by Sloan, Phil
‘That’s even better. I could dress up like a 1970’s one from Starsky & Hutch with massive flares, loads of gold chains and pimp slap any fool who got in my way. I’d spend all day shouting “Woman don’t make me hurt the back of my hand!”’
‘But you could end up in prison worrying about getting chivved or dropping the soap in the shower.’
‘Oh well sounded a good idea rattling around in my alcohol soaked brain, back to the drawing board yet again. Talking of meat and stuff a mate of mine killed a cow in an abattoir using one of those bolt gun things.’
‘What did he work there or was he on a school outing or something?’
‘No he flogged meat as a salesman and went to see a client who let him have a go. Think the fella was border line maniac anyway so bet he enjoyed it.’
‘There’s no way I’d do that. What had that cow ever done to him?’
‘Someone has to do it. You eat burgers, don’t you?’
‘Yeah but I wouldn’t kill a cow like that. I thought they all died of old age when they were akip before they were ground up for burger heaven. Wish that cow would come back and haunt that geezer by lowing quietly at the end of his bed keeping him awake at night. Maybe the ghost cow could annoy him by rubbing his phantom udders over his face drenching him in spectral milk or drop spirit cow pats on him.’
‘What the fuck are you dribbling on about Village you have well lost the plot. A ghost cow, have you lost your marbles? You talk absolute hat stand mate but that’s why we love you.’
‘Thank you Kid F. That is the nicest thing you have ever said to me. I’m welling up, I truly am. Fancy another pint?” END OF CONVERSATION…..
Early evening arrives and we are steaming. We head back to the cess pit we are staying in to get changed. When we arrive, the kebab shop is busier than a whorehouse giving out free blow jobs. They must be sprinkling crack cocaine on their MRM to keep the punters coming back for more.
We climb the stairs to the shit holes we are kipping in to get ready. Unlike a lot of blokes who moisturise, cleanse, exfoliate and generally ponce about, I subscribe to the 3S system: Shit, Shave & Shower. For the younger generation this could also be known as the 3D system: Dump, Dig in the grave & Douche.
Why waste VDT (Valuable Drinking Time) fannying about beautifying yourself when there is lager to be sunk? Those beers will not drink themselves you know. This is a stag do not a spa weekend so man up!
Just do a quick ‘Whore’s Wash’ of the armpits, face and crotch areas then you bugger off out. Just remember to do the face bit before you do the crotch if you are using the same flannel. Don’t want those annoying yeast problems from downstairs spreading to your boat.
Like a typical man I ignore my own advice and decide to brave the rank shower. I open the door to be hit by a wall of stench, worse than an open sewer. It makes me gag and tears spring up in my eyes but still I go in.
It smells like a lavvy on a building site around mid-morning on a warm day, after a load of cooked breakfast cables have been freshly dumped down it. The floor of the room is covered in filth. I may as well shower in my socks to keep my feet clean.
The plug hole is blocked with enough curly watch springs (pubic hair) to stick to an elephant and create a modern day woolly mammoth without the need for cloning.
The tiles are only held on to the walls by the thick mould where grout once was and I am sure there was a nice growth of mushrooms sprouting up in one corner. It is well grim. In fact it is grimmer than Jack McGrim of Grim town.
Anyone with half a brain would just leave well alone but I convince myself that once I am in the shower I will be cascaded by a glorious spray of hot water and all will be well.
Disappointment predictably hits me. The water is freezing, seemingly pumped in straight from the nearest canal judging by the greenish colour of it. I start washing all the gank of the day off me and sober up a bit.
I get convinced that no live human being has been in this shower before. It is only used to rinse the blood off the recently deceased, soon to be served up downstairs as corpses. All the sharp knives, hatchets and serrated blades needed for body dismemberment are also washed and cleaned in here ready for the next victim who will soon be part of the elephant leg seen spinning in the kebab shop window.
I am sure that the owner of kebab towers will be running through one of us with a bayonet just for kicks as meat supplies downstairs start to dwindle. Think it’s all the puff I have consumed today that is turning me into a head case imagining all this serial murdering impending death bullshit. Need to move on.
I rinse off and leave the vile shower room to return to the vile bed/torture rack room I sleep in to get changed into the night’s clobber. My uniform is Converse trainers, black jeans and a flowery shirt. I stick a bit of gel through the crew cut, dab some aftershave around the neck and a bit downstairs for luck, then its wagons roll!
The rest of the troops are ready to rumble so we march over to the nearest coffee house for Stella and a spliff. The place is well rammo with a thick fog of cannabis fumes hanging in the air. How the bar staff breathe this smoke in all night and can still pull pints is a wonder of science. I guess it’s a major perk of the job, getting high for nothing and the boss cannot even stress you out about it. Good as gold!
We get tucked right in again and it is not long - well two joints - until the conversation takes a turn towards the nonsensical. Hit and Miss are standing at the jump talking the following utter load of horse manure that I am unlucky enough to have to overhear:
HIT: Are we going to meet up with Kristall and her saucy mates again tonight?
MISS: Sure are. She’s taking us to some trendy restaurant she knows and then on to some mad techno club.
HIT: Result, she is definitely in my target market. She looks like she bangs like a barn door in the wind. Bet she fucks and sucks until midnight then turns into a six pack and a pizza. She is a real looker with fantastic NLT’s.
MISS: NLT’s?
HIT: You know Nice Little Titties. Mind you some of her mates are a bit moody. One of them is a definite Prawn.
MISS: Prawn? What she is pink and fleshy? She lives in the sea?
HIT: No you fist, it means she has a delicious and tasty body but get rid of the head because it ain’t all that. It is a real shame that another one of the lasses is a big old unit with some fantastic fun bags but the last time I saw legs like hers they were attached to a billiard table.
MISS: And that right there is why you are going to end up as a simpleton singleton for the rest of your natural. Get used to a life of Mrs Palmer and her five lovely daughters my sexist 1971 dwelling caveman friend.
HIT: Oh fuck off Mr Feminist, what about the ‘Who’s The King Baby?’ competition you were bragging about earlier that you and your seedy flatmates have started?
MISS: Where’s the harm in that? We bought a crate of lager that will be awarded to the first one of us blokes who brings a woman back to the flat that they can get into the sack. While rogering her senseless they will shout out: ‘Who’s The King Baby?’ and if she yells out ‘You are! You are!’ we have a winner! Obviously we will need an independent witness to verify the event or the lager stays shrink wrapped.
HIT: I don’t know where to start. That is so far off the wrongness chart it’s staggering. So are you all videotaping your conquests as evidence or do the rest of the lads listen at the bedroom wall with glasses to their ears while you have your wicked way with some poor unfortunate girl? What were you smoking when you came up with this plot? I’m telling you that slab of lager will be well past its sell-by date and underneath six inches of dust before any of you sad sacks pulls a woman to win that nasty old contest.
MISS: Well that’s where you are wrong Mr Woman’s Lib. I have a plan to snatch victory. I’m going to pay a brass to come round and I’ll pretend to have pulled her up at Mushy Peas. Then I’ll ride her like Shergar and as I am paying she will be screaming like a good ‘un. You’ll be able to hear her from out in the street
bellowing ‘You are! You are!’ at the top of her voice and the crate is all mine.
HIT: Brilliant. Spend a oner to get a take away hooker so you can win a poxy twenty quid crate of beer. Economics was never your strong point was it?
MISS: Bugger I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe your sister will do me a favour and come around and let me pretend I’m humping her. She wouldn’t mind would she?
HIT: Not in this lifetime. Stay away from my skin and blister. I don’t want to end up related to you. It’s bad enough that I have to drink with you. Let’s talk about something else before I get the hump. What about that cracking bird standing over there by the window, would you felch her dripping arse for a tenner?
MISS: I’d do it for nothing. It would be a great honour. What the fuck.
HIT: Talking of FUCK do you know where the term came from?
MISS: Errrr your Mother?
HIT: Leave it! No back in medieval days you had to get permission from the monarchy if you intended shacking up with and indeed shagging someone before marriage. The king must have been a right pervert wanting to know when his loyal subjects were getting laid and how much they were getting. You had to go to the royal family to receive a ‘Fornication Under Consent of the King’ form, thus creating the acronym FUCK, which then entered the English language. This was how a vulgar way to describe the sex act was created. So if you fancied a hand shandy instead of the real thing you then had to apply for a MUCK approval: ‘Masturbation Under Consent of the King’ to show you were a right wanker.
MISS: What a crock of steaming moose shit. How could they have policed and enforced this law preventing the peasant masses from ‘getting jiggy with it’ without permission? Was there a team of crack Intercourse Inspectors who were paid to peer into people’s bedrooms at night or to check sheets for Harry Monk stains in the morning?
HIT: You really are a massive GUNT fella.
MISS: You’re just making this up now aren’t you? What the hell is a GUNT?
HIT: A GUNT is the layer of blubber that swings between a woman’s huge pie gut and her cunt. You will spy this wonder of nature that is caused by over eating, down most local high streets on many leggings wearing members of the underclass. It’s a work of art and right gives me the horn.
Luckily Kristall and the Dutch contingent turn up at this point ending their rotten conversation before they can say anything that will really offend more sensitive folks within ear shot.
The locals get a round in with shots and then ask us what we have been up to during the day in their fair city. They rip the piss out of us remorselessly when they hear about our cycling adventure. ‘You English are crazy’ they keep saying.
They just can’t believe that we are all still standing after having drunk and smoked hard all day. In The Dam the more sensible cool people go out late in the evening and make a real night of it. Most of us will be lucky to make it past eleven without collapsing.
We sink the drinks, leave the bar and walk about fifteen minutes to the restaurant that Kristall has been raving on about. It’s a small family run place that we completely take over as there are twenty four of us in total in this Anglo-Dutch posse. The owner is well chuffed to have a full house and he really fusses over the lot if us making us feel really welcome.
It is like being in someone’s house and amazingly the lads all are on their best behaviour and are on top form. The laughter and the mickey taking is what a stag weekend is all about and I feel genuinely moved to have such close mates around me. This ‘booze camaraderie’ is a great feeling or it could just be caused by all the illegal chemicals flowing through my blood stream.
The waiter brings over the menu’s which are written in Dutch but on the following line are very helpfully translated into English, so it should be a breeze to order your scoff.
Not for Village. He’s so far out of his head that when he reads the menu all he can see is a total nonsensical jumble of Dutch and English words. He stares long and hard at the menu trying to work it out but he has no chance. He cries out ‘Help I’ve caught dyslexia, I can’t read the menu at all.’
‘For dogs sake,’ replies Kid B ‘you can’t catch dyslexia you are born with it.’
‘Well maybe you can fuckwit,’ Village spits back ‘cos you just said for dogs sake so stick your dyslexia theory up your hole!’
The wind ups go on and on. Old stories get wheeled out and aired for an all new audience who lap them up.
Kid G is unimpressed when the old tale of him smoking a joint we had rolled for him that was made from an Oxo cube instead of real gear, gets trundled out. He puffed his way through it and we then asked him if he had had a meaty high?
He announced it was a great spliff, weak but sweet. Trying not to wet ourselves we then went on telling him that the puff had mind-altering effects that really helped you to take stock of your life. This type of marijuana enabled higher thinking, thus giving new ideas to make some real money by boarding the business gravy train.
We didn’t tell him for months that he had been inhaling Oxo granules. Everyone howls with laughter. The Dutch contingent, haven’t got a clue what is funny as they probably don’t even have Oxo over here, but they laugh along politely.
The food turns up and it is amazing. I had always thought that the Dutch national dish was chips smothered in Mayonnaise but I was way wrong. The tucker is right tasty and hits the spot. After a day on the pop dining on burgers, kebabs, crisps, chips and space cakes (every one of your ‘five a day’ food groups there!) it is brilliant to consume something delicious to soak up the alcohol. Three courses, vino and coffee later and we are done.
Talking of food the full English Sunday roast dinner with gravy and red rocking horse is the apex in International Cuisine for my money. You just cannot beat it. Way better than sushi. My opinion on that raw fish old tosh is that if they can’t be arsed to cook it then I can’t be arsed to eat it. It is as simple as that!
We have had a top night with some top people but it’s time for us all to move on. We pay up and then we hit a place called The Melkweg and from here things start to become all a bit of a blur. The place was a superb music venue, club and bar all in one hip spot. I remember that a ‘lower league’ Brit Pop band were playing a gig there so we all went to see them and had a mad jump about. Pills get dropped, powder is snorted and predictably the local brewery will have to do an extra shift next week to replace all the beer that we sunk.
Women are hit on and I think someone else got hit for hitting on the wrong blokes girlfriend. I then go into full wobble mode and lose hours of time in a hideous tail spin. My body cannot handle the abuse any more. We somehow manage to lose Kristall and all her mates in the club, or more likely they decided to lose us. Our drunken English charms had worn well thin by this time of the night.
We do the offski.
CIGARETTES SMOKED IN THIS CHAPTER: 16…..156 TO GO
BOOZE BINGED IN THIS CHAPTER: 5 PINTS, 2 BOTTLES, A PORT & LEMON, 2 X BLACK SAMBUCA AND A CARTON OF KIA-ORA
Chapter Nine: I Know My Basic Human Rights!
Friday night slides into Saturday morning as the fourteen of us wobble around Amsterdam town centre. Finally we come across a nightclub that has a queue of bodies waiting outside to get in. It looks right up our strasse as it’s a hard house night and the queue is full of ladies.
We all get in with no bother from the bouncers. They have a strange system for buying drinks though as they don’t take cash at the bar. As you pay to go in they give you a card with eight empty boxes on it. Every time you get a beer, the staff on the bar, stamp the card and as you leave you present the card and pay for your alcohol as you exit the club.
All drinks cost the same so you pay per stamp you have on the card. Seems well over complicated to me, but when in Rome, I mean Amsterdam. Besides what could go wrong?
Inside the club the volume is turned up to ELEVEN. It’s a huge warehouse-looking place and the DJ is spinning his ‘platters that matter’ from a booth at one
end. He’s playing full on bibbly bibbly house music. This is proper ‘industrial house music’, with bass so low it rattles your fillings.
The place is full of folks getting down to the hard beats. Plenty of people have their hands up in the air, pumping their fists, arms waving about. All that ‘big fish, little fish, cardboard box’ nonsense is going on. Or was it ‘big box, little box, cardboard fish?’ I could never remember.
Just a noisy, smoky room full of ‘pilled up’ clubbers, gurning their faces off. Everybody is pouring with sweat and wearing ‘shit eating’ grins as they have a top night out. Most of the ravers are swigging bottles of water, rather than beer, not a surprise.
It is crazy loud though, loud enough to wake the Devil and all his imp helpers. Even my tinnitus has tinnitus. We wander up to the bar which is empty, even though the club is busy. This is a sure sign that illegal chemicals are fuelling the majority of people in this joint.
We shout in a round of beers, so everyone has to produce their cards that then get stamped and returned. We then explore the club properly.
Some of the lads make a bee line for a group of fruity looking frauleins dancing around their handbags and start up all the old chat. A few others are up on the podiums waving their arms about and throwing shapes like they are having some kind of seizure.
Although the music is way too heavy for me we all have a great laugh. We are all smoking, boozing, sniffing and snorting.
The dance floor is a big slab of raised metal. Kid G legs it halfway across and then slides on his knees the rest of the way. He looks extremely cool and it looked like bloody good fun.
Then Hit runs and flops down on his belly to glide over the dance floor. Some of the locals join in and soon a big crowd take turns bombing across the floor on knees or beer guts. This sliding game is something for nursery school children or folks with limited intelligence to enjoy. Know what category we fall into. We’re well feeble minded.
Suddenly the bouncers appear and with just two words ‘No More’ our fun ends. That’s that game over for sure. Was a giggle while it lasted but ‘rules are rules.’
