a pleasant place to spend the evening with friends. Oh, and there might be a big black hairy dog that likes crisps.
What it will NOT be is a theme pub. Theme pubs are, as their stupid name suggests, pubs laid out according to a (do you see?) theme. Now traditionally, in a way, all pubs are theme pubs. Their theme is Beer. Some pubs have slightly more developed themes like ‘The Landlord Was In The Navy’ or ‘We Collect Dirty Crinkled Foreign Banknotes And Stick Them On The Wall’. Other pubs are unintentionally themed, like ‘Pub Full Of Cockney Murderers’ or ‘Pub Where They Play A Bit Too Many Goth CDs’. But these are not what we mean by theme pubs.
Oh, and the beer is some sort of bottled ant sweat with a Confederate flag on the label that no-one in America has ever heard of.
This is what we mean by a theme pub: a pub which used to be normal but was turned, at great expense and for no real reason, into some kind of museum of twit crap. Thus the Bird In Hand might be gutted, remade and remodelled into Graceland, an Elvis Presley-themed pub. Where once there was a duff painting of a dog looking askance at a pheasant, now there is a white neon guitar with ELVIS written on it. Where there used to be some weird old bits of broken farm equipment, there is a sequinned satin jumpsuit in a glass case. And where the jukebox would occasionally deafen punters with random selections from Thin Lizzy’s Live And Dangerous, now all it plays is DJ remixes of bad Elvis singles. Oh, and the beer is some sort of bottled ant sweat with a Confederate flag on the label that no-one in America has ever heard of. The bar staff are suicidal and the clientele is that delightful mixture of bewildered tourists and recently-released serial killers. But it is a Theme Pub and as such looks good in the brewery’s free magazine.
‘If cats could find a way to push all the people in the world into an active volcano and still open all the tins of catfood, they would.’
Cats are bastards. There it is in cold print. Cats are bastards. If a cat was a man, it would let you buy it beer all night and then have sex with your girlfriend. If a cat was a criminal (and, oh, it is), it would leave you to do whatever the hard part of a bank robbery was, and then, when you were doing that thing with the safe and the stethoscope, run away with all the money and tell the police you did it. If cats were lifeguards (and they’re not, because cats are scared of water the way vampires are scared of sunlight – coincidence? No), they’d sit there on their wooden lighthouse towers with their cat legs crossed watching as people drowned in the ocean. Cats are, in short, the scum of the earth.
Here’s a clue about cats: tigers. Are tigers bastards? Yes. And what are tigers? Just big cats. Therefore cats are tigers only smaller. Therefore they are bastards. Here’s another clue. Lions. What do lions do? Lie around all day and then, when they’re bored, jump a giraffe and eat it. Cats don’t even do that. Ever see a cat jump a giraffe? No. Why? Because we’ve cossetted them and welcomed them into our homes and invented catfood, just for them the idle bastards.
Hey! When you’re sitting in the front room watching the telly and the cat comes in with a dead bird in its mouth, or kicking a half-alive mouse down the carpet, and some visiting idiot says, ‘Ah look, he’s brought you a present,’ they’re wrong. Cats do not bring people presents, the same as they don’t buy flowers or offer to help out with the rent. Cats don’t give a toss about people. If cats could find a way to push all the people in the world into an active volcano and still open all the tins of catfood, they would. So why is the cat bringing you a dead sparrow or mouse? Because they want you to cook it for them, that’s why. And while you’re at it, maybe make them a pair of mouseskin trousers and a fetching little hat, with some sparrow feathers on the brim. Bastards.
Another thing about cats which is false is the fool remark that they’re intelligent. Now this might wash to some extent with dolphins, who do seem to talk a bit and can do tricks but cats? Come off it. Here’s a simple test; lock the cat in the house, having first blocked up the catflap. Put a chair next to the keyhole for the back door and on that chair place the key to the back door. Tell the cat, in short words, that the key on the chair will open the back door. And go to Florida for six months (using the front door). When you come back, will you find a) the back door opened and all your possessions removed and sold, b) an armed gang of felines waiting for you to exact a terrible revenge, or c) the skeleton of a cat? Case rested or what? Bugger off, cats and take ocelots with you.
Red squirrels. How we loved them, with their cute ears and their little faces and their russet fur. We even, bafflingly, based a road safety campaign around a red squirrel. These days, if they wanted to find Tufty to interview him on one of those nostalgia TV shows, they’d be stuffed. Tufty has gone the way of all flesh, driven out of his native Nutwood City Limits or wherever he lived by a grey squirrel, name of Arseface. What was the deal with red squirrels, that they wouldn’t stand up and fight for their red squirrel rights? Were they too busy hoarding acorns for the long winter, or were they just too interested in learning about road safety? Either way, the grey squirrels moved in and trashed the neighbourhood.
Grey squirrels – someone called them ‘jazz rats’, a rare combination of two unpopular things. Grey squirrels are the cuckoos of the squirrel world and they should be outed as such. Just pray that one day, what with genetic engineering, GM foods, global warming and all, it’s just a matter of time until the big mauve squirrels come along and give the grey squirrels the kicking they so richly deserve.
What’s the point of wasps? We’ve got mosquitos and we’ve got bees and we really don’t need some inbetweeny stripey stinging spiv as well. Wasps are crap. The only reason Noah took two wasps onto the Ark was they probably stung the unicorns to death and nicked their tickets. That’s the kind of useful animal wasps are.
Wasps are, in fact, bees gone bad. Not literally, obviously, nobody really thinks that if a bee is naughty, it starts smoking tabs and building a paper nest. Wasps resemble bees in many ways; they buzz, they’re stripey, they have queens, and that’s it. Wasps are sods. At school they probably bullied the bees and made them do their homework for them. Later they would go out drinking with a bee because the bee had a car, and then the wasps would rob a sub post office and make the bee take the rap. Wasps are not bees. There’s no kids’ book about a wasp being friends with an ant because wasps don’t have friends. Ha ha! Look at the lonely wasp!
The real difference between bees and wasps is this; when a bee stings you, it dies. Its only weapon, other than pollen, is fatal to it. When a wasp stings you, it doesn’t die. It just laughs and twirls its imaginary moustache.
When a wasp stings you, it doesn’t die. It just laughs and twirls its imaginary moustache.
Wasps are bastards and they know it. All they do all day is chew paper to make nests, hang around sticky drinks, and sting people for fun. And why is it that, on the one day of the year when the weather is remotely bearable, the sun comes out and with it come the wasps? Why don’t the little gits ever go skiing or something? Then at least they might break their stupid wasp waists and we could all have a good laugh. But no, hot day, wasp. Sod off, wasps, and take flies with you. As humans, we prefer the company of daddy-long-legses.