Saturday 19th August 2000

1542 Hrs

THE MEETING

Dad should be French. He gives up too easily. He spends too much time feeling sorry for himself, and not enough time doing anything useful. He woke me up early this morning at 10am to tell me that he was calling a critical family meeting this afternoon (secret from Mom of course) at 1 o’clock, because he had something very important to discuss with all of the family. Dad of course didn’t really have the authority to call meetings about my business but I thought I would indulge him; he might surprise me and have something useful to say.

“Last night I learnt new information which caused me to shit my pants”. Well done Dad, what a great way to start a business conference, I should use that line when I’m in Parliament in a few years. He went on to explain to Miller, Clint and Curly what the late Bertie and Antony had told me and him before they killed each other last night (basically that the pub makes fuck all money).

“I’ve got enough dough to keep this place running for roughly a month. If it isn’t making any money by the end of that period, then we’re fucked. We’re gonna lose the business, we’re gonna lose the roof over our heads and I’m gonna lose….well we’re all going to lose our shot at the good life. What I want from you lot are ideas to get the punters and the money rolling in”

I tried to tell Dad that he was worrying for no reason, that I had a Masterplan but he wasn’t having any of it. He said that he wanted us all to go off and have a good, long, hard think. He has called another meeting (yet again he stressed, no word to Mom about it) for 3 o’clock tomorrow, where he wants to hear what we have come up with. He said he will be picking only one idea and then we all must concentrate our combined efforts on it. Well if it makes the Umpa Loompas feel like they are contributing, then I suppose it will make for a happier chocolate factory, but I’m sure everyone will see that I am the big Willy Wonka here!

Saturday 19th August 2000

2358 Hrs

DEFENDING MY CASTLE FROM ASSAULT

Great leaders are not always popular leaders. Tough decisions sometimes need to be made and they don’t always endear you to your countrymen, but what the peasants don’t realize is that we make those decisions to give them better lives. Tonight I learnt what it must have felt like for Maggie Thatcher being in office. People just don’t understand the plans of a superior mind.

It was 10pm and as Bertie had warned, a crowd of Karaoke loving losers came stomping up towards the entrance, singing their heads off (badly), all screaming with excitement about what terrible song they wanted to murder first. There must have been about forty of the feckers at least. Unfortunately this drunken rabble had forgotten all about their plan to boycott the pub so I ran as fast as possible to get to them before they even stepped foot into my palace and informed them loud and clearly that I was in charge now and Karaoke was cancelled FOREVER! For the uproar that greeted me, you would have thought I had shat on their babies’s heads. Clint came running up to me and asked what the hell I was doing. I told him to feck off and not to question me in front of the lower classes. The little shit then ran off upstairs to my parents’ bedroom and told my father what I had done.

I was sitting at the bar, quite pleased at the disaster I had just averted when my father came racing down stairs in his underwear, bawling his head off at me, in front of everyone! He has absolutely no idea how to run a business and clearly demonstrated that tonight! I tried to explain that by loosing a few tawdry customers, you will actually gain a lot more elegant clients. Once the word is out that I have swept away the filth, the decent fringes of society will come pouring in, bringing with them all of their lovely money. Did he listen, no! Instead he threw on a coat and without a shred of dignity, chased after the tacky posse of wannabe singers down the road. Ten minutes later he came back with a bald headed hunchback with a demented smile and a woman the size of a child whose eyes and teeth looked as if they were trying to escape from her hideously ugly face. Before you could say Jim’ll fix it, Clint had manned the karaoke set the previous landlord had left behind and the gruesome twosome were on the stage, introducing themselves as Dicky and Elaine, then launching into ‘Angels’ by Robbie Williams. I almost cried as I realized that I would no longer be able to listen to that beautiful song in the same way ever again.

I was so angry that I was almost tempted to have a pint of lager but I took a hold of myself and remembered that I was not a part of the underclass.

Tonight didn’t end on a completely sour note however. After most of the staff had left, me and Curly were having a laugh with the new digital camera my Dad bought yesterday for the pub. We were taking pictures of each other pulling karate poses, basically taking the piss out of the chef who thinks he is something he isn’t. Miller tried to join in but he was so drunk he smacked Curly right in the face and knocked him spark out. Luckily for Curly our barmaid Bertha knew first aid and she made sure he was alright.

I’ve come to bed now so that I can begin work on my presentation for tomorrow’s meeting. Miller’s gone out with Clint down town and I’ve left a sozzled Curly downstairs with Bertha.

Sunday 20th August 2000

1123 Hrs

Curly ATTACKED

I woke up this morning and I thought I was dreaming. Curly was stood at the foot of my bed with his fists clenched and his face white. His eyes were bloodshot and frantic like a rabbit that sensed danger.

“Curly, what the fuck are you doing waking me up so early!” I angrily shouted at him, pointing out that it was only 10 o’clock.

At first he didn’t answer. He looked panicked, scared. Once I had come to my senses and sat up (trying to conceal my enormous morning glory) asked him again what the matter was. This time he replied. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, so I asked him again and I told him to speak louder.

“I was raped” he muttered

“What?”

“I WAS RAPED!”

“What?” “Where?” “When?” “How?”

Curly rushed over to my side and grabbed a hold of my arm, forcefully dragging me from my bed. Before I had a chance to wipe the sleep from my eyes, I was being hurled down the corridor that separated all of our rooms and inside Curly’s stinky cesspit. He let go of me and walked beside his own bed, furiously pointing at the centre of it, which had caved in.

“What are you pointing at? Just tell me what has happened”

Since I have the misfortune to share a room with Miller and Clint, they had borne witness to this strange spectacle and the pair had followed us to the scene of the apparent crime. The three of us stood in Curly’s doorway, waiting for an answer. Slowly, he began to talk.

“After you went to bed last night, me and Bertha continued to have a few jars”

“I hope you paid for those”

“YES!”

“Alright, just checking no other crimes, such as theft, took place last night.”

“Shuddup dick face” Miller interrupted “Carry on with your story pube head”

“Well me and Bertha started drinking spirits after we polished off a few pints, and then we moved onto slammers, before having the last drink I remember drinking with her, which was that bottle of Absinthe that Miller brought back from Ibiza with him last year. The next thing I know I’m waking up completely naked and (sob) she’s lying next to me with no clothes on!”

The image of the rotund, sweaty Bertha in her birthday suit instantly made me and my brothers gasp in unison!

“But it got worse” Curly continued, barely able to talk as he hyperventilated “I started to get flashbacks. I can see her now, in my mind, on top of me. It hurts. OH GOD NO! I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER! She has a hold of my head and…” momentarily he couldn’t talk, so slowly he made a motion of his head being pushed downwards. “I almost choked”

The picture he painted for us caused Clint to throw up on the spot. The thought of Curly’s forced expedition into the black, slippery Chasm of Doom was too much for my baby brother’s hungover, beer-gurgling belly to handle.

“I thought it was going to swallow my head!” Curly cried “I couldn’t breath!!!”

“She must have spiked my drink right?” he reasoned.

“Nope” Miller answered “You’ve just been fucked by a fatty. Classic case”

“What are you on about, dumbass?” I asked Miller

“That is what all fat bastards do. That is how they get da sex. It’s the circle of life. Dick hunters. They go out late; when they know that the drink is making us fellas do bad things. I swear ta God it’s true. Many a nights I’ve been at a bar, with me pint in my hand and the little amber fucker begins to talk to ya. Whispering in your ear. ‘Go on, shag her, it’s a great idea. I bet she’ll take it up the choc shop’ and so on. Drink is a bastard for playing tricks on you and before you know it, you’ve agreed with your tasty friend that it would indeed be a fine idea to ride that mucky bouncy castle like a wild pony”

“It’s rape MILLER!” Curly protested

“Lol. The beer made you do it. Not her! She just didn’t stop you! Don’t worry mate. Any hole’s a goal. Anyway, we all love a fatty once in a while, you’ve got so much more choice with all of those folds”

On that note I had to leave the room. I left it to Clint to convince Curly not to get the police involved, while Miller had decided that he was off to track Bertha down, so he could get raped too!

I’m going downstairs now to set my presentation up for the meeting this afternoon. This ship needs steering away from the iceberg dead ahead.

1611 Hrs

THE MEETING PART 2

I should leave right now! I should pack my bags and leave the lot of’em! Why won’t they listen to me! I have vision! I am the one with the key to the fecking vault! MADDNESS!

At 3 o’clock Miller, Clint, Dad (Curly was still too traumatized to come downstairs, he feared it would spark more flashbacks) and myself were seated at my round table. I didn’t want to rain on my brother’s idea’s too quickly, so I thought I would let them go first, before I dazzled everyone with my amazing plans.

Miller went first. I don’t know if he was being serious but he looked very impressed with himself. He had two ideas.

Idea No. 1

We should go around all the local AA meetings and all of the homeless shelters and hand out two-for-one vouchers to the winos. They love drink, so why shouldn’t they buy it here. Brilliantly simple he proclaimed.

Worryingly Dad didn’t slam this idea; he just kinda nodded his head and gestured for Miller’s second idea.

Idea No. 2

Let’s hire prostitutes as barmaids.

He didn’t back this up with any reasoning. He thought it was self-explanatory. Fortunately I saw my Dad drop his head into his hands in despair so, no, the lunatics weren’t running the asylum just yet. Next it was Clint’s turn.

He suggested a charity event. He said this would be a great way to build the reputation of the pub and more importantly get us free, positive publicity with the local newspaper and radio station. He said we should take advantage of how popular Karaoke was in the pub and make a big competition out of it. It would appeal not only to locals, but also to karaoke fans across the bay. We would make it known that every Saturday and Sunday night we would be entering the best singers into our major, big prize, karaoke competition, all in aid of a good cause. We’ll tell everyone that we will judge not only on performance but also on public appreciation, which would mean that participants would bring their friends and family along to cheer them on, thinking that it will improve their chances of getting into the final. Each week we’ll put virtually everyone through. The ones we don’t put through, we’ll tell them to come back and try again next week. Eventually we would end up with a massive final, where the pub would be rammed solid! We would have to offer a cash prize of about 200 -500 quid but we’ll make a fortune over the bar. We would pick a local charity, like the hospital or something and we would tell everyone who makes it into the final that they need to get sponsored, and that would be the cash that we donate. To make it extra special, we could make the final a big fancy dress event, like Stars in their Eyes.

Just like Miller, Clint seemed very impressed with himself and he waited to hear what the rest of us thought. Dad was just about to say something but I wanted to spare my little brother the humiliation of being told that his idea was utter crap. Instead I thought I would wade in with my own superior plans. THE MASTERPLAN. I handed everyone at the table the proposal I had prepared.

1. Triple the price of all our drinks.
2. Triple the price of all our food.
3. Change the name of the pub to THE OFFICE
4. Charge £50 entry, or £1,000 annual membership.
5. Do not refer to business as ‘a pub’; it is an ‘establishment’.
6. All staff members must wear a suit.
7. Sack the door staff. They won’t be needed.
8. Sack Miller. He definitely won’t be needed.
9. Sack Bertha. She may rape again.

Dad, Miller and Clint looked at me in amazement. I knew their feeble little minds wouldn’t understand what I was pitching, so I spelt it out very simply for them. We overprice everything. Food, drink, the lot. Hell, maybe even charge an entry fee to the shitter. I am going to make this place classy. By doing all of this the upper classes will know that none of the undesirable common people will be able to tarnish our establishment with their grubby presence. This means the rich won’t have to worry about the underclasses bothering them. I’ll make this a meeting place for people on the council, yacht owners, land owners etc. They all have more money than sense. If we do this now, we will be millionaires this time next year.

I stood before my family and awaited praise. I should have known I wouldn’t get it, or more to the point, they didn’t get it. They gobbed their poisonous venom all over my magnificent MASTERPLAN. They said it was ridiculous, that it was an insane idea, that I was an idiot. I felt like Galileo telling his unenlightened peers that the Earth was not flat. I am too far ahead of my time. I have a greatness that ordinary people like my father and brothers just don’t comprehend. I pleaded with them to understand, and I tried to explain it even simpler. Bring in the rich people, make lots of money, but my father was having none of it. He proclaimed that it was Clint’s idea; the idea that would beg the dregs on society to descend on my beautiful kingdom and kill me slowly with their vulgar songs sung badly, that was the brilliant idea, a plan that might just save us all! HA! The lunatics have taken over the asylum, and I’m trapped in it.

Dad finished the meeting by saying that our game plan has been decided. He would pour the last of his resources into promoting the event. It was a tremendous gamble and it was now our job to make sure the odds are stacked in our favour.

“Make sure we don’t lose our shirts” he warned “because you have no idea what will happen to us all if that happens”

Dad is so melodramatic.


2334 Hrs

ANOTHER PROPOSITION

My Garden of Eden is being besmirched. No wonder God took such vengeance out on Adam and Eve when they desecrated the wonder that he had given them. I have offered paradise to my family. I told them that it is all there for the taking but they must not, under any circumstance, eat from the KARAOKE tree! So that is exactly what the bastards have done! Tonight I watched as the first weedy thorns crept into my wonderland, digging their evil roots deep into my scarred grounds. Dicky and Elaine were back, and they had with them more freaks from their musical horde of Hell! I managed to vanquish a band of foul singing demons when I heard them swearing at the bar. I quickly tried to march them out, but the Devil, my Father, let fly his terrible wrath and they were permitted their place in my Kingdom. I sense a battle of biblical proportions is on the horizon. Good versus Evil. The Devil is as powerful as I, so I must use all of my cunning to smite him once and for all!

If that wasn’t bad enough, another rabble of yokel locals came bursting through our doors an hour before closing. If this group of grubby, bloated, cackling scum had a theme tune, it would be the Dueling Banjos. At first they kept themselves to themselves. They came to the bar, gruffly demanded their drinks without so much as a please or a courteous smile and then huddled in a dark corner. The group consisted of about thirteen men and seven women, whose ages ranged from teens to O.A.P’s. Most of the men either looked obese or built like a brick shit house. The women looked like painfully thin witches, with soulless, dead black eyes. I could see them all sizing us up. Snarling. Laughing. Plotting. I have seen this behaviour before.

Suddenly the only small man in the group stood up. He had only two yellow buck teeth that protruded over his lower lip, and his grey skin blended with his horrible, greasy grey hair. He came walking towards me and Dad with the biggest, gummy smile on his face and positioned himself between us two. He smelled worse than the hairy open drain that Curly’s face was forced into last night.

“Ma name’s Arry, and those folk over there are me family. You’re new in town so I’d like to introduce us. We’re the Barkers. We’re a big family in these ere parts. We can trace our lot way back over 15 generations. Everyone knows us around this town.”

Harry necked his pint of bitter and slammed it onto the bar. Dad gave him a nervous grin and told Curly to top his glass up.

“As I said. We’re well known around ere and we could have this place packed in no time”

My father was definitely listening. As Harry slammed down his second empty pint glass, Dad personally refilled it, at no charge, and asked how he could do that.

“We have a big family, and we have lots of friends. It wouldn’t take much to encourage them to drink here”

I take it all back! Give me the karaoke freaks! Please don’t send in the Hells Angels

“All we would ask for…” Here we go “is that we, the family, gets mates rates on all of our drinks”

Bingo! I knew it and I knew what was coming next, a threat delivered with a smile.

“And what if we couldn’t offer mates’ rates” I asked.

For a second his weasely smile dropped to flash me a hate filled glare before turning his head back to my father with a sickly smirk. “We all wanna be friends ere don’t we? It’s too small of a town to be falling out” He playfully, with an undercurrent of intimidating menace, slapped my father on the cheek and then shook his face. “Whadda you say then?”

Dad gave me a look and I shook my eyes left to right as feverously as possible. No, tell him NO! I would have told him so myself, but since my Dad wants to play Boss, well then he can deal with the local wannabe mafia.

“That sounds like a great idea” my father said.

The ghastly little man shook my Dad’s hand and asked for a bottle of our finest champagne, as a token of our new friendship. My father duly obliged. The nasty troll then returned to the rest of the ghouls and they welcomed back their champion warrior with a thunderous round of applause. The battle had been won without a drop of blood. The invaders had come into our castle and my Dad had bent over.

They left not long after that, cheerfully letting us know that they would be back…soon.

I really don’t know what will be worse. The Barkers trying to take control of the pub, or my mother finding out and launching her attack on them. If she calls for back up from our Irish family in Brum, then I’m just gonna hide in the nearest bomb shelter!

I am starting to have grave concerns about Torquay; it might not be the delightful haven that I believed it to be. I hope that the English Riviera isn’t like dog turd in a fancy chocolate wrapping. It looks a treat but actually it’s shit!

Monday 21st August 2000

1028 Hrs

My Winky