Thursday night used to be quiz night at the Farrier’s Arms. The questions were never too demanding; a lot of them you could answer in your sleep. Let’s be straight, the “comet” is always Halley’s. The “literary prize” is always the Booker. The “art prize” is always the Turner. The “medieval writer” is always Chaucer. The “famous diarist” is always Samuel Pepys. The “medical journal” is always The Lancet. And the “garden designer” is always ‘Capability’ Brown.
Landlord Brian abandoned The Big Book of Pub Quiz Questions - they were too trivial, he said - and started to compile his own. He decided it was time to ask his customers some of life’s more challenging questions. He didn’t get further than number one, "Why are we here?": a subject that’s preoccupied mankind ever since we started walking upright. A discussion turned into a heated argument, which, in that combustible, beer-fuelled atmosphere, degenerated into a fist fight. That evening’s prize, a mixed grill, was trampled underfoot; the pile of pennies on the bar, earmarked for the brave (but under-employed) men of the Whimsey Mountain Rescue Team, was knocked over prematurely.
That unfortunate episode marked the end of quiz nights. Brian keeps a pepper-pot and a pick-axe handle behind the bar these days, but he hasn't needed to use them. Thursday nights are convivially conversational... well, until a stranger strides up to the bar. Brian sweeps his hand across the beer pumps with proprietorial pride. “What will you have?”, he asks. “A pint”, the stranger replies. Brian sweeps his hand across the pumps once again, for dramatic effect, cocks his head to one side and raises one quizzical eyebrow. “Which one?”, the stranger says, impatiently. “Oh, it doesn’t matter”.
The room goes quiet. The locals shuffle uneasily along the bar. Old Bert, aiming for double top, misses the board entirely and throws his dart into the wall. Beer, you see, is taken very seriously at the Farrier’s. If the choice of beer doesn’t matter then the lives of most of the pub regulars are rendered meaningless at a stroke.
Brian has beers to suit all tastes. The budget option is a cheap ‘cooking bitter’, so weak it’s almost homeopathic. It arrives already watered down, which saves him the trouble. He’s got premium beers, with daft names, from local micro-breweries. He’s got fancy foreign lagers (all brewed in Warrington). He’s got a range of Belgian fruit beers, brewed by monks (who are bound by a vow of silence... especially about where the beers are actually made. Yes, Warrington).
So go on, nip down to your local. Pick a quiet night - so you can enjoy the satisfaction of shouting “drinks all round” at the startled regulars - and get the party started. Order a pint of Old Profanity, without regard for the consequences. Strong beer only attacks the weakest brain cells (the stragglers, cells that probably wouldn't have survived anyway) so a pint or two will actually help to make you more intelligent. Or, at the very least, more gullible. Cheers!
Saturday, July 4, 2020
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
25 Our miniature library
Valid or not, there were as many dissenting voices raised at the possibility of losing our phonebox as there where when it arrived 69 years earlier. Now that we were no longer using it, the red phonebox on the village green had somehow acquired ‘iconic’ status. Nobody wanted to see it go. Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall - quite literally so in the case of our phonebox - until Jean and Hayden stepped up to the mark. When they offered to ‘adopt’ the phonebox, BT readily agreed. The phone itself disappeared, and Hayden fitted the back wall with wooden shelving, floor to ceiling, and Jean volunteered to fill the shelves of the Whimsey Lending Library with books.
Jean knows what locals like to read. Until the service was axed, she had driven the mobile library from village to village, bringing the written word to the natives. Sometimes it seemed like literary evangelism, sometimes missionary work. After all, there are farmers in the flatlands whose reading is confined to the application forms for set-aside grants and the cooking instructions on the back of a ‘Boil-in-the-bag Cod in a Chedder cheese-style Sauce’ TV dinner for one. After a hard day’s work harvesting root vegetables, they’re unlikely to curl up by the fireside with a Booker prizewinner. “I read a book once”, Les confided to Jean, when she’d parked the mobile library next to Wolds End Farm, “and, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t impressed.”
Jean’s readers were keen on fatuous adventure yarns, usually featuring killer bees, for some reason. And romantic fiction: an uncomplicated world where men are men, and women are airline stewardesses. Conveyor-belt books: nothing to tax the brain after twelve hours inhaling sileage. The romantic action used to stop at the bedroom door, with three little dots of discretion... Readers could fill in the more salacious details for themselves, depending on their own tastes, experience and sexual proclivities. But these blockbuster authors have no such qualms. Confronted by a locked bedroom door, their first instinct is to batter it down and burrow voyeuristically beneath that double duvet of desire. Some of Joan’s more elderly customers may have raised their eyebrows and suggested that the book they’d just finished had been a bit on the steamy side - before asking, in a demure whisper, if she had any more like them.
There wasn’t much call, around Whimsey, for science fiction, or avant-garde poetry, or impenetrable stories that boast of their ‘exciting and experimental use of language’ (which generally means there’s no punctuation). Jean tried - God knows she tried - to introduce her readers to the classics, but it was a thankless task. Weaning them off Jeffrey Archer was a start. It was the smallest of victories, though, like getting cannibals to eat with a knife and fork.
The rationale behind the Whimsey Lending Library is simplicity itself: locals bring a book to the library, and take another book out. Jean visits her immobile library a couple of times a week, to wash the windows, ensure all the books are in shelved in alphabetical order and do a cull of Jeffrey Archer books. We may have lost our payphone, but, hey, we still have standards.
Jean knows what locals like to read. Until the service was axed, she had driven the mobile library from village to village, bringing the written word to the natives. Sometimes it seemed like literary evangelism, sometimes missionary work. After all, there are farmers in the flatlands whose reading is confined to the application forms for set-aside grants and the cooking instructions on the back of a ‘Boil-in-the-bag Cod in a Chedder cheese-style Sauce’ TV dinner for one. After a hard day’s work harvesting root vegetables, they’re unlikely to curl up by the fireside with a Booker prizewinner. “I read a book once”, Les confided to Jean, when she’d parked the mobile library next to Wolds End Farm, “and, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t impressed.”
Jean’s readers were keen on fatuous adventure yarns, usually featuring killer bees, for some reason. And romantic fiction: an uncomplicated world where men are men, and women are airline stewardesses. Conveyor-belt books: nothing to tax the brain after twelve hours inhaling sileage. The romantic action used to stop at the bedroom door, with three little dots of discretion... Readers could fill in the more salacious details for themselves, depending on their own tastes, experience and sexual proclivities. But these blockbuster authors have no such qualms. Confronted by a locked bedroom door, their first instinct is to batter it down and burrow voyeuristically beneath that double duvet of desire. Some of Joan’s more elderly customers may have raised their eyebrows and suggested that the book they’d just finished had been a bit on the steamy side - before asking, in a demure whisper, if she had any more like them.
There wasn’t much call, around Whimsey, for science fiction, or avant-garde poetry, or impenetrable stories that boast of their ‘exciting and experimental use of language’ (which generally means there’s no punctuation). Jean tried - God knows she tried - to introduce her readers to the classics, but it was a thankless task. Weaning them off Jeffrey Archer was a start. It was the smallest of victories, though, like getting cannibals to eat with a knife and fork.
The rationale behind the Whimsey Lending Library is simplicity itself: locals bring a book to the library, and take another book out. Jean visits her immobile library a couple of times a week, to wash the windows, ensure all the books are in shelved in alphabetical order and do a cull of Jeffrey Archer books. We may have lost our payphone, but, hey, we still have standards.
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