Lughole Input Highlights Fri-Sun

Wind, mainly, like truckfuls of gravel being poured into the ears. But also a football stadium, either angry or delighted, roaring half a mile away into a next-door garden playlist that threatened Hotel California but didn't deliver. And a man whose brewery we invaded using the full phrase "the new north american-style hoppy beers" every time he compared his own (delicious) drinks to those (domineering) others. He had a wardbrode nailed to the wall three feet off the floor. And closed doors opened and banged themselves into splinters.

Catatonics and the English Language

Foyles offer a free muffin for spending over a tenner, but mention nothing about a free book for buying ten muffins. This is one reason why my forthcoming book-and-alcohol-vending enterprise (possible names I haven't yet checked are available: Anais Nin's Home Entertainment Supercentre. The Fountain of Paragraphs. The Swede Creamery. Dostoyevsky's Death Palace. Loitering. The business plan, when I present it, will be just this list of names and an inventory of about a hundred books, none of which I'm really willing to part with, give me seventy thousand pounds or I'll bomb your allotment) will offer five hundred words for every litre of ale imbibed, and a free book for every seventy-five millilitres of spirits power-quaffed when you had work the next day. I haven't found a location, or an idea of where the stock is going to come from, how much the overheads are likely to be, start-up costs, customer base, and whatever other goblins might like to obscure the picture with their realistic hands, but I'm guessing a sharp half-hour on Yahoo Answers'll take care of all that, and I'll then be free to galvanise both flanks of the Avon with crass enticements, veiled threats and loyalty cards.

Oi Oi Oil

I threw three people out using only language. I had to abandon subtlety. While I was bellowing I was thinking of Top Trumps. There was a pause and I re-bellowed the one demand in case they thought it was negotiable, which it wasn't. Their faces were all marshmallowy and they were very young. They left in a meek huff. If they'd been older and had faces made of oak or marble I wouldn't have had the Top Trumps score necessary to throw them out. It takes ages to throw older people out because they stand there saying things like come on man and what have I done, to which the answer is always you were being a cunt, but you can't say that because no one ever takes it the right way, for some reason they always feel insulted, it would be nice if when you said it the other person winced and went oh cripes I must've had one too many, I shall leave forthwith, just let me find my shoes. But they always want a detailed explanation of their faults, and when you give them a brief rundown of the fifteen least acceptable things they've done since they arrived they try and put together some kind of round-table discussion. So I usually just squirt lime juice in their eyes until the police turn up. Most people are largely nice.

Stag Don't

You're supposed to go Praguewards in matching shirts with nicknames on the back and spill yourselves into disaster. All that can fuck off. We nine opted for Peterborough ale festival, which from Leicester is a longer train ride than you'd think. We are not ale geeks, but it's safe to say we enjoy several drinks, and several drinks were enjoyed, local and less local. Hats were seen. Beards and burgers reviewed. A baffling amount of children, many of them not lost, bounced up and down on trampolines inbetween the bumper cars and the toilets.
We quaffed around and lost and found and lost each other. Some of the ale tasted like chocolate socks. Some of it was served by a sullen man in a glittering pink cowboy hat like he was doing you a massive favour. Volunteer bar staff. The two ale halls were massive, and before we'd got through the three hundred and fifty varieties on offer it was time to get the last train home and continue things elsewhere, which did happen, after the required Embarrasing Thing That Happens To The Groom On The Stag Do happened, on the train, and is easily explainable but unfit for family ears, so maybe the Best Man's speech will only hint at it, I haven't decided, because I'm writing it, because I'm Best Man.
One by one the group whooped more and numbered less, and there was music and a satisfying couch and a long walk home.