MIDNIGHT EXPRESS 19-10-05

By Peter Holmes
October 19 2005

What a bloody knackering, totally hectic night it was on Saturday, into early Sunday morning - the witching hour. Where all Old Farts like me should be tucked up in a comfy bed, after a warm mug of Horlicks, curled up hornily dreaming of naked nubile young strumpets.

But no, not me. As it was my lovely niece’s 21st birthday party, which after months of pre-planning she’d decided to celebrate on a Satdee night at a pub called the Sail and Anchor in Fremantle. The dockside haven of Fremantle, at the mouth of the Swan River, which is colloquially known as Freo in these parts, just as Sunderland is commonly abbreviated to Shithole by Teessiders!

What’s so special about that for a Satdee, you might ask yourself? Vocally out loud if you have a habit of talking to yourself. Try a psychiatrist young man, on the National Health. Me and my inner demons can highly recommend that course of action. No we can’t! Eh fuck off you. I’m writing this article so back in ya box. Sorry about that. Who, I mean where were we?

Well, I realised that my Beloved were gonna be on TV that very night, live on Foxsports One, clashing with the celebrations. So I could look forward all week to getting my visual fix of Borocaine, by seeing the boys do the bizz against the Yak’s old mob Pompey at the Riverside.

Then, I suddenly realised, that as the game usually kicks off about 10pm our time, I was in a very perplexing quandary. You see, I’d be stuck ten miles down the road in Freo with a belly full of piss and the Bride would be alike in disposition but with a tummy full of Champers. So I was racking my alcohol reduced brain cells to think of a reason I could bugger off early at about 9:00 pm in a Joe Baxi and not upset anybody.

I know it’s at odds with the impression I give you but hey I’m a SNALL, what can I say, sensitive new age Lager lout! I mean, to do the game justice, I had to get home at least ten minutes prior to kick-off and open a few packs of crisps, get the pork pies sliced, slop on the HP sauce, put a few coldies on ice by my side and the bottle of port warming for topping off the celebrations afterwards. I fancied 3-1.

Dilemma, how could I leave the party mode Missus in the clutches of those studley young strapping twats and nightclub hungry femmes and trust her to come back to me at midnight? How could I explain to my celebrating niece Carly, that I have an urgent pressing need to depart very early?

Would the unique excuse of - I desperately need a shite and the old turtle’s head is touching cloth, I am going to have to go home, due to the fact that I will only place my arse on the pristine porcelain of my own crapper. I have a compulsion Sweetheart, we all have our crosses to bare, my arse is very sensitive.

Good excuse at the ready, that’s my course of action and I’d take it with the ongoing consequences of criticism and urine removal for the ensuing few weeks. Then, I got an email from Rupert Murdoch’s Foxsports on Thursday, informing me that our game kicked off at just after midnight, 12:15 am Perth time to be exact. I was out of jail and sailing, normally I’d curse like fuck because that would mean being up to near enough 3am. In this instance I was rapped, it was my ‘get out of jail free’ card and I could now party like it’s 1999! Yeh right Prince!

The party was just the usual collection, relatives in their out of date daggy gear, smelling of moth-ball camphor, gear they’ve just dragged from the dark recesses at the back of the wardrobe. Young attractive busty beauties and the odd fellah in tow, and a few blow ins I didn’t know. Now, as long as the tottering Totty are wearing revealing low cut tops with their milkies on show, well I’ll talk to anybody. Very sociable like that me, Old Uncle Pervy.

How do you make six pounds of fat deliciously and obsessively attractive? Plonk a nipple on top!

In the end, we made it in time to see the last ten minutes of the first half, thanks to my Sister who did the sibling thing and gave me and the Bride a lift home, to arrive post pumpkin destruction just before 1am.

Only trouble was, I did the usual ErimusRed mad bastard gargling alcohol, beer in wit’s out routine and got totally shitfaced. I then fell asleep on the couch dribbling beer and food all over my new trendoid ‘Footballer’s wives’ shirt. Which now in the skull splitting cold light of day, looks like I breast fed a projectile vomiting baby with excessive colic, who’d just discovered mashed crackers and had dribbled all over the front of my shirt. Write off.

Thank fuck that Rupert Dandelionandburdock’s mob repeats the game next day and I could watch it in peace, with a head which felt like the Army were carrying out artillery tank movements inside my cranial cavity.

Was it really worth watching though? I had an excuse to fall asleep as that first half was dire and yet again playing against a very ordinary team we looked all at sea against salty Pompey. We had about as much cohesion as a gadgee with Parkinson’s disease trying to thread fine cotton through the eye of a needle. Anyway, suffice to say, the excellent match report on this very web site explains the game perfectly, it pulls no punches and is sports journalism as it should be, no bullshit and lots of perceptive opinion.

Marras, like you, I’m so desperately disappointed and I know this will give me red haze malaise all week, effect my moods and whole disposition. I particularly hated watching my Beloved playing in front of 26,551 in sparse empty stands with more gaps than an MFI cabinet. My last word on the matter is deflation, but that’s part of the Yo-Yo of being a Boro Lad.

This Satdee night’s exertions reminded me of another midnight express run whilst holidaying in Blighty a few summers back checking out all the Relies. I’ve got to say, I got totally jacked with drinking insipid over milked warm tea that holiday at Auntie this and cousin that’s. I reckon my poor bladder went up by two litres in capacity with all the Ringtons, Twinings and Tetley diddleliddley I had to consume.

When visiting folk that’s one custom you Pomgolians can learn from the Skippies. When one visits friends here it’s out with the tinnies and a glass of Chardonnay for the Sheilas, which makes for an interesting breakfast! Exshcuse schme, pash the shereal and choast hic! My journalistic wanderlust again.

A couple of night’s a week I’d go for a few foamy Strongarms with the Old Man to his werkies club at Hemlington. The evening in question, I’d had a good night on the turps and the usual few whisky chasers and a game or seven of snooker. Also along with the general barbed humiliation and extraction of the urine that the immortal WG Holmes and his bunch of haemorrhoidal old wrinklies would partake. It came with the turf. Bloody good crack and give and take repartee.

Closing time, I returned to Yarm. We were staying with the bride’s Mother, dropping WGH at home on the way via the usual mini-cab from Boro Taxis. My Dad had a pre-booked arrangement with one of their drivers, to drop him off and pick him up at allotted times. The normal driver, who addressed Dad as ‘Mr. Holmes’, treated him like royalty, even got out of the car and opened the door for the old bugger.

Maybe ‘cos Dad lived in the salubrious dormer bungalow domain of Brookfield but more than likely that Dad was slipping him a tip of a few quid extra. Very reverent, he even called the Old Man Mr.Holmes when talking to me and would tick me off for swearing at ‘Mr.Holmes’. Who the fuck did he think taught me the art of foul invective, piss take and defame? WGH was world class in that department.

The driver was a nice lad though and through him, Boro taxis gave me a large Erimus, red lion door sticker that holiday, which is firmly and proudly ensconced on a tool cupboard door in my shed to this very day. Anyway, this particular night, Jeeves was off on his hols to Scarborough.

He’d handed the Bentley Mulsanne Mondeo to a replacement driver, a canny machine-gun gabbling, confident young Indian lad who virtually flew me to Yarm via the tortuous back road past the Reynolds factory and Leven Bridge. He was hard charging and vocally proud of his car driving skills, which he insisted on displaying constantly with the rev counter straining in the red, engine singing, informing me how his ambition was to become the first Formula One driver from Bombay.

I kept pointing out that I believed him and there was no need to show me his ambitious formula one skills in a Mondeo with 200,000 miles on the ticker and tyres as bald as Bobby Charlton. Thankfully, he’d dropped my Dad off first, who departed with the barb “Hey! Fucking Fangio, the brake peddle is the little twat in the middle!”

I was sat in the back as the journey continued, trying to tighten my seatbelt a notch or ten when I noticed the speedo needle creeping over the ton mark. All the while our Asian Nigel Mansell wannabe drove loosely, one handed, nonchalantly digging for an errant bogie in his right nostril with the index finger of his spare mitt. As we rapidly approached shit filled underpants status, or even worse ten pints of Strongarm and carrot down yer back Pal.

I remarked as casually as possible between gritted teeth in a high pitched sphincter clenched whine, about getting there in one piece and no rush as the fare was sorted. He casually retorted; “That’s all right mate, I usually do this bit at 120mph plus!” Yes, but do you have both hands on the wheel or are you still driving one handed rolling said bogie and scratching yer cods too? Fucksack!

Talk about a sobering experience, next day I think I went to confession at church for the first time in twenty years and repented every sin. That will be 450 Hail Mary’s and 500 Our Father’s then.

Enough Said! ErimusRed.