Here Comes (There Goes) The Weekend

From Monday morning I work for Friday night
Collect my wages, then try to paint on the smell of soap

Thank you Mr Weller !

I know I use this place primarily to moan about stuff. So as a pleasant surprise I present my weekend (and this may take some time).

Friday

No work today...really. It was Staff Appreciation Day. Now I have to admit that my idea of being appreciated is being given an extra day off, having large bundles of easy to carry cash stuffed into my hot and sweaties and being pointed in the general direction of the nearest ale house. Alas and alack it was not to be. We were transported to Birmingham's Ackers Trust for a "team building morning". The kind of thing that generally fills me with dread. I won't go into details but the team I was in won the day and we were awarded with bottles of wine, which is always a good start.

We were then whisked off to a very nice Italian restaurant to be fed and watered. I left as soon as possible to go home, get my dancing trousers on and head to to one of my brothers fine acoustic shows in the outpost of crumbling industry and poor taste known as Wolverhampton. A fine performance, fine company, lotsa booze and a conversation involving US immigration, dysfunctinal parents and whether Marilyn Manson is entertaining or not later, we found ourselves in a very expensive taxi back home where everyone proceeded to pass out on various sofa's at around 4am. A damn good nights work if you ask me.

Saturday

No alarms, just kinda fall outta bed when it feels right. Kept the kettle primed all morning for the supply of Tea and Coffee to weary rising revellers. Everyone appeared very sprightly considering the previous evenings excesses. Then my wonderful wife cooked up a full English to die for...god bless her x

Suitably fed and watered one of our number headed off to the north for my brothers 2nd show, that night, and a Sunday of mountain biking. The rest of us were headed for the 21st Telford Beer Festival.





One of my great hopes when we moved here was that I might find myself what I call an "old man's pub". The kind of place once described by another of my eloquent friends as all "brass taps and oak" where it's possible to put "a shine on the bar with the sleeves of our coats"...oh boy did I find one o' those. The Crown Inn is a haven for Real Ale drinkers. A no smoking back room and no intrusive music playing, a proper pub to visit for the purposes of drinking ale. It has become mine and my dear lady wife's home from home on Fridays, most Saturdays, occasional Sunday lunchtimes and random Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays too. We tend to stay home Thursday as The Sopranos is on E4 at the moment.

The rest of Saturday was thus spent in The Crown sampling such wonderfully titled brews as Pot Belly Best Bitter, Sadler's Gentle Ginger, Falstaff Voyeuristic Intention and the wonderful Paddy O'Hackers Genuine Irish Stout (brewed in Lancashire !!!). Extra company was supplied by a table full of gentlemen aged between 55-65 who appeared to be chasing down each pint with a large glass of wine and who gradually became rowdier and rowdier until they just slunk off home; a woman at the next table who was most insistent that we should take her 17 year old son as our lodger; a fine looking 13 month old Staffordshire Bull Terrier who took a very keen interest in our bags of pork scratchings and at the end of the night the local chav's put in an appearnce so we could all laugh at their pathetic sense of sartorial elegance. I'm no fan of Pete Doherty but his lyric "There are fewer more distressing sights than that, Of an Englishman in a baseball cap" is one I wholeheartedly concur with.

Sunday

Nothing...absobloodylutelynothing ! Well, I walked Jules down to the station to get his train home (a 7 hour trip while trying to avoid the result of that days Grand Prix). I then walked our hyperactive dog over the nearest hill and went home for a day of doing absolutely nothing.

Another of our local hostelries delivers Sunday dinner (yes you read that correctly, this has to be the greatest business idea I have discovered since coming across the Australian drive-thru off licence). So we ordered 2 in and lounged around the house all day watching bad movies and wondering whether we could be bothered to do anything...the answer was no.

Here comes the weekend - I'm gonna do my head
Long live the weekend, the weekend is dead