No World Cup - No Cry

NO WORLD CUP, NO CRY.

Did you enjoy the World Cup Final? A very un-English affair wasn’t it, referee apart? Of course we didn’t have a team in it - but the idea of Spanish and Dutch supporters mingling good-naturedly, sipping skinny Lattés, seated side-by-side at Boulevard cafes is the sort of thing that gives football a bad name. Not a union-jack tattooed, drunken yob, nor a riot policeman in sight.
I particularly enjoyed it as I didn’t watch it, at least until the last few minutes of extra time. I found something much better to do, and something that the English are actually rather good at: musical exhibitionism.
Pete the Plumber had invited my girlfriend and I - I’m much too old to have a girlfriend, but partner makes us sound like a couple of raddled old gays - to watch a band at his local pub, the Guzzling Goose in Ashton.
Getting there was interesting; Pete picks us up in his adapted Nissan Micra so that we can have a drink. He had suffered a severe stroke a few years back and has little use of his right arm. This doesn’t impair his ability to drive like a complete maniac. My girlfriend, seated in the back, asks - in all innocence - which arm he had lost control of?
By way of diversionary therapy, I ask Pete what his rehabilitation exercise programme was like.
‘Don’t do any mate,’ he replies.
‘Not even swim? I ask.
He thinks about this for a moment. ‘Nah, I’d only end up going round in circles.’
One benefit of Pete’s condition is that he can park where he wants, which in this instance is on double yellows right outside the Guzzling Goose.
On stepping out of the car I immediately feel a tad overdressed in Armani jeans, tan cowboy boots and pink Superdry T shirt. Why, in the name of Zeus, did I wear the pink one? My girlfriend blends in better in Doc Martins’ and bi-curious combat trousers.
We sidle through the congregation of smoking hairy-arsed leather-clad bikers and their molls, latter-day punks and a sprinkling of Goths and find a pew at the back. The room is about the size of my girlfriend’s kitchen and the stage takes up a good third of it. Instantly I am transported back to a time before bottled water, mobile phones and ponsey coffee. It just needs a haze of cigarette smoke curling upwards towards the terracotta stained aertex ceiling and we are in a set from Life on Mars. No Botox, fake boobs and false tans in here then; just timeless fashion disasters such as middle-aged men who still think it looks good to tuck their black T shirts into their trousers, particularly if their belts have more studs than a pit-bull’s collar.
Tuning up completed, we get underway. On stage we have the lead guitarist, compare, and, thankfully, part-time comedian. He is shaven-headed with a long beard, so let’s call him “Beardie No1” Next to him is the bassist who is slightly smaller but otherwise identical in every way, so we’ll call him “Beardie No2”. Beside him is the rhythm guitarist. He must be seventy-five if he’s a day; what’s left of his hair is restrained in a ponytail and with white beard and bulbous nose, he could easily pass for Asterix the Gaul. The drummer looks like a computer analyst, and he probably is.
Beardie No1 is in a foul mood. He announces that it is too effing’ early for this sort of thing and he won’t be happy ‘til he’s had a load more beer and played some tunes.
The band grinds out a few of their own rock numbers which are loud, competently performed, although fairly forgettable. Mid-way through the third number, Beardie No2 – the bassist - clearly the most capable member of the band, moves back to the drummer and has a word. I imagine it goes along the lines of: ‘…you speed up any more, mate, and I’ll skewer your prostate with those effin’ drumsticks”.
I would like to think, that, at his audition, he was asked the question: ‘What do you consider to be the most important attribute of a drummer? Is it: A) an ability to keep time? B) The ability to bash the drums as hard as you possibly can? Or, C) to look good. B was clearly the correct answer.
Beardie No1 then opens the floor to anyone who wants to play. These slots have been pre-booked so that the band has some idea of what to expect.
First up is Sean Wilson, aka Martin Platt, formerly of ‘Corrie’. I believe he’s into cheese production now; a bit like his performance, then.
Next up, is a very fat black guy with a very large guitar and an even fatter white guy with a very small guitar. My girlfriend wonders if this could be symbolic. They are Blues’ specialists and are very good, although the trouble with the Blues is that it starts to get a bit samey after half an hour. My girlfriend, whose musical interests don’t really stretch far beyond Joni Mitchell, Elbow and Van Morrison, looks bored. She leans over and tells me that she finds the Blues about as stimulating as any cricket match which lasts for more than one ball. However, as she leans over, we notice a rucksack which appears to belong to no one, which drags us back into the post-911 paranoia of the 21st century. It transpires that it belongs a couple standing behind our booth. He is shaven-headed, slim, and wears a T shirt with the words ‘Beaver King’ sandwiched between two halves of a roll.
‘Is he?’ my girlfriend asks his girlfriend. She is smartly dressed, has dark hair stylishly cut in a bob, and looks as out of place as me. She smiles demurely, but gives nothing away.
‘Is there a bomb in there?’ Persists my girlfriend.
Her bloke laughs, opens the bag and produces what appears to be some kind of UPVC bondage mask, for which he gets a scowl from his moll. I peer into the rucksack and clock what looks like a pair of hand-cuffs and a something resembling a whip. Strewth!
Next on stage is a bird from Macclesfield who is wearing what appears to be a wedding dress. She strangles the life out of ‘Hey Joe’, not bothering with any lyrics after the first verse, but improves and bangs out a presentable version of ‘Voodoo Chile’. Midway through her set, Big Steve comes in. I know it’s Big Steve because Pete tells us, and Pete knows everyone. Big Steve is a cross between Obelix and Sebastian Chabal, with a beard and straight, sandy hair which almost touches his studded belt. He is a good 6’8”, has arms like girders and a girth the size of the Mersey tunnel. Sadly for him, he too tucks his T shirt into his jeans.
The Macclesfield bride finishes and sits down amid hearty applause next to her mum, on the opposite side of our table. They are both drinking pints of Stella (aka ‘Wife-Beater’) mixed with Coke. I am intrigued and offered a sip; it is all I can do not to vomit.
‘Discovered it in Belgium, she did,’ mum announces proudly, as if the discovery of something guaranteed to made you heave is a good thing.
‘Another reason not to visit Belgium, then’, I reply, my words clearly drowned out by Neil from the Young Ones, bashing out something depressing by Paul Weller on his Les Paul. His set finishes with No Woman, No Cry, which almost makes me want to.
The last act before we take an intermission and re-fuel in the curry house down the street, was easily the best. Now, they say that to play like Hendrix, you have to play like Hendrix, and that is precisely what the young skinhead with excessive body piercing is now doing. This is as good a version of All Along the Watch Tower as I have witnessed, played, of course, left-handed on a right-handed guitar. When he sat down, I just had to ask him, 'why?’
‘Simple’, he tells me, swallowing half a pint of coke-free ‘Wife Beater’ in one gulp, ‘I started to learn on a right-handed guitar. By the time I could play anything half-decent, I’d have had to completely re-learn on a left-handed one’. Obvious.
By the time we return from our curry, it is all a bit after the lord major’s show; the band has packed up and gone, as have most of the crowd; those bleary-eyed half-deafened souls who remain have half an eye on the World Cup Final in the other bar. We sit down beside Asterix and his bird. Dressed in what appears to be a leopard-skin leotard, she is a good forty years his junior and three times his size. Neil from The Young Ones accompanies the landlady as she belts out You Are So Beautiful to no one in particular. Time to go, I say, fearful the Lady in Red may be next.
We are vaguely aware that Spain has scored the winning goal as we leave the Guzzling Goose. But, as I’ve already mentioned, unlike the Great British feast of unashamed exhibitionism we had just enjoyed, the soccer was a very un-British affair.
But then I, for one, would rather live in a country peopled by eccentric exhibitionists rather than a country that is good at soccer.