Its 2025 - whats happening?

 Afternoon readers

          its only March and am already penning my first post!

So I realise I could mention the take over of a number of popular breweries by Keystone, or indeed the continuing demise  in numbers of unspoilt national Inventory pubs in the UK, but instead I wanted to write about ranting, by customers, at pub staff.

I am well aware that I "perhaps" drink too much and also that when I become drunk I simultaneously become a nodder, but in other people drunkenness bears a ferocious aggressive and solipsistic child, whose reason leaves them and they cling instead to imagined powers that they do not posess, like earlier this week. Allow me to Elucidate...

It was late on a midweek night in a popular Sheffield pub and probably about 30 minutes prior to closing. Two men I didn't know came in and sat down and started chatting but quickly one expressed his extreme irritation at them playing rap music, a phrase he couldnt accurately pronounce. After a couple of minutes he shouted "why dont you play some proper music instead of this rap shit" His friend told him to stop shouting which riled him further so he decided to storm over to the counter and shout the same accusation directly at the barman - who said, politely and calmly, that what they were playing was all music, and may even have suggested that some people liked the music they had chosen. Cue embolism number 2.

The stroppy man returned to his seat to complain that he didnt see why they didn't play proper music, instead they played this fuffin rab schyit.

I reneged the opportunity to ask him why he thought that rap wasn't music, and neither did I choose to explore which particular facet of the musical style he was unable to pronounce that enraged him so, nor did I enquire if he didn't like every single one of the millions of rap tracks ever recorded because of its established cultural backgrounds and influences. Instead I simply ignored them as best as I was able and then I awaited their threatened departure. Then came the line that really caught my attention. The loud guy returned to the bar as they were on their way out and once again started ranting about "rap shit" and then said " n I know xx and xx and I'll tell them about you and get this pub removed from the Good beer guide and (probably) youll never win pub of the month". 

Erm What now?

And this is when I realised that they were CAMRA members.

And I knew both of the gents he mentioned, one for nearly 30 years. And I was amazed that both those men had carried out surreptitious undertakings in Sheffield and Dronfield CAMRA as a Siloh of Silent Assassins to destroy and therefore close down any public houses or bars, which didn't meet strict musical requirements, weapons loaded, court orders at the ready and bile spilling between their clenched teeth pre action.

And do you now how the angry persons finished their visit?

As the bar man said that he didn't appreciate being shouted and sworn at and harrassed, they both said "fuck off" in unison before one said "gerra fuckin grip" as they stormed out. Children.

Lets just list all the normal and CAMRA benefits of the pub which they did not consider:

6 to 8 cask handpulls (admittedly these are just numbers - it could be 9) selling cask beers and ciders;

10 keg lines selling further and often stronger beers and ciders;

3 fridges selling further canned and bottled ales and ciders;

High quality fresh food produced in the newly refurbished kitchen;

Available function room upstairs for hire;

And what did the CAMRA members hate?

The style of music being played at closing time.

Interestingly - am not especially a massive fan of Rap music as a genre - because I have my own tastes in music. But in the event that a venue I liked or even one that I had first visited, played a style of music that I didnt like, I wouldn't undertake a roaring embolism of chuntering and swearing at bar staff, I would instead remember that I didn't live there, and go somewhere that I believed to be more appropriate. What an absolute shit show by these two Cameroids!

With kindest regards

Wee beefy

 men I

Fruit Loop Friday - sniffed up on misery

Hello there,

         I would like to point out that I always did, and continue to do so until this day, think that sniffed up was a reference to a current or previous cold infection. It was only when in the toilets with two of the world's loudest ever men, on the last Friday before Christmas, that I heard one of them roar that they wouldn't be able to eat their meal because they were "snifft up off mi tits man" referencing, one imagines, recreational drugs. So the title is about injecting misery into your veins. AKA going out on Fruit Loop Friday. Hope that helps....

Oh, and a warning to any delicate souls reading - this post does feature a large swathe of what I might politely call "maritime language". AKA swearing. Look away now if you are scared of the f word.

So, who would want to go out on the last Friday before Christmas? Who? And why? Well, the thing is, am thinking that I may have gone out on every such cataclysm of coarse language and crude behaviour in the last ten years - not least because Wee Keefy's work mates almost always have their Christmas pub crawl on that day. And am struggling to recall a year when I didn't see them. So if its not such a big deal in terms of times completed, what is it that I hate about the last Friday before Christmas so much?  Let me tell you....

Not wanting to go over old territory (that much) I think most of all I dislike the large numbers of obnoxious people infringing on my personal space, and the fact that a number of these irregulars believe that the season to be merry is, instead, the season to act without reason. Am not going to try and assume a high moral line against drinking to excess - even if I never say it I am aware that I drink too much and my birthday week this year was an excellent example of my drinking well beyond the bounds of sensibility by anyone's standards. What I would say, however, is that apart from the odd argument with those around me, I never become aggressive, and never physically attack people when am drunk. This is a rule that I observe as a member of human society. And its not one that I consider the festive season is reason enough to abandon entirely.

Many of you will have heard the phrase pub voice. This is a voice that most people have, at a reasonable volume, that should be used when in the pub surrounded by other humans, whom have ears. Inside the pub is not a place to try out your foghorn overpowering bellow. Not even once. And definitely not all bloody night. Yet for some reason, the festive season seems to be overladen with the shoutiest and most annoying people ever. And the last Friday before Christmas is their pied piper of pointless, piss taking, rambunctiousness.

Then, there is the lack of spacial awareness. As a hundred and something year old pub building, Shakespeares has a number of rooms and a relatively small bar area. Using even the most infantile logic its easy to spot that congregating at the bar once you have your drink is entirely the behaviour of fucktards. Apologies for my Middle-English. I have sat at the bar, in times of quiet. The last Friday before Christmas is not that. Get your drink, and piss off out of everyone's way OK?  Its a simple rule to follow.

A lack of knowledge of beers and pub etiquette and manners is also piss boilingly annoying. As per the below:
Fucknugget: Steeef. Steeef. Dyerwanna beer?
Far away Fucknugget: Whorrivthi go?
F: Ave yer gorrany lager pal?
Barkeep: Yes we have Becks Vier, Paulaner or bottles of Corona....
F: Fuck me, errr...ooh, this uns 11% Steeee-eeee-eeeef! Steeee-eeee-eeee-eeef!
Barkeep: it is £8.90 a pint though
F Yer fuckin wha? yavvin a fuckin laff er wha?
Barkeep: you could have a pint of Becks for £3.40
F: aye go on then (laughs, turns away and points over shoulder at barkeep) this guys tranna sell mi a pint for £19.00 a gu.....
FAF: wosztha go meh?
F: nnanuvver pint er tha please pal
FAF : eh?
Some 11% shit, a dorn fuckin norr.....
This goes on for the next 7 hours. This is one of many reason I don't work behind a bar. The above is not a criticism of lager drinkers, by the way, before you get your angry crayon out....

And finally, mass. Too many people in too small a space. For the love of made up deities, just go somewhere else!

The weight of the air, sticky with overweight men's sweaty farts and Thorseby market perfume splashed on by the litre. Blokes pissing in the sink because there is a queue of two for the urinals. A ten minute scramble to the loos. People who can't pronounce available, thinking it features the letter D. People who are proud of knowing nothing. People who start anecdotes in great enthusiasm, only to not finish them or drift off onto another subject, like John McCabe. Sitting behind a near impenetrable barrier of massive lumbering chimp men with the brains of a cat and the hygiene of a dead rat. Its really not very good fun.

Yet, despite all of the above, I was out in this shambles. I was drinking and enjoying Almasty Pale on cask from the past, and enjoying the company of my Brother and his workmates. We finished the night in a reassuringly quieter Bar Stewards on a mental pint of Wylam Reality Asylum hoppy soup at 7.4% and it was amazing.

And that is the ironic thing. I enjoyed my night out because I was drinking what I liked in my two favourite pubs with people I love. Partially the same remit as the noisy simpletons blocking the bar.

Although, to the best of my knowledge, I don't have breath like a miner's sock with a poo in it.

Just saying....

Bee Wifi

Once a year drinkers?

Good moaning,

       in a moment of lucid mollification earlier, an event which occurred in the twenty minute fight for warmth twixt waking and rising, I realised that I have been labouring under a delusion, or had fallen into the comfortable armchair of a pub conversation trap. Not subject to any malice you understand, but I had started agreeing with the claim that the worst people to find in a pub at Christmas and New Year are the much vaunted "once a year drinkers".

Firstly, the time of year I am thinking about this phenomena occurring is between Mad Friday and New Year's Eve. The three worst days in that period are Mad Friday, Christmas Eve, and New Years Eve. Straight away therefore, the phrase "once a year drinkers" seems awry. Unless these fearful of bowze roustabouts congregate in such mass that there are sufficient in their group to individually affront us on each of the above three days?

I spoke in my last post about the unpleasant nature and behavior of large groups of imbibers near Christmas, or in what am now going to called the new year era, or new yeara. The unpleasantness unleashed mainly on bar staff but often other customers (who may or may not be reguluzz) is widely thought to stem from once a year or novice drinkers.

Now I know a fairly large number of folks from different backgrounds, and with different levels of supping experience. I can only think of one who maybe only goes out in the New Yeara. They might fall foul of over indulgence, and perhaps also bail early upon that realisation, but the deplorable characteristics displayed in this period are not theirs.

When I was 19, so had been drinking regularly for two years (this is a fact, but not a boast I should point out) I used to go on a lengthy pub crawl on Christmas and new Years eve with  my regular drinking buddies. Did we get drunk? Yes. Was this because it was Christmas or New Year? Yes. We saw it as our duty to consume an insensible amount of alcohol because of religious doctrine and public holidays. We often screang (screamed and sang that is) loudly, although mostly in tune, in pubs and on streets (sorry if you lived in Crookes in the nineties and heard someone screaming Nirvana songs in the early hours, that was me....). We talked loudly, staggered and swayed, and made unprovable claims of our abilities in numerous areas of life, including insobriety. That was, however, the limit of our trespass.

I know time makes ones memories rosier, but I don't remember us ever getting into a fight, only once being asked to leave, and never being abusive to staff. Well, there was one time in the Springfield, but that was our regular spot and this in no way mitigates our behaviour, but there were ongoing issues. What am saying is, the New Yeara made us drink differently, but we were no booze babies, we had already become insufferably thirsty folk by this point, and crucially, the excess of New Yeara alcohol didn't turn us into aggressive, confrontational, twats.

I heard that prior to this Christmas a person I wrote a song about had been physically assaulted behind the bar. Having seen friends in the industry withstand absolutely unjustifiable amounts of personal abuse from revellers enjoying the immoral freedoms they wrongly assume they are entitled to, its a mark of respect to all that they haven't lamped a number of exceptionally rude customers. The thing is, to behave in such a reprehensible manner requires practice. Therefore, the mumblous miscreants I loathe are far from once a year slakers. They are, instead, regular drinkers but also, full time aggressive simpletons.

I think once a year drinkers, should they exist, should in fact be encouraged to come out, and find out what parts of our lives they are missing. I think more importantly than that, seasoned drinkers need to remember that whilst their drinking habits can change in the New Yeara, their behaviour should comprise respect, and forethought of speech. Its one of the things I absolutely don't miss about working behind a bar, and every year swathes of rude and abusive drinkers remind me of that fact.

Here's to a new year, and a new era of calmer, less rude drinkers.


Wee Beefy