Can't Do That Here, Love

Two old people, putting up coathooks. Factor in a hangover and the potential is ripe for comedy, or tragedy.
Certainly much time for the mere dental nurse of the piece – me – to spend on her hands and knees on gritty floor picking up careless screws while E, the important dentist, drill-happy, swore at walls and issued instructions then caught his thumb on a sharp edge and said, “I hate bloody DIY.”
Gosh, he's kept that quiet.
And it’s no barrel of laughs being the dental nurse either since each of your jobs, that is each of my jobs, is of far less importance than anything which is being done by the dentist, who is the agenda setter, with a sore thumb and a temper. So one minute I am battling with exuberantly belligerent packaging, ripping my fingers on cruel plastic, the next sent a-scurrying for the spirit level, or the pencil in the pocket, and then the dentist calls for coffee.

For sho’.

The lapse into black speak is explained by my recent finishing of the wondrous “Twelve Bar Blues” by Patrick Neate. It tells of the jazz age unfolding in New Orleans at the beginning of the last century and what vicious nasty lives they all lived. A bashed thumb was the least of your problems. And if you weren’t a whore your mother was, or your sister, or you were what passed for married to one. With names to render those on Jeremy Kyle bland, faces were ribbon-slashed by handy razors and eyes were incidental in the scoring of a slight. The tonks (hastily acquired familiarity with the correct term for jazz bars, I think) were cauldrons of discontent with dancing too scary for whites to witness. I loved it but it made Cheltenham look a dull old place and I’d had Cheltenham down as a stew of Boschian depravity, very Hogarth come a Friday night, when all the boys and girls come out to play. And drink, and vomit and fight. And that’s just the girls, ho ho.

But fresh from an acquaintance with Neate’s world, I was toughened, and grateful. For sensible comparison could only prompt a buoyancy purely by considering the sheen of civility offered by Cheltenham’s enthusiastic commitment to disabled parking bays. Plus we were tempted by the prospect of seeing a friend – one with a beard and a set of drums and friends of a similar ilk (or elk, as an old boss used to say) – playing, yes, jazz. How very synchronicitous. I reckoned that the slashing opportunities were comparatively few so off we set.

Mistake number one: optimism; number two: taking the children.

I had forgotten how this world of ours hates children; goodness, I’ve only been at it, “mothering,” for 11 and a half years.
My birthday always falls on a grim grey Tuesday in early March. The year in which T11 was T5months was no different and E and I took ourselves off to a pub for lunch. We stopped outside, in a contented “this’ll do” sort of way, unhooked the slumbering T5m and sauntered on in. The barman, busy with an empty pub, ignored us. We played eye catch a bit and then gave up and went to sit ourselves down.
“Can’t bring him in here,” came the welcoming tones from the suddenly vocal barman.
I looked around with mild, anonymous interest, expecting a drunken wretch clawing at optics or a sly teen in search of a cider, but no, it was T5m, warm with milk, who was the crim.
Turned out it was Licensing Laws: no children allowed in the bar.
“But he’s 5 months old,” I bleated, “and asleep.”
I’m all for children not crashing around and being irritating and taking over adult spaces, unless of course it inconveniences me, so we huffed and puffed and muttered grimly and went down the road instead.

On Friday, the night before CoatHookDay, different bar same attitude, delayed version.
I went up to order, and I won’t even go into – oh well, yes, I will – the intense annoyance caused by having asked for a glass of Sauvignon and then seeing the till display a price 50p more than I had expected.
I brought it up while peeling off a twenty (the new fiver), asking, nicely, so I’d know in future, if their policy was to serve the most expensive brand of a generic ask such as “Sauvignon.”
To which the bored barman said no, but that was the only cold one, which seemed a bit crap to me at ten to 9 on a Friday night when they must have been expecting the ubiquitous lorry-loads of pissed hens on interminable hen nights to stagger in dressed as fairies and braying for wine.
Perhaps I’m out of touch with hen drink.

And I do so hate paying half as much again for a glass of wine than I normally spend on a much nicer bottle from the supermarket. At a dinner party the next night the stakes were raised by one of our number claiming to have been charged £8 for a glass. Alcoholic madness.

Anyway.
T11 carried away the cokes, while I took to the table my wine (the new liquid gold) and E’s beer. And then E wanted another beer. Well, it was fun. The jazz was cool, of razor blades there were none visible, and we were mainly white so the dancing, scary or otherwise, was going to be fine. So he bought another which is when the gentleman – solid, bald, earpiece – argy-bargied over.
“Kidsa gonnaravta go” he croaked, the words of one who has never had to organise child-care on the hoof.
?
“Sarfta nine.”

Licensing laws.
Marvellous.
Not mentioned by the barmen when arranging our second mortgage on round two, naturally.

“Can we possibly finish our drinks outside?” I asked, nice with ice, drawing my finger across my throat and pretending I was being hanged, to boot, to signal to Simon (beard, drums) that it was the end for us. He nodded in an eye-rolling way: no kids, didn't really understand.

Out we went, herded onto the pavement like transportees, manhandled from the place, all but clamped in an elbow grip, as if we'd been caught fiddling with the fag machine, subject to smug sneers from the truly legal (ie: child-free), the ordeal doing little for our dignity. We're meant to be the good guys in life's balance and scale. The cheek of it all. I wanted to bluster, or cry.
We proceeded to down our drinks – well, they’d cost enough, as I might have mentioned.
The bouncer did some flicking action with his fingers which was the perfect time for F9 to mutter “How Offensive,” but he didn’t because for once something offensive really had happened (rather than me asking him to shove up, or suggest that he might put away his shoes) and he was lost for words.

It transpired that the children couldn’t even stand on the bit of pavement apportioned to this bar.
Nor could they stand the other side of a cobbled line holding the glasses.
“Can’t take drinks off of the premises see.”

This is the modern danger when out pursuing jazz, this is where our madness lies. Adherence to a set of guidelines which in principle may be just fine, but in literal quest of mapping to the nth degree are just ridiculous.
“I don’t make the rules, love,”
No but you enjoy enforcing them.
Good sport for the casual on-looker perhaps.

So we came home and slurped on wine and tossed our heads and tutted and, glancing at the box of coats which has cluttered the hall these past two years, E said, “We really must put up those coathooks tomorrow.”
For sho’.