Next Wednesday, 18th November, 7.45, I’m back as a desperately needy Quiz Master at the Cinque Port Arms, Old Town Hastings. Come to fight for the massive prizes (a bottle of wine) and sheer entertainment (in the event of legal proceedings “sheer entertainment” is defined, for the purposes of this posting, as “the odd laugh”).
Sinister regulars at the Cinque Ports
I also managed to get an invite to Tony’s (fellow marbles team member) 50th in May. Proving, in Hastings at least, lusting after another man’s wife is no barrier to social success, what a great place this is.
Tony, a few years ago, about to “glass” the photographer.
Yesterday I started out as just mild mannered Steve Hardy photographer and ended up as a member of a winning team at Winkle Island Marbles Championship. This is one of the few sports that seems to encourage substance abuse as my fellow team members all played with pints in hand. It was a hard fought championship displaying high levels of skill, er, okay, no skill at all and no one was really bothered who won but we did end up with a cup. Afterwards the celebrations commenced and I suspect you know what’s coming here, another slow crawl up the West Hill, unusually this time in broad daylight, most of which I don’t remember.
As an aside, participating is more fun than taking pictures but only I could see that as a revelation…
Team member Vic with the trophy
My loathing of Jazz, though more drama queen than principle, is well known. A jazz concert seems to consist of solo, clap, solo, clap, ad nauseam. It has the visual consistency of seals being thrown fish for tricks. At the Jazz Hastings concerts held at the Hastings Angling Club this is only made bearable for me by the presence of Mrs Donaldson & the Former Future Mrs Hardy, both of which I adore and fear; the FFMH reminding me last night of the UK stalking laws…
Anyway, this time was different (though the seals were still there), the main artist, Gilad Atzmon was fun and made, for me, this formulaic form of music engaging and playful. The drummer was awesome, normally there is only one drummer; Keith Moon (in his Quadraphenia period). This guy has the same effect. The bassist redeemed the genre by sporting a Bruce Springsteen tee-shirt and the pianist tinkled away. Actually the pianist was probably great as well but pianos do nothing for me outside of classical music and Bat Out Of Hell!
So there we have it, the music was enjoyable, the women struck fear in my heart and reality was banished by cider; what a great evening.
Potential member of the E-Street Band.
Yesterday started at a funeral for an old school friend and ended with me having enjoyed a jazz concert. Both of these things I never hoped to see. In reality the day ended at around quarter to eleven with your hero, having thoroughly defeated sobriety, laying on his back on the West Hill photographing the moon through clouds; a clue here for all you photographers, a drunk taking 13th second exposures requires the deepest of beer goggles to look even vaguely interesting.
Jocks funeral again brought home to roost some old chickens, as I think funerals often do. Its been dawning on me of late how badly I’ve treated people in my life; for me guilt has always just been a dictionary word and as an emotion up there with the best fairy tales. And with two more pieces of the jigsaw; a capacity to leave, anything, and never look back and a wonderful skill at justifying absolutely everything to myself, the creation of a glorious wake of casual cruelty was inevitable.
Up there with Ansel Adams I think you’ll agree!
Be there or be tucked up warm at home, ah, yes, I can see the issues here…
Oh well, if you want to come and support my egotistical onward march to fame, forty years too late, you’ll be making an old guy happy!
Half way home up a rainy west hill, trailing a snake of 2 pints and half a carafe of wine, is where wisdom strikes, and the worst thing is is the realisation that by the time you reach your front door you will have forgotten every thing. Tonight I vaguely remember it was something to do with Patrick not being right with his “if women didn’t have ****** we’d throw stones at them” philosophy. I remember thinking that the only people men can talk to about emotional stuff is women and how wonderful that was. The thought then floundered on the realisation that as women could talk to other women about these things they really didn’t need us and it was a bit of an exploitative concept. The reality is that is men didn’t have ******* they’d just ignore us. Thank God, here I am at my door and I will forget this all in a few minutes…
The weight thing is not going too well, and as I have mentioned before, this is not helped by the “you don’t need to loose any more’ brigade. Last night was talking about this at the bar and it turned out that Bradley is my height, six one, and the weight I would like to be, eleven and nobody goes on at him for being too thin. Anyway if I get to eleven he’s promised to lend me one of his more fetching outfits, pictured below. Is this the incentive I need?
Bradley showing Lily Cole how it’s done.
I only called into the pub to see if I was involved with the next Pub Quiz, honest. I can’t remember my vision being blurred till late morning after a few drinks when I was a young man, what happened there?
I will be doing a couple of rounds of the Pub Quiz next Wednesday at the Cinque Port Arms in All Saints Street starting at about 7.20pm, Geography & Music are going to be the questions I’m setting, so I hope to see everybody who reads this (you know who you are!) turning up to join in, it’s a quid each and it goes to charity and not the “Steves feeling the credit crunch but needs to buy a new camera” charity, sadly.
A month ago on one of my pompous rants by a bar I talked myself into joint comparing a pub quiz. I had hoped Shelagh had forgotten but a couple of days ago I got the call, “are you ready?”. Bricks and sh**ing come to mind. I can occasionally talk a good talk but the walking has often eluded me. Tonight was the night so powered by a bag of chips & two pints of cider I “did my thing”.
For a guy who’s all mouth I have a real problem getting up in front of a group, but it seems to have gone well. I did a couple of rounds of questions (Science & Entertainment) and got a few laughs. My problem is that I have a tendency to ramble, big time, you can’t do that with and audience. But in the end a few people came up and said I’d done okay and before I could stop myself I was offering to do it again. Basically I’m a tart and the lure of babes & fame is too much.