Birthday tripe and regulators

Well, it was my birthday yesterday. Take the number 50, add a hundred, now subtract 130, then dribble a couple more on top. That’s how old I am.

I only want maths geeks knowing my age.

And as if birthdays weren’t already a painful enough reminder of my own impending mortality, I have fallen foul of a big fat cold. And this wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that I seem to get such colds just about every birthday, Christmas, Easter, scheduled party, trip to the shops and after most showers.

Or so it seems.

Yesterday began well enough. I texted my boss to say that I wasn’t coming into work. I had a cold. Felt like shit. Don’t want to spread my germs all around and make it worse now do I? I returned to my guilty, warm sleep for about half an hour, dozing, dreaming of all the wonderfully pointless things I could do with my day off, on my birthday. I could feel ill, yes, but I could also watch some new DVDs. Open some presents. Eat cake. Yeah.

However, said boss – let’s call him bastard for today’s purposes – informed me via textual intercourse that it was in fact his day off and that he’d tried his best but no one could cover, could I come in anyway?

Had I not made an appearance, my co-worker would be forced to open the bar on his own and would be unable to take his precious “tab breaks” or his sacred “toilet breaks”. What a cry-baby.

So I dragged myself blindly through my morning routine about half an hour later than usual. I walked into work a vision of ill-health and blasphemy: my nose streaming, my mouth swearing, my head aching, my mind swearing.

The whole day was spent relaying this story to my pathetic regulars. My god they are pathetic. Let me illuminate a couple of them.

“Coke boy”. Vital stats: man, normal university age, cropped dark hair, long black coat. I would say he was like clockwork, if your clock didn’t so much tell you the time as guarantee to whisper you a number at some point during the day.

So, he’s in once a day and orders a “pint of coke?”. The question mark is there because I’ve beaten him to it. That’s one fun bit about the job: reminding this circus of hapless saps that they are in fact dancing monkey slaves to their own routine.

“Ice?” I say, knowing full well, that Coke Boy disapproves heavily of the cold shiny cubes that pollute, dilute and generally piss up his precious coke.

“Uhh, no,” he says, trying his best to smile and look disapproving all at the same time. Imagine that - it comes out more like a twitch.

Now for the best bit. I take a clean pint glass, place it on the bar, take a firm hold of the “Coke Gun”, teasing the nozzle with my fingers. I look up, smiling. Coke Boy is loving this shit. His nose flares, his mouth flutters. I can sense an erection under that big black coat. Coke Boy loves his Coke. I press the button (the red one on the top right) that makes the magical Coke cordial mix fuse with the magical fizzy water and creates what you and I have come to know as “Coke”.

As the frothy waves inside the glass begin to take the form of the dark, syrupy liquid, Coke Boy eggs it on. His teeth are chattering. He’s muttering to himself, occasionally smiling. This will sound wrong, but to him it’s like the coke is giving the glass some good hard, un-consensual bum sex. Imagine the gimp/rape scene in Pulp Fiction. That is Coke Boy’s face, sweating through the sheer wrongness of the big coke violating this crystalline purity of a virgin pint glass (no glass retains its virginity long in our bar, sorry Coke Boy).

And then it ends. The glass is full. He takes a deep breath, wipes the sweat from his ample brow and grins one guilty smile as he manly takes the pint glass into his slightly fat hands.

“Quid please”. I say by way of cheapening the whole affair, just to remind this sexual deviant (and tragically friendless student) that no pleasure comes for free in this world.

And when he’s done sitting by himself, reading a broadsheet and sipping that filthy coke, he will return his glass to the bar, like some kind of old-world ‘soiled bed sheet’ rite of passage. Every day.

I like to tease Coke Boy. He is my bitch. Occasionally, as if to pretend that I haven’t recognised him (that his routine is not so gripping) I will take a half pint glass, fill it to the brim with ice, and shoddily thrust him a glass of Diet Coke.

His face is a treat. A mixture of abject horror and disbelief. This can go one of two ways. He will either pay his 50 pence, skulk off defeated and leave his half empty glass of Diet on the table as some kind of dirty protest. Or, I will make a face of “am I bad?” toss the offending diet crap down the sink and we will share a chuckle like what an idiot this barman is to have forgotten to anally violate this poor glass with the full fat in full view of the student’s union.

So that’s Coke Boy. Let me talk no more of Coke Boy, I have given the Coca Cola Corporation more than enough product placement during this post and haven’t even received a crate of the stuff in return.

What about Carling Boy? This one is perhaps less interesting though definitely more disturbing than C*** Boy. Again, like some kind of knackered cuckoo, he will appear “at some point” during every day, skulk over to the bar, hunched over in his jogging pants with his short frame drowned in a Newcastle United top. His rather spotty, scrunched face tries to get the words out before I do. “Pint of Carling?” Look, there’s the question mark. I win.

So instead he nods and looks down at his hands which are folding in on themselves like a furtive squirrel. His face has a distant, woeful look. I mean, I feel dreadfully sorry for this fucker. Once the transaction is complete, he will walk away with a tired purpose to the various fruit machines to throw away the rest of his money. He doesn’t even get any fruit. The guy is going to need some vitamins soon.

Speaking to no-one on his way, he will return the glass to the bar and leave. He must be £1.70 and god knows how much out of pocket each day. Only once has he asked me to change a bunch of coins (his winnings) into a note. And the guy’s a Geordie. He must live at home with his despairing (or simple) parents who wonder where all his student loan goes because he doesn’t need one does he, he lives at home right?

Once I tried to engage Carling Boy in some light bar banter. I said “One of these days you’re gonna order a double gin and tonic and I’ll collapse from the shock.” I couldn’t tell whether it was a case of him not hearing me or just that he’d got the question wrong on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire machine “What does one do when faced with social interaction at a bar?”

A – Engage in it
B – Ignore it, grunt perhaps and run ASAP
C – Punch the guy for being a posh twat with big hair
D – Quote something from Red Dwarf and leave a tip

He answered it B and acted accordingly. (The correct answer, of course, is D.)

So that’s C*** Boy and C***ing Boy. One a perverted, passive crime stalker and the other a one-man money-losing loser with squirrel hands.

Worse still are those regulars who have children. A student bar and the worst offenders, the real drunks are those with mouths to feed. The true lowest of the low is a very well-spoken, short, friendly, tubby man. A mature student at least 40. On a previous post I discussed his relentless drinking and relaying of dull stories of reckless alcoholism. He says people have gotten used to him smelling of drink, the way you would forgive your friend for having a wart on his finger.