim off a clear liquid that manages to combine the flavour and effects of petrol, Waitrose gin and nitro-glycerine. All in all, what your barman has always thought goes unchallenged by these contenders. If you want to feel patriotic, buy British. If you want to feel cool, buy American. If you want to feel ill, skimp on the essentials and repent your urge to try new experiences. For fuck's sake, kids. Your barman and many thousands like him have spent the last few thousand years whittling down the millions of potential comestibles on offer and have got it down to beer, wines, and spirits, made in the richest country in the world and troughed in the drizzly quaint theme park it keeps going as a stopping-off point on the way to fashionable Europe. Marvellous.
Shy Steve is our pianist. He's one of the gang, but it took him a hell of a lot of guts and planning. Because I'm retired and pissed I'm going to tell you all about it.
He used to work nights here, wringing old Blues standards out of our corky upright with his thug's fingers. Used to come in the afternoons to practice and get his drink up, this boy was like a lot of pool players. You know, come in sober and they play sticks & balls like Stephen Hawking plays water polo. Couple of pints to quell the shakes, get their muscles into neutral, whatever. I don't give a shit, but you know as well as I do that it works. Shy Steve was the same. He started coming in and used to get bladdered in the afternoons so he could talk to people in the evening. Before our posher clients start thinking that's daft, I should point out that we've had a couple of those, and they're not lonely boys anymore. Well they are, of course, but they know what to do with all that free time now, so it's alternative therapy or whatever the Seattle you want to call it. Anyway, he starts knocking some out of my piano, so I tell him there and then that if he does that when I've got customers, he's hired. He takes it on, and he does indeed add to the atmosphere. Don't get me wrong, he's no good, in fact he plays like a joey jives, but it's nice to have it going on. So, he starts coming in for the afternoons. I put a bottle of cheap whiskey on the piano and a tumbler, he does it in single fingers and by the time he's halfway to being a happy man, he's got some fairly slick chords on the go. Thing is, everyone thinks he's a cunt. Back to the bar.
'Night.
With the street bound in grimy, cold amber light
When you don't feel like drowning but don't care that you might
You're in the bar that was too shy to call and too drunk to write.
Maybe that's too harsh. Okey, we get some smart people in here. I don't mean they dress to drink, if they did that they wouldn't bother coming here and if they did they'd bother us, dig? No, I mean clever dicks, critics, people who always end up eating the staff's cocksnot if they go to a restaurant. Professional complainers, yeah? Okey, they hate Shy Steve. He's irritating, he can barely play, and these guys don't like that he's doing something and they're not.
In the afternoons, Debs used to do some cleaning up for me. Not much, but she'd sweep her ash up and collect glasses she'd emptied in the booths with strange men at lunchtime, (and trust your barman, you have to be a kind of strange to want a woman like Debs by you during the day). She was more despised than Shy Steve, if you can imagine that. And he twigged this.
She's never been a great dancer, but she's tried. I've never met a woman who wants to dance so much, but she's just not got the balance. I believe we mentioned before now that she enjoys the occasional breakfast vodka, and that kind of gives you sea legs when you don't need them, dig? So she'd shuffle, just knock her feet together and move from side to side. By evening she got her hips going so it wasn't half bad, but she's not a girl who looks good during the day. She'd sing along with his tunes in that funny voice of hers, sounding like she was pleading with a mugger rather than cooing a ballad, but who the fuck cares if it made her feel good?
One lunchtime, Shy Steve comes in with a box. It's not ribboned and bowed, he's not that rich, but it's a shoebox and it's tied with string. He leaves it on the table for Debs. I assume it's for her, anyway, and when she comes in, there's a card. Okey, in this box is a pair of shoes. I'm not talking about any subtle shoes, here. They are what Gerry Greer would call 'Fuck me up the ass while you snort cut speed off my back' shoes. Red, slightly frayed sheer material stretched over heart-shaped toe-bit, heels like pencils. Debs gets them out of the box, and she looks just about as happy as a face that clenched can look. Shy Steve gets a tune up. I shit you not, this chirpy little shot of Hollywood squalor happened right here at Mike's Place.
Debs dances in her new shoes, puts it all in, I give her some drinks. We're obviously in for a spontaneously good afternoon, and we're going to get fucking giddy by tea time. Then in come the critics. Debs doesn't spot them, or doesn't clock who they are. She goes on like she's on her own, or doing well at it or something. The critics eye Shy Steve. He hitches his eyebrow at them, and they grin, everyone flicking conspiratorial eyes at Debs. It gives, and they laugh. Those motherfuckers laugh and laugh. Debs carries on going, with a red face, carries off a finish and struts off. Shy Steve couldn't have looked happier. He was in. Debs wore the shoes for months, then one morning I found them in the bag with all the ash and crisp packets.