lifestylesupportguru

Tag: pub

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!)

The Spy At The Bar!

Beanie cap

Oh dear me, dear me, dear me! I never realised that the Lifestyle Support Guru could come close to using up her almost limitless reserves of patience (ha ha!) but a skinny young man in a brown knitted beanie hat came close to causing a fracas of Jeremy Clarkson proportions about 20 minutes ago!
Imagine the setting:
You decide to have a little light refreshment and relaxation in the Little Chester Ale House after a testing Italian class, so you settle yourself down quietly in a corner, disturbing no-one and nodding a quiet greeting to acquaintances as they arrive. You should have realised that the skinny young man was going to be a nuisance when he stood talking to the lovely barmaid long after he’d been served, even though you are standing next to him with an empty glass and a £5 note in your hand (as well as your loyalty card) and then goes on to interrogate a group of cyclists (it’s a healthy Ale House!) about the fact that one of them comes from Birmingham. (So?)
The cyclists leave and Mr Brown Beanie turns to you, asking if you have ever travelled, because you look ‘interesting’ (you should have walked away at that point!) so you tell him that you’ve lived in France and have visited Togo and Malawi, at which point he tells you that he’s not really familiar with central Africa (check a map of Africa!), but he knows north Africa quite well; the conversation then goes as follows (although you’re not really that interested):
You: North Africa, eh? Tunisia? Morocco? Algeria?

secret

Brown Beanie: Well, not exactly.
Y: (Guessing wildly and joking) Libya, maybe?
BB: Somalia and LIbya. But I can’t really say what I do there.
Y: Sounds different. Do you work for a charity?
BB: Not really. It’s 75% government work, and if I didn’t go there it wouldn’t matter and if I didn’t come back from there, it wouldn’t matter either.

You now realise that you shouldn’t have got into this conversation, but you’re hooked…

Y: So are you an aid worker?
BB: Not really. I work partly for the government and partly not. But I can’t really talk about it, although it’s not secret as such.

Sean Connery

Y: Are you a spy?
BB: No…
Y: So what do you do?
BB: I can’t tell you.
Y: Why? Would you have to kill me if you did?
BB: No…
Y: So why can’t you tell me?
BB: Because I can’t tell you.

The conversation will continue in a similar way for several. minutes until you get completely bored and take your (empty) glass back to the bar where the lovely barmaid and regulars are standing grinning broadly!
You leave, nodding briefly to Mr BB, wondering if he’s the unrecognised James Bond of Derby.

This post will self-destruct after ten seconds, so read it quickly!

Translations

Translation

A very good Friday evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru! Once again, I am here to help you manoeuvre your way through the maze of troubles and difficulties that some people laughingly like to call ‘Life’, but which I prefer to refer to as a ‘maze of troubles and difficulties’.
In my Last Post (which also happens to be the name of a micropub in Derby!), I said that I would be taking about TRANSLATIONS. Do not worry – those of you who think you have very little linguistic ability will have little trouble with these, since they don’t really involve any foreign languages. Obviously, as the LSG, I have few difficulties picking up other languages, but I realise that not all of you have this facility (even my beloved Deputy LSGs, Debbie and Sue, who still have many stages to go before they can hope to achieve my level of near-perfection), but these TRANSLATIONS are to do with understanding what other people mean when they come out with what seems, at first sight (or, rather, hearing), a perfectly harmless statement in English.

Firstly, once again, as I have done so many times before, I must ask you to imagine that you have a sibling and, preferably, one whom you haven’t seen for a number of years (let’s say three and a half, for the sake of argument) because he has been in foreign parts (again for the sake of argument, we’ll say Australia). Now, you kindly agree to put this sibling up in your own home temporarily, expecting no recompense (the occasional meal out, perhaps) apart from an eternal expression of gratitude whenever he sees you. A little bowing and scraping and doffing of caps wouldn’t go amiss either.

untidy garden

Sibling:

Would you like me to do anything in the garden while I’m here and have some time on my hands before I start my new job?

Translation:

Your garden looks incredibly untidy and overgrown, even for winter. And why have you still got the sun loungers out on the lawn?

Sibling:

I suppose the spiders in your house are quite large?

Translation:

There are an awful lot of dead flies caught in the cobwebs in the fanlight above the front door; don’t you think you should get your feather duster out and get rid of them?

Second scenario – you have arranged to go out for lunch with a friend (let’s call her Karen, for the sake of argument) whom you have known for years but whom (‘whom’ is currently my favourite grammatical word) you haven’t seen for a few months. When she walks into the restaurant, your jaw drops when you see how much weight she has lost. (She CYCLED to your lunch date – CYCLED!!!!).
The first thing you say is:

You:

Good God! You’re not going to lose any more, are you?

Translation:

You absolute b**ch! You look stunningly slim!

Blue Whale

Third scenario – and the MOST IMPORTANT! This applies to males and females alike, because we have all been guilty of it at some time or other. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER say to someone you haven’t seen for quite some time: “You’re looking well.” This phrase has several TRANSLATIONS, depending on whether the person saying it is male or female.

Male:

Lovely to see you. You’re looking well.

Translation:

Good god, you’ve put on a whole load of weight since I last saw you three days/weeks/months/years/centuries ago.

Female:

Lovely to see you, daaahling! You’re looking REALLY well! (Note the addition of ‘really’, which makes the comment doubly barbed.)

Translation:

Good god, you have REALLY turned into a blue whale since I last saw you three days/weeks/months/years/centuries ago!

Do NOT – I repeat ‘Do NOT’ – EVER say ‘You’re looking well’ to ANYONE. The TRANSLATION can only ever be misunderstood and you will go into a steep spiral of depression, resulting in you opening a bottle of wine with which to drown your sorrows and make sure that you look even more like a blue whale next time you see that person.

Enjoy the weekend, dear followers – you’re all looking REALLY WELL!!

Life Lessons from the pub

London buses

Good evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru! I have several LIFE LESSONS to share with you tonight and, since there is nothing to watch on telly on a Saturday night (which is why I’m in the pub), you may as well do something constructive and learn from my experiences. But first, I have something desperately sad to communicate to you (apart from Wales losing to England last night, that is). My friends and followers, I have had a complaint… yes, A COMPLAINT!!! Someone has had the temerity to say that my posts (sorry, ‘LIFE LESSONS’) are inconsistent – a bit like buses, really, in that you get nothing for a while and then several come along in short succession. Well, MR WHINGER (I’ll keep his full identity secret, but his first name is Richard), that’s what it’s like for LIFESTYLE SUPPORT GURUS. We cannot control when the Muse may strike us – actually, I say ‘us’, but I don’t know of any other LSGs (although I have now recruited two Deputy LSGs, but they’re still in training), so it’s a lonely life in reality, but I carry on because I know that there are people out there who NEED my support and help.
Now, on to the LIFE LESSONS, all of which are pub-related – this may surprise some of you, but someone has to support local businesses, and it may as well be me… oh, the sacrifices I make!
First LIFE LESSON:
1. Picture yourself in a quiet, pleasant, little real ale pub where sartorial elegance is not the first thing on your mind – you’re only there for the beer (or wine), after all.

Joan Collins

2. In walks the equivalent of a blonde Joan Collins, accompanied by Benny Hill. She is wearing a short, lacy black dress and black lacy stockings with a seam and pattern up the back, topped with a faux leopard skin coat. He is wearing grey trousers, a black overcoat, a mulberry-style scarf and a grey beanie, the ensemble completed with heavy dark-rimmed glasses on a rather pale face.

news nerd

So, what is the LIFE LESSON? Don’t judge a book by its cover (or its leopard skin coat or beanie) because they are sitting opposite you and obviously observing you as well, judging by the looks they keep giving you – what’s wrong with an orange jumper paired with green and navy trainers?
Second LIFE LESSON:
I was so impressed with the Joan Collins/Benny Hill. combination that I’ve completely forgotten what the second LIFE LESSON might be! However, look out for a LIFE LESSON in TRANSLATION – coming soon to a pub near you!

Have a lovely evening (what’s left of it!).

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