Friday, April 13, 2007

Women and children first...

Work had ground to a halt yesterday so I decided to move class outdoors to a beer garden in a nice location to see if that would kick start progress on the script editing I wasn't getting on with. If nothing else, it meant that I'd take some refreshing liquid on board and get some fresh air for a couple of hours before knuckling back down to something else after some serious thinking about what that might be.
I didn't bank on four fat mothers, a grandfather and a small coach load of their horrible offspring deciding to sit right next to me. It wasn't as if there weren't other tables. It wasn't as if I hadn't made it obvious that I was busy in the 20 minutes of peace and quiet I did enjoy - indeed, I'd sprawled huge chunks of paper across the table I'd sat at and was busy scrawling all over it when the Addams family arrived. But this was, after all, a public place and who was I to think that I might get creative out in the open air?
The fat mothers couldn't control their horrible offspring. They had come to eat but before the fat mothers could find out what their horrible offspring wanted, the horrible offspring had gone running into the distance, where swings and slides and other fat mothers with children were. I thought the fat mothers and the grandfather might see sense and also move, to be with their kind. But no, they decided instead to conduct a long-distance shouting match to try and take their horrible offsprings' food requests. Which basically amounted to nine dishes of chips. Then a loud and lengthy debate ensued between the fat mothers and the grandfather about whether this particular pub did pizza which could have been solved by looking at the menu that was staring them in the face but, no, that would be too simple and too courteous to the man sat next to them that was having to listen to this constant inane babbling.
By this time, a brat called Ben (not the one from Eastenders but suffering a similar fate it seems) had been assaulted by the other children. The grandfather, for it was Ben's grandfather, who had not seen the incident because he was at the forefront of the pizza debate, decided that Ben must be guilty of something, otherwise why would the other children have assaulted him? "I din't do nuffink grandad," came Ben's tearful pleas, as Grandad's face revealed that he would happily take his belt off and swing it buckle first and with some force at Ben's body. But now the fat mothers, keen to order burgers in light of the fact that pizza wasn't on the menu after all, agreed with Grandad Pizzaexpert's twisted logic and started telling Ben that he should go and apologise to their horrible offspring and then they would let him play and all would be rosy and the fat mothers could stuff their fat faces and put a bit more weight on. Ben: "But if I go over there they'll hit me again." "Is this how you repay your mam? She takes you out and you cause trouble," said Grandad. Ben was sent packing because the burger order had to be put in, although he was sent with the instruction, "behave, or yer mam'll bray you" ringing in his ears.
Five minutes later he was back, crying, the victim of a more serious assault and the mob of horrible offspring blaming him. "Why can't we just go home for Christ's sake?" cried Ben, as the food arrived, along with all the horrible offspring and their filthy hands that wouldn't be washed before being dug into chips. I gathered up the paperwork, drank up, shook my head and walked away, thankful that I don't own a gun, because I certainly wanted to use one.

Just before all this happened, in the happier moments when I was still under the impression that I was doing the right thing sitting in the sun with a pint of Fosters, I overheard a wreck of a man who wore polyester trousers and very cheap shoes bullshitting telling his blonde lunchtime date, "well, of course, I was spending half a million pounds a year on my debit card so it was only logical for the bank to give me a platinum card." With such cash at his disposal it made perfect sense, then, for him to be treating the woman of his life to her share of two meals for £5.

1 comment:

Bazza said...

Sadly the meek no longer have any chance of inheriting the earth. At the next 5 tackle handover it will go to the fat lazy bastard with 20 kids (by seven different mothers)who shouts the loudest.