Cafe Culture

I’VE always been somewhat cynical, even as a child. I can’t, for example, ever remember believing in Father Christmas. I knew all about a big kindly man carrying a sack - but that was my dad with a bag of horse feed over his shoulder.
So when we were told, back in 2005, that relaxing the licensing laws would turn us all into continental clones, embracing cafe culture by nibbling on garlic-soaked escargots while sipping our pastis, I said: “Fiddle-les-sticks,” or words to that effect.
A glance at any tabloid newspaper will show you the effect drinking copious amounts of lager and tequila slammers has on certain Brits - and it sure doesn't encourage them to drag on a Gauloise while sitting under bistro-style stripy umbrellas on the pavement.
It’s more throwing up in the ashtray, then using the umbrellas to inflict some awful injury on the nether regions of someone who is, like them, wearing Union Jack underpants but is wearing a football shirt of a rival team.
After all, we already have experience of that European-style cafe culture on our frequent trips to Costa Del Vomita. And do we sip decorously on our Sangria on a Spanish promenade? Do we buggery. We start drinking ourselves into a stupor on the plane and don’t stop until we’ve marinated our livers in alcohol for two weeks. Then we stumble back to the plane, neck a few more drinks while up in the air before touching down on the grey tarmac under the grey skies of dear old Britain.
The government hoped the new laws would prevent hordes of drunken youths pouring onto the streets at 11pm every evening when the pubs kicked out. So news that lager-fuelled louts are now reeling about our streets all night long, getting into fights, trashing everything they stagger into contact with and throwing up in any handy receptacle, comes as no surprise.
Tsk, tsk. The youth of today. Why can't they be more like me? I have embraced the café culture with gusto. Now instead of sitting around the table with a nice cup of tea, my friends and I pour ourselves a large red wine, argue about anything and everything, eat too much and then stagger off home for a nice siesta.
Cheers.

A Night Out With The Girls

I WAS out last night with a few of the girls.
Big mistake. Big, big mistake.
I'm partial to the occasional whisky or red wine with my steak and chips but on the whole I'm not a big drinker.
However, I am sometimes - sorry to make you men jealous - led astray by wild women.
This is how it goes.
We enter a pub and there's a mad scramble to find a table to sit around. We have to sit down. There's not one of us wearing a pair of shoes you can stand up in for longer than it takes a puddle of blood to seep out of a blister. If, Pompeii-wise, we are preserved in a layer of lava, historians a few centuries down the line will be wondering about the strange social custom that's placed bare-footed women sitting around tables with, underneath, various shoes with vertiginous heels.
We start off sober and restrained, discussing work and family. But after a couple of drinks, we fix our gimlet eyes on the other drinkers. We wonder if the couple in the corner are married or having an affair. Definitely an affair, he's actually listening to what she has to say, that's when he can tear his eyes away from her cleavage.
We agree that the 50-something woman perched on the bar stool has had some very dodgy plastic surgery. Those lips are so collagen-enhanced that if you threw her at a wall, she'd stick there.

"Nice dress," comments one of us. "Shame they didn't have it in her size."

"Look, a lurex top! I thought they went out in the 70s."

"Lurex, isn't that a contraceptive?"

"Definitely is in her case."

As the drinks begin to flow more copiously, we get louder. The men in the bar send nervous glances in our direction, worried that they are going to get separated from the herd and we are going to pounce and tear their sensible woollen cardigans off with our teeth.

If only they could hear us.

"He's definitely gay. He obviously moisturises and waxes. Back and crack." We nod in agreement.

"God, she's going to dump him tonight. Look at that body language. His says 'walk all over me in your pink stilettos' and her says 'let me walk all over you in my pink stilettos until there isn't a drop of blood left in your body, you creep'."

"What a sleaze ball he is. Italian? Possibly, judging by those disco-style clothes and the black greased hair."

"Oh look. Who knitted his jumper? His mother? She must have found some old knitting patterns from the 1950s in the back of cupboard."

Then it's on to stage two. We start arguing about who is the sexiest..... Homer Simpson or Fred Flintstone. One of us falls of her chair while trying to put her shoes back on so she can hobble to the bar for another round.

Stage three and those men who have been eyeing us so nervously have had enough to drink and suffered enough set-backs from nubile jail-bait that we start to look like Sophia Loren's younger, prettier sisters.

They drift towards us. They buy us drinks. We flirt. We engage in sparkling repartee. They suggest we all go to a club. We suddenly remember we are a load of sad, middle-aged prats with loving husbands/partners at home.

So it's on with the shoes and a quick call for a taxi.

I woke up this morning to find a trail of clothes leading from the hall to the bedroom.

I think I will be OK.... as long as I can get a complete blood transfusion in the next couple of hours.