lifestylesupportguru

Category: Pub

Making Plans For The Weekend

Dungeon

A very good afternoon to you all from the Lifestyle Support Guru! Today I am going to share with you some thoughts on MAKING PLANS and THE WEEKEND, so that you have plenty of time to MAKE your own PLANS before the coming WEEKEND. You will also learn that MAKING PLANS does not always turn out as you expect. As always, the steps are easy to follow:
1. Inform sibling that you have free tickets for Warwick Castle and MAKE PLANS to visit.
2. Sibling decides on the day that he doesn’t really want to visit Warwick Castle after seeing TV ad which included lots of children in it. (We both prefer child-free venues – such as pubs.)
3. Suggest Workhouse at Southwell, Notts, but this doesn’t appeal either. (I think he thought they may well still be keeping children there – see point 2.)
4. Suggest Strutt’s Mill at Belper, which is just a bus ride away. Sibling seems quite taken with this idea, so you MAKE PLANS and invite along a friend as well.
5. Meet friend at bus stop at a reasonable hour (11 am) and he informs you that he has already

bus stop

washed his windows, made a bacon sandwich, walked into town and back and put some washing out. (At this point you feel worn out and consider going back to bed – the walk to the bus stop was exhausting enough.)
6. On arriving at t’mill, you wait for the guide while friend starts talking about an ‘articulated python’ for some reason and an image of a large, jack-knifed snake on the M1 comes into your mind. Sweetly, you enquire, ‘Do you mean a ‘reticulated python’? and friend says they’re the same thing. Sigh and hope guide turns up soon.
7. The three of you have a tour round t’mill with Barry the tour guide, who is absolutely delighted to find that your companions have a genuine interest in the engineering aspects of the weaving machines, although he couldn’t answer the question ‘Why do they go backwards and forwards?’. (WARNING: do NOT visit places with machines if your companions work in metallurgy or on the railways and you personally have no interest in engineering, other than the essentials such as knowing how to use a corkscrew.)

reticulated python

8. Before returning home, you make a small detour via a little micropub (well, I suppose a micropub will be small, by definition!) that has been recommended by some other friends who also have an interest in real ales (I choose my friends carefully!). Inside the pub, as a feature, is what looks like an old, small motorbike; friend, after examining it closely, confidently declares to all and sundry: ‘That’s either a Raleigh or a Dennis Hughes.’ (as I thought he said at the time). With an air of triumph (not the motorbike manufacturers, ha ha!) he turns to the barman who promptly tells him that it’s a Mobylette from France. Sad face from friend. (For those who know about motorbikes, friend didn’t say it was a ‘Dennis Hughes’ but an ‘NSU’. Still no wiser, but at least I know my reticulated pythons from my articulated ones! Or maybe he meant Kaa, the ‘articulate’ python in the Jungle Book?)
9. Finish the day off by going to a local Chinese buffet where friend attempts to pour a glass of wine while the top is still on the bottle. As I said earlier, I choose my friends carefully!
So there you have it, dear followers and acolytes – PLANNING a weekend is easy; it’s actually following the PLANS that’s difficult! You have all of Thursday and Friday to MAKE YOUR OWN PLANS!

Embarrassment At The Pub

Wet and cold

A very good (but wet and cold) evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru!
I realise I haven’t offered any advice recently, and I know that many of you rely on such advice to help you negotiate your way safely along this treacherous pathway that is LIFE. I had originally intended offering some words of wisdom on ARTY-FARTY matters. (Sadly, predictive text changed that to ARTY-FATTY , which is probably a more accurate description.)
The original advice was to include a warning about ice cream vans and how they might be driven by psychopathic maniacs (courtesy of Stephen King’s ‘Mr Mercedes’) and how some people think that the Merchant of Venice is Shylock. Ha! I know better! (And I’m not showing off – that’s another story altogether!) However, since arriving in the pub (simply to gain inspiration, you understand), I have realised that life in the pub is much more interesting, valuable, fun and, as you will learn, EMBARRASSING for the LSG!

EMBARRASSING? FOR THE LSG? Yes, and I am sad – nay, distraught even! – because of it. My

woman and purse

reputation is tarnished. It was when I ordered my drink at the bar and reached for my purse to pay that I realised I had – for the first time EVER! – left my purse at home! Horror! I knew exactly where I’d left it – next to the china elephant piggy bank and the little yellow pot with an Alzheimer’s Society pin badge in it (rather ironic in the circumstances) on the mantelpiece.

But what was (almost!) even more EMBARRASSING was that the bar staff have been perfectly prepared to give me credit all evening because, as they said, ‘We know you’ll be in tomorrow.’ Needless to say, I didn’t bother traipsing all the way back home (a long trek – all of 5 minutes on a slow day), but took advantage of their kind offer – 3 bottles of wine, seven packets of crisps and five ham rolls later, I am having a lot of fun for someone with no money!

karaoke

In addition, I have also had free entertainment, courtesy of a little Yorkshire woman who thought the pub might wish to listen to her rendition of ‘Don’t Cry For me, Argentina’. The reasons for this were never properly explained. On top of that, her brother also felt compelled to entertain the pub in his own way, offering a selection of (Yorkshire) jokes for everyone’s amusement (apparently). I have now realised that, should I wish to spend much time in Yorkshire, I will need to have a sense of humour bypass. (Only joking, Yorkshire!)
So, there you have it – an evening in the pub offers value for money in so many ways. Care in the community! Who needs ART when LIFE is so much more FUN?
Have a lovely (soggy) weekend, dear followers!

Men and Pub Conversation

men in bar

Greetings from the Lifestyle Support Guru! Today’s ‘lesson’ is one that I hope will be of great use to many of you, since it involves a whole range of topics, but all centred around MEN and PUBS in one way or another (I would have said ‘one shape or another’, but I don’t want men worrying about their body image). (And it was only one pub, really.)

Firstly, I know MEN say that women can talk about anything and everything whilst saying nothing, but I overheard a LONG conversation in the pub the other night which involved four men of varying ages discussing, for no good reason that I could gather, ‘White’ pubs in the area – that is, pubs with ‘White’ in their names and not pubs where the BNP and EDL would feel at home. They talked about the White Swan, White Hart, White Post (although there seemed to be some confusion about whether or not the latter had been knocked down) and the only ones they seemed to leave out were the White Elephant and the White Man’s Burden…

White Swan

Shortly afterwards, the male half of a couple in their 70s started talking about how he was going to swap his Chaka Demus for something else – I mean, what do you swap for Chaka Demus? And when you’re in your 70s? Tributes to Bob Marley, perhaps? Or Althea and Donna’s Greatest Hits?

Soon after this riveting chat, I noticed a middle-aged couple sitting opposite me – she is on orange juice (and therefore, presumably, driving) while he has a pint of beer AND is munching on a VERY large pickled onion! So not only has she drawn the short straw on the alcohol, but she’s not even going to get an enjoyable snog at the end of the night!

And, finally, there is the 38-year-old male who has ordered two jars of ‘Psycho Pickles’ off the internet and has brought them to the pub. (One has to ask ‘Why?’). ‘Psycho Pickles’ are gherkins and onions steeped in vinegar with VERY HOT chillies in it. (For those who know chillies, these were Scotch Bonnets, with a heat rating of between 100,000 and 350,000 Scoville units.)

Chilli Scotch Bonnet

Apparently, he had already eaten two of these chillies the previous evening and had suffered greatly in the night, saying that it felt like he’d had ‘a hedgehog in his stomach’ Why, then, would you eat yet another the next day? However, I have to say it was quite amusing to see someone go bright red in the face, unable to speak, tears running down his face, sweat coming out of every pore and eventually getting down on all fours in the middle of the pub because he can hardly breathe. WHY???

MEN, if you can explain any of the above, the LSG would love to hear from you! Enjoy the rest of the Bank Holiday weekend – I’m off to see if I can persuade any other MEN to eat a Scotch Bonnet… purely for the pleasure of seeing their reactions!

The Perfect Guest

Welcome

A very good evening to you all from the Lifestyle Support Guru! This evening I am going to give you an important lesson on BEING A GOOD GUEST. It is always useful to know how to behave when visiting other people, as they will inevitably have different habits from your own, so you need to learn how to ADAPT! I have drawn up a list of easy-to-follow instructions which will ensure that you will always be welcomed in future as the PERFECT HOUSE GUEST!
1. DO make sure that you give as little notice as possible of your intended arrival, even though you may have been planning your trip for weeks, maybe even months – an hour, maybe two, should be ample. This is, of course, entirely for the benefit of your host, to save him/her spending hours cleaning and tidying prior to your arrival. You are thus saving your host days of stress and worry.

cleaning

2. DO make sure that you arrive at least an hour later than you had said. Again, this is for the benefit of your host, who will have been able to put that extra time to good use by doing a little more cleaning and tidying, thus alleviating any earlier concern he/she may have had about the house not being spick and span. It also means that the friends the host had arranged to meet at the pub will have had a whole extra hour to drink more alcohol, thus making them far more relaxed than the host!
3. DO make sure that you bring a gift for the host – I suggest a box of kippers. This will ensure that the host’s house will be gently perfumed with a tantalising smell which will entrance the host’s cats, even if the host hates them. Again, this is all for the host’s benefit because it keeps the cats happy and the host is also able to use up a large number of carrier bags wrapping the box of kippers to try and mask the smell.
4. DO make sure that you have some unspecified leg injury which means you are unable to walk for long and need to spend the evening resting when your host had been thinking about a meal out, perhaps Chinese or Italian. Once more, you are doing your host a great favour because he/she needs to lose some weight anyway.

wet floor

5. DO make sure that, when you have a shower, you fail to put the bath mat down, so that the floor is lovely and wet when the host goes for a shower. Once again, you are selflessly helping your host, who is thus able to practise long-forgotten skating skills and who hadn’t realised he/she could do the splits!
There are other instructions, but I think these will suffice for now; there are certainly enough to ensure that your host will have a BIG SMILE on his/her face – WHEN YOU LEAVE! Sleep well and don’t forget to put the bath mat down unless you have a wish to become another Torvill or Dean. (For those of you who may be worried, the PERFECT GUEST has a sense of humour!)

Random Thoughts

Randon thoughts

A very good afternoon from the Lifestyle Support Guru! Today I am going to tell you about RANDOM THOUGHTS.
I was going to talk about RANDOMNESS, but that is actually a mathematical concept and I felt that not all of my followers would grasp this concept – in fact, I don’t understand it myself, so I didn’t feel I should inflict it on lesser mortals. To be honest, these RANDOM THOUGHTS are just a collection of, well, just RANDOM THOUGHTS that I believe may interest you, my dear acolytes, and which may also help you look at the world in a different light.
Where to start? Well, firstly, CRUELTY. There are many forms of CRUELTY, but the one which cut

cruelty

me to the quick, beloved believers, was a remark addressed to me personally by someone I thought a friend. Picture the scene: you are in Little Chester Ale House enjoying a beverage or two and you casually mention to the so-called ‘friend’ (whom I shall call George and who might just happen to be the owner of the aforementioned establishment) that you will be attending a wine-tasting and nibbles party the following evening. Imagine, dear followers, how it felt when George turned round and said, ‘You’ll go anywhere for free wine, won’t you?’ The HURT, the PAIN, the unfeeling CRUELTY – I’d paid FIFTEEN POUNDS for the privilege of this ‘free’ wine (and nibbles)!

Cheddar Cheese

Second RANDOM THOUGHT? QUIZZES. As you know, I have some experience of QUIZZES and I have to say that they can cause much merriment. The scene is once more in a drinking establishment (I know this may surprise many of you, but I go to such places purely for your benefit, you understand, to help you make greater sense of RANDOM HAPPENINGS), this time The Coach & Horses. (Most people only have one local, but the LSG feels that this is a limiting factor in her quest to address and support as wide an audience as possible.)
Papers are swapped between teams for marking at the end of the quiz. One of the questions was: “‘The Theory of Everything’ is a film based on the early life of which renowned scientist?”, the answer being, of course, ‘Stephen Hawking’. One team asked if ‘Stephen Fry’ was an acceptable answer. The quizmaster sternly replied, ‘Of course not!’ ‘Oh,’ continued this very

Scotland

generous-hearted team, ‘well, can they have half a point for getting ‘Stephen’ right?’ ‘NO!’
On another occasion, the question was: ‘Cheddar is in which English county?’ and the quizmaster heard someone in the team behind her (yes, the quizmaster was ME!!) say excitedly, ‘Scotland. It’s Scotland!’ until someone else in the team pointed out that the question had specifically said ‘ENGLISH county’. ‘Oh, yes,’ said the first team member sadly, ‘Scotland’s not in England, is it?’ Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond, I think you still have a lot of work to do!

Third RANDOM THOUGHT? I have recently wondered if there is a connection between the rise in the number of mobility scooters on the streets and the number of cyclists riding on the pavement. Are the cyclists knocking pedestrians over willy-nilly, like a set of bowling pins, and causing them to have hip or knee replacements (replaced with what, I sometimes ask myself)

cyclist

and thus requiring the use of a mobility scooter? I believe this is something that the next government should put high on its agenda – an enquiry into the statistical relationship between these two groups of people. I also believe they should consider creating mobility scooter/cycle lanes where these fun-loving people can bump into each other like a set of Weebles (‘Weebles wobble but we don’t fall down!’) while the rest of us get on with our normal lives. They’d get my vote! (And, yes, I’m still working on my election manifesto, which may, or may not, include Weebles, cyclists and mobility scooters.)

And the final RANDOM THOUGHT? Have you ever considered that there are GOOD mirrors and BAD mirrors? I find I have these in my own house – the mirror in my bedroom is a VERY BAD mirror, showing all sorts of imperfections that I know don’t really exist (a couple of extra pounds here and there, a broken vein or two, a few life-affirming wrinkles), whereas my

Mirror

bathroom mirror is a VERY GOOD mirror and reveals no such imperfections (mainly because it is not in direct daylight). And as for the mirror in the front room downstairs (where the blinds are permanently down, to prevent the adoring crowds from spotting the LSG and camping outside), that is my FAVOURITE mirror of all because it shows me as the slim, lithe, perfect specimen of womanhood that I know is the REAL ME! This is partly thanks to the mirror being one that my sister and her husband bought me for my 21st ( just a couple of years ago), which has writing all over it, thus blurring the reality!
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please feel free to add your own RANDOM THOUGHTS.
Before I go, one final comment on the ‘free’ wine-tasting mentioned at the beginning – the water was of an excellent quality, or so I am told!

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