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Banjoes, bonus balls and boxers....

Blog: Norfolk Single Dad
Posted by: Eddie2sox Friday 11th May 2007, 12:25pm
Last edited 11/05/2007 12:25pm by Eddie2sox

On international sandwich variations, a Dragon's Den failure, the word "pish", and other follies

Lunchtime

Yesterday being Thursday was my relaxing day, and did I relax! Was working first thing, and enjoyed a little lie-in because from next week I'll be getting up at 5 each day. So I took my usual amble for a lunchtime pint or two, and all was good in the world. Took on the Itbox, ended up losing 5-3 but that's not too bad. Les The Duck was in good form despite only having 3 hours sleep in the last three days, and even Tim, King Of Flirting finished work early enough to make it for a beer and a chat. The usual horde of students from the college next door piled in and ordered 5 drinks between the 128 of 'em, but they liven the place up if nothing else. And then two of the chavviest kids I have EVER seen arrived, sky blue burberry baseball cap, bowl haircut, KNITTED duffel coat (!!!!), humungous combat pants and tracky bottoms, enormous Argos gold chains, hilarious. To our joint disgust one of them walked up to the bar and pulled out a massive wad of notes to pay for their drinks - we asked him how he earned his money and he said he worked on the land - YEAH RIGHT! So he got constant stick from thereon, about how OUR taxes paid for HIS pool and booze etc. Bloody chavs.....KNITTED duffel coat!

I headed home after an hour with a promise to be back for GOM Club later, and predicting that Les, Tim and Pompey Danny (new landlord, married to Kim, the new landlady) would still be in the same places propping up the bar when I returned. For the record, Danny 7-balled Scottish twice this dinner time - in consecutive games. He didn't have to drop 'em and do a lap though, he was excused on the grounds that he was drunk AND that he always drops 'em when OTHER people get 7-balled as well. As I am his official legal representation, I was happy to see him keeping the boys in the barracks for a change.

Evening

They were still there! Well, Tim wasn't but the other two were. Along with a surprisingly large crowd, business seems to have been building up a bit recently. I took time out to thank Stevie and Barney for their help last year when I was really on my uppers emotionally, when they took time then to tell me things will get better etc, and introduced me to the Sad Dad Club motto of "It's a bullsh*t life!" Sometimes, isn't it just.

And so the Grumpy Old Men convened, no sign of Old Bob though which is a bit unusual and worrying, so I inducted Pompey Danny as a new member (he wasn't impressed, boo hoo). Genial Jock Gerry and Scottish George somehow turned the chat round to sandwiches - or as they say in their native Jockanese "pieces". A ham piece being a ham sandwich - get the picture? Sooooo....this sparked an interesting debate along the bar. It began with "crisp pieces" which we apparently don't do "down here" (oh yes we do), and progressed to some cholesterol-laden Scottish creations, in particular the "big piece" which is actually a deep fried pizza folded in two and dripping with unhealthiness. The two sweaties had a faraway look in their eyes as they whispered - virtually in harmony - "Noooooow THAT'S a man's piece....." With a quick diversion into teacake/breadcake/bap/roll territory (by the way a tea cake does NOT have currants, a breadcake DOES), I mentioned the classic fried egg sandwich, which I know as an Egg Banjo. Nobody else had heard that phrase - except Scottish. He was also in the RAF like me, so it obviously seems that egg banjo is a military phrase. Gypsy Rose Bwana told us of the similar sounding "bonjee" which he ate in South Africa, which was a half a bread loaf with the bread scooped out and filled with a kind of stew. So....banjo/bonjee, maybe the egg banjo has it's roots in the dark continent? The "scooping the middle out" theme was also confirmed to exist in Scotland......but they probably fill it with deep fried Mars Bars and Irn Bru?

Incidentally, I gained bonus points for the correct use of the word "pish" in two different contexts. Genial Gerry is very proud of his introduction of "pish" into The Woolpack and therefore wider King's Lynn society, as he believes it is the ultimately versatile word. I correctly stated that Scottish George was pished, and that I got soaked earlier with a sudden downpour, when it pished it down. Hoorah for me, multi-lingual at last.

In a welcome move, the Bonus Ball lottery has been introduced, at £2 a pop it's a spicy meatball, but the potential winnings are £98 a week, So look out for the bonus ball being 33 from now on, it's my lucky number.

From now on, the barmaid previously known as Sue will be known as Little Miss Lemon (LML). It's partly that that the Little Miss characters were all cute and funny, and partly about sexuality. So. Little Miss Lemon for some reason showed Gerry and me her pants. Grey boxers. And that gave us a GREAT idea! We immediately decided to design and market a range of boxers, but aimed at the lesbian market. NOT big baggy blokey boxers, but fitted and tailored boxers, occasional girlie touches like a little bow at the sides, and (this was LML's request) not the sideways access that you find on men's boxers, but some kind of straight on access but with adequate chafing protection. The mind boggles, but this will obviously take quite a lot of development, testing and evaluation by a multitude of LML'S cutest girlie friends, fully supervised and photographed by Gerry and me of course - purely for development purposes of course! So, all we need is the financial ooomph to get our Lemon Pants off the ground. SS Roy had arrived at the bar, and as he is not short of a bob or two, we approached him with our idea, Dragon's Den style. It was obvious that Roy saw the huge potential in our radical underwear concept, and huge sums were discussed. We asked for one fifty for 25% of our idea. Roy declined, saying a hundred and fifty thousand pounds is ridiculous. NOOO we replied, one fifty. One pound and fifty pence. Roy was happier with this, and negotiations continued. Sadly, our last pitch of 80 (p) for 80% still wasn't enticing enough, and Roy said "I'm out".

I won a bet! We had a wee punt on the first goalscorer in the Spurs v Blackburn game and I opted for Benni McCarthy, get in there! So, 10p better off, I bet again with LML - winner takes all. Sadly there were no more goals, so the charity pot profitted to the tune of 40 (yes you read that right, FORTY) pennies. We don't muck about in The Woolie!

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