Posted on by JonnyB

We attend the Big Village Pub Quiz Night.

Mr & Mrs Short Tony, Big A and I huddle at a table in the courtyard, as the quiz was being held outside under ‘weather permitting’ rules. (For overseas readers I should explain that the British definition of ‘weather permitting’ means “not like in the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow'”.)

“Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart,” I inform the table. “Played by Nicholas Courtenay”.

They are amazed by my general knowledge.

“I wish the quiz would start soon,” complains the LTLP. “I’m freezing.”

In truth, I have mixed feelings about this quiz. I am extremely good at quizzes (that is a fact, not just me boasting. Sometimes I worry about telling people things because it sounds like me boasting, whereas I am actually just trying to tell them a fact that they will be interested in and not boasting at all.)

Anyway, I am as extremely good at quizzes as I am as a lover, and the others are quite clever as well. So we had won the previous two quizzes. After the second one, there had been a certain amount of booing, and so I have it in the back of my mind that perhaps it would be a good idea not to win this one.

This thought seems to be in the backs of lots of other people’s minds as well.

It is all very well saying that winning again would be as tedious as if Ricky Gervais had done loads of easy comedy again in his new show about being tactless to disabled people and ethnic minorities. But when the adrenaline starts pumping and the questions start being called, it is impossible not to cover your bit of paper just in case people are looking and hiss ‘sssshhhh’ when the LTLP suggests an answer in too loud a voice.

“Ernie was the fastest milkman in the West,” announces the landlady. “What was the name of his horse?”

“Oh!!! Oh!!!” says Big A. “Wasn’t it something like -“

“Sssshhhh!!!!!” I hiss.

We finish the quiz second, due to not knowing that a cockroach has seven penises.

I shake the hand of the winning team leader, who I know quite well. Now that it’s over, I am pleased with second place, and that nobody can accuse me of engaging in unnatural practices with cockroaches.

We collect our beer tokens. We spend them.

(Note to Mr Gervais’s agent – I have not watched it yet but I am sure that it is very good. I also really liked the funny joke he did at the first tube bombings when he announced that in fact they hadn’t happened after all, and that it was all a joke and that we could all go home. Or maybe that was at Live 8 about the starving people in Africa – sorry, it was all in the same week and I get a bit confused.)

Posted on by JonnyB

I have a bonfire!!!

There is nothing so manly as having a bonfire. I love it. I dodge in and out of the wind so my hair does not get smoky. Unfortunately the wind seems to be going in every direction at once and blowing with more gusto than Abi Titmuss on performance-related pay, and soon my hair, my clothes and my entire neighbourhood are engulfed in a billowing thick and woody smog.

I look round guiltily, worried that somebody will turn up and shout at me.

Although I live in the country, I am a townie by birth, and am therefore a bit sure about the rules RE bonfires. If you are from the countryside you are allowed to burn anything, anywhere and at any time – crops, cuttings, old tyres, sheep etc. Whereas I get a bit nervous about this.

My very second encounter with Short Tony next door (after the time when he came to apologise for getting the LTLP horribly, incapably drunk within two hours of her moving in) was to apologise to him for an inappropriate bonfire. He was very nice about it, and didn’t say anything about having to re-do his washing, clean the ash out of his open-topped car, etc.

Since then, we have got to know each other better, and I have smoked him out many times without him complaining, moving home, etc. Although admittedly, the time the smoke was inside the house was still a bit embarrassing on my behalf.

I chuck another pile of the green leaves on and crawl around the garden holding a hanky over my mouth and nose. A shape looms out at me – at first I think it might be the police wearing those chemical suits, but it is the LTLP calling me in for dinner. (Although her maternity outfits do look a bit like those chemical suits).

I disappear indoors, leaving my bonfire unattended in strict breach of the law that I am sure there must be.

Posted on by JonnyB

In the village pub.

“And then Daltrey tried this,” continues the Well-Spoken Barman. “And Townshend worked on a few chords, and got something together.”

We lean in, agog to hear his stories about his times with The Who pop group.

I sit at the end of the bar sipping my drink, and smile. I do not mention my time in the nineties supporting The Sultans of Ping, as it is rude to trump other people’s stories.

We continue talking about music. By closing time we have formed a band. I had known that the Chipper Barman played the bass, but finding out that the Drumming Barman played the drums is a bonus, especially as it fits his name so well.

“We need to have a rehearsal now,” says Short Tony (vocals/saxophone).

With the Chipper Barman needing an early start, it is just the three of us that head back in a sort of zigzag fashion to my living room. At this point it transpires that the Drumming Barman, whilst being a good drum player, doesn’t actually have any drums. But he has a didgeridoo, which he picks up on the way.

“I’ll get some wine,” says Short Tony.

“Are you sure this will be OK?” asks the Didgeridooing Barman.

I explain that the LTLP is away for the night, and start setting up my Massive Cock-Extension Amplifier. Unfortunately after several pints the wiring bit defeats me, and I have to bring down my smaller Size-Is-Not-Important Amplifier instead.

At this point, things stall slightly. There are a limited number of songs in the classic pop canon for our particular mix of instruments. Short Tony announces that ‘Rat Trap’ is really the only thing he knows on the saxophone, and I remember the overall, major, most fundamental thing that has always done for me at parties – that I am completely unable to play the guitar when I’m drunk. Meanwhile, the Didgeridooing Barman is playing along nicely, but potentially getting a bit frustrated with the single note that he is able to generate.

Still, we get through a passable ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” which shows promise.

We part in the early hours, enthusiastic to arrange our first gig.

Posted on by JonnyB

Many thanks to Salvadore for taking over once more.

It seemed only right that he should have finished the series of posts planned before he was so rudely interrupted. With myself having been called into London for a couple of days at short notice, it was an ideal arrangement.

I was a bit loath to leave the thousands of small white maggoty things that had invaded my larder, and all the food therein, during my week away. However this was pushed to the back of my mind when I found that a project that is my largest single source of income is clearly going, as we say in the Important World of Creativity ‘tits up’, with me set to fulfil the traditional role of ‘the one a long way away who can be blamed because that won’t require everybody else to face up to their own institutional incapableness’.

Obviously I would have been in better form for my meeting had a problem with a hotel not forced me to spend the night sleeping on a floor. I can’t grumble however, as many people sleep on floors all the time, and the onset of what would prove to be lengthy bouts of firstly sinusitis and then food poisoning put it all into perspective anyway.

I returned to Norfolk on Friday, presenting my suit at the village shop (dry cleaning division) and instructing them to remove the spatters of blood obtained during my – possibly unwise – intervention in a particularly cheery post-pub mugging the previous night. I should reassure that the blood was the other chap’s, perhaps the most rubbish mugger in the entire history of that activity, who took one look at me, started an exchange of pleasantries then fell off the kerb, injuring himself badly in the process. But it was a nice suit and one of which I was fond.

Back home, a message from the LTLP explained that she’d spent the evening in A&E herself, having accidentally nailed her hand to the garden wall.

By Saturday the food poisoning was reaching its climax, but, it being too late to decently drop out of the cricket team, I packed several mountains of toilet roll and turned up for the game. Fortunately the fresh air seemed to settle things down, although I had to call a halt when my calf muscle pinged again and I found myself unable to walk.

So as you see, I have been getting back to normality here. I have a bit of a backlog to clear, then I will be returning to my usual role as the Venerable Bede of North West Norfolk.

Until then, please talk amongst yourselves.