We have recently found an out-of-the-way locals pub in Nottingham which doesn't care much for licensing laws. It has lock-ins most nights and rarely closes the bar before 2. We have been going regularly on Thursday nights for their pool competition, and have usually comprised more than half the total people in the pub. Last night we got a bit of a shock.
Apologies for the present tense narration.. I am feeling lazy:
The rough 'n' ready "Marquis of Lorne" last night turned out to be more rough and ready than we had thought. Oh my God.
Okay. We turned up at about 9.30 to discover the place was packed with
local types. Seemed like there was some kind of function going on -
people were sat around tables with food layed out. Some darts
competition as it turned out. Quite busy - lots of shouting. Harmless
but noisy types, you know? So we got our drinks in, sat down in an empty
corner, and played cards - me, Jon, Alex, April and Bob.
Had a couple of pints. Ate some crisps. Kept selves to selves. Was quite
a good laugh. At around 11 the landlord came round and pulled the
curtains as usual for a lock-in. A good number of the punters had left
by now.. there were probably about 20 people left. Alex and Bob decided
to get the house Battleships set out, and as they started to set up this
bloke came staggering over, holding a load of change in his hands, and a
quid between his fingers, and he starts swaying over the table and
points at the battleships and says
"How much is it?".
We're a bit
confused by this, as you would be, and get him to say it again, thinking
maybe he'll see sense and go away, but he's like
"How much is it? To
play?"
trying to give us a quid. So Alex tries politely to explain that
we are playing this game, and it's free, and he can borrow it from the
bar afterwards.. and the bloke is like
"But, pool, 50p. How much is
this? How much is it?"..
We exchange confused glances, then look back at
the bloke, and he is standing upright now and smiling cheekily. He puts
his money away and goes "I could have kept that up for hours" then
pretending to be us says
"He's had a drink, humour him"
or something
like that and wondered off laughing.
This isn't the traumatic part of the tale. This is merely to set the mood of the night. Give you an idea of the crowd that were there - that bloke, and two mates with him. Quite hard looking twenty-somethings but nice enough. And also three young slim girls of about 17 or so. And an array of older people. All of them common as muck. A group of about 20 in all, some of them clearly related, all of them clearly known to each other.
So we're shortly back to our own little world. Jon and I are chatting and Alex and Bob are playing battleships. April has gone home. Which, as will become apparent, was a good thing for her.
Jon drew my attention to it first.
He goes "Neil. Have you noticed this?" and leans to one side, tilting his shoulder to point to a semi-naked fat old woman dancing around the pub. Stripping. And she is BIG. And wearing enormous knickers, stockings, and a bra far too small for her. She's spherical. Rotund. The woman is FAT.
At first this was funny. Funny but embarrassing, none of us knowing where to look really. And now she's working her way around the pub, rubbing a scarf between her thighs like an erotic dancer, and going up to seated blokes and wiggling her tits in their faces. We're sat there wondering if she is a professional ugly stripper, something to do with the darts night.... but it becomes apparent that she is just drunk. She came round and wobbled her tits in poor Bob's and Jon's faces... we don't really know how to handle it, but she soon goes away and we laugh it off. Me and Alex got away with it at this point, being behind the table on the sofa bit.
Then a Spice Girls song came on. The whole group seemed to start encouraging the woman, like dancing around laughing and clapping, all being really noisy. And so she took her bra off. And poured cream all over herself and danced around rubbing herself with this cream like a porn star. Only huge and frightfully ugly. She is really out of control now...
We had already thought about leaving because the whole thing was making us feel more than a little uncomfortable. Remember: the weird "How much is it?" guy and the 17 yr old girls are still here, and they are calling this woman by name and cheering her on. The whole scene is more than a little odd.. this woman's friends and relatives egging her on to embarass herself. Freaky. But we still had full pints and weren't about to abandon them!
So she's wondering round in nothing but knickers, her huge cellulite arse hanging out of the sides, smearing her thighs and big belly and dangling tits with cream, dancing from person to person.
From a corner we can't see, three men walk out purposefully, one of them wiping his face, shouting "Get the fuck AWAY from me", heading rapidly for the door.
The next thing we know she is at our table again. Now this woman grabs Bob's head and starts rubbing her creamy tits all over his face. I am laughing. Bob is covered in white shit and looking rather unwell. Now she grabs Jon's head and does the same. I am still laughing. "I don't see what you're laughing at" she says. And suddenly neither do I, as her foul-smelling, deathly white dugs are thrust into my face, and I have the taste in my mouth and on my lips of this cream, whatever it is. It smells like dairy but tastes like cosmetic cream, and it's in my ear and in my hair. This revolting stern looking woman climbing over me to get Alex as well now.. and then she's gone back to dance around the pool table, leaving us all with open mouths, faces covered in this white shit, trying to wipe it off our lips and get it out of our ears.
The woman still hadn't broken a smile. This is the weird thing.. she didn't seem to be enjoying it particularly. But she can't have been a paid professional - they all knew her. I think she may have been too drunk to know she was doing it.
So we're drinking our pints quite quickly now. A little scared to say the least. And as we do so, Jon glances over at the pool table then quickly back at me, and stares straight ahead.
"Neil," he says. "Neil. She's lying on the pool table wanking". Thankfully I can't see this from where I am. there is a pillar in the way. "Neil. She's using a broom handle now. Oh my God. No, no. It's a mop."
I didn't believe him at first. Until I saw the landlord walk towards the pool table empty handed, then come back with the mop he had been using to clean up the cream a minute ago.. and he is sniffing the end and laughing and pretending to be sick.
Now the woman is in my line of sight again. She is chasing this old boy around.. until two of her friends grabbed him by the arms and held him, and she shoved her hands down his pants, and she's trying to undo his fly and get his cock out. He is lashing out and kicking and spitting. He eventually shakes them free and runs across the pub, really angrily, throwing the woman's abandoned shoe at her as he goes, downs his pint and leaves.
As do we. Amused, but feeling unclean and a little traumatised.
Mad pub, the Marquis of Lorne. Not the sort of thing you see everyday. "Don't tell your mates for fuck's sake" says the landlord as we leave, half-embarrassed, but still allowing the show to go on.
I'm telling everyone I know.
Email the author, Neil Williams especially if you know the pub.