Sunday 11 October 2009
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I am lazy, antisocial woman trapped in the body of an extrovert drunk and that, sans drink, I have a natural going-home time of 8.45pm. Thus the greatest excitement of today was finally finding my thick socks and then spending an entire morning wearing said socks while staring out of my window at the geraniums on the balcony and feeling pleased that, unusually for a Sunday, I didn’t have a hangover. I had a pot of coffee and scrambled eggs on English muffins. Bliss. But what fleeting bliss. My peace and quiet were shattered by the almost simultaneous arrival of Two-Woman and The Lodger. Two-Woman was in a terrible mood, although given that the last time I saw her someone almost double her size was shouting “And you have to match me vodka for vodka!” this was not especially surprising. We headed out to Lewisham for a cheering Muffin Break.
Now. When in a bad mood, Lewisham can work on you in one of two ways. On days when the odd people of Lewisham are out and about, there is relief to be found in a 'here but for the grace of God go I’ sort of way. Alternatively, Lewisham can leave you really wishing you lived somewhere else. Buoyed by my excellent morning, I fell into the former category, while Two-Woman seemed to be languishing in the latter. I began to lose count of how many times she sighed and said “I wish I lived in Chiswick.” Not even a bountiful blueberry muffin its statuesque form erupting free of its greasy casing was enough to lift her spirits. “Oh great. Look – an off blueberry,” she said, stabbing a slightly darker bit of her muffin with her fork. “Just looks a bit well cooked to me,” I remarked. “No, it’s off.” said Two-Woman flatly. “I wish I lived in Chiswick”
It was definitely an off-blueberry day for Two-Woman. I tried to engage her in sniffing the rank candles in TK Maxx “Urgh – smell this one Two-Woman. It’s birthday cake flavour. Smells like a tart's knickers. What does yours smell like?”
“Horrible” said Two-Woman listlessly. She wasn’t playing.
Top four mad people encountered in Lewisham today:
1. The man who ordered a ‘flat white’ in Muffin Break, drank it all, and then called a waitress over to complain that it didn’t look like it did on the poster. The poster featured a bells & whistles heavily accessorised hot chocolate – not a flat white. When the waitress pointed this out, the man complained that his flat white was not the same as it would be in Starbucks. Coffee-shop novice! Everyone knows Starbucks don’t do a flat white. The waitress stood there trying to explain that Muffin Break is not like Starbucks, which is not like Costa, which is not like Caffè Nero. The man then went back to complaining that his drink didn’t resemble the poster. His wife looked smilingly on when, really, she should have been beating him about the head with her handbag. The waitress’s parting shot was: “I just don’t know what to say to you.” I often feel like that.
2. The cheerful chap who appeared to get flash-mobbed by police officers outside Sainsbury’s. They all had a look down the front of his trousers, then he shook hands with them and everyone went on their his way.
3. The lady in TX Maxx who caused a severe pile-up by the second floor ‘down’ escalator as she gazed at it intently for several minutes, presumably waiting for her favourite step to come round again.
4. Not a mad person but a mad poster in a shop window. Advertising a Shabba Ranks concert. “Shabba Ranks?” we both shrieked in unison. Chaka Demus and Pliers were the support act.
I would like to say that our day ended on the Shabba-Ranks-poster high note, but we really pushed our luck by heading off to the pub quiz at The Local that evening. Now sometimes I’m in the mood for a pub quiz, but I do demand nice drinks, warm temperatures, a prompt start, an entertaining quiz master, and a feeling of camaraderie. Amazingly, despite its new carpet and ‘let’s bring in the normal people with teeth’ series of ‘themed’ evenings, we got nothing of the sort.
1. Drinks. Me: “Do you have any non-alcoholic beer?” Them: “What?” Me: “Non-alcoholic beer… oh never mind, give me a pint of Diet Coke.” Great. More sweet liquids I don’t want. All my teeth will have fallen out by the end of the 30 days at this rate.
2. Warm temperatures: Let’s just say I had to put my coat back on. And not just so I could beat a hasty retreat.
3. Prompt start: We were told that the quiz started at 8pm. We arrived at ten to and became the fourth, fifth and sixth people in the entire pub. The quiz finally kicked off closer to nine, requiring me to resort to desperate acts such as having more Diet Coke and furtively sniffing Two-Woman’s half a Becks.
4. Entertaining quiz master: We’d been misinformed by the bar staff about it being free entry. So when The Lodger went up, grabbed an entry form and took the first of five steps back to our table, we were not expecting the quiz master to shriek “YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR ENTRY FEE!” through the microphone as if the poor Lodger was committing a jewel heist and the quiz master were armed with a Taser. Thank goodness he wasn’t: he would have used it. No doubt at all.
5. Camaraderie: This is what tipped us over the edge. Everyone bar our table (me – self-imposed teetotalism; The Lodger – religious reasons; Two-Woman – bad mood and hectic metabolism) was drinking. I know because I was playing spot-the-lager (“Four Stellas in proper Stella glasses at that table over there and a half for the lady. Oh, how lovely!”). So you might have thought that this alone, if not the sheer joy of just being together, might have breathed a little life into them. Not at all. The only time I heard a voice raised was when someone asked: “Could you repeat the question?” And there was no jolly marking of each other’s papers either. They all went back to the quiz master to be marked in cold silence. No banter. It was like A-Level Pub Quiz. By the end (nearly 11pm on a Sunday night, and, oh, but we were weary), we sat in bleak despair over the picture round as the quiz master asked for the third time for people to hand in their forms, and the table in the corner continued to peer at Morrissey (or was it George Clooney? All celebrities were starting to look the same) with their magnifying glass. That’s right: their magnifying glass.
Bah. We went home without getting the answers. We probably lost, but we were past caring.
Units dodged: Six. They served their Stella in lady glasses. I do love a Stella lady glass. Yet even two lady glasses of Stella would have done nothing to improve that godforsaken quiz.
The Unit Dodger
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