Ghost's revenge

Yesterday I installed myself in a small guest house in Southampton, and then proceeded to a pub for dinner. I ordered a pepperoni pizza and went outside to draw the fresh air. It was really quite wonderful to be in southern England yesterday - the sun was shining all day and it was still nice and warm out in the evening. Green grass, blue skies, people sitting around chatting, etc.

There was this guy with a vewy, vewy cute lil' Staffordshire puppy on a leash; more for her own protection than anything else. The little fella was high and low, her tail wagging constantly from side to side and her nose twitching with every new thing she found on the lawn (empty bags of chips, bottles, leaves, blades of grass). When I bent down to say hello, she slobbered all over my hands and her little body was doing that strange, little tap-dance dogs do when they're so happy to see you their tiny brains go into overload and stop sending messages to their feet.

I sat down at a table and waited. And waited. And waaaaiiiited. I'm normally a patient guy. Despite all my grumbling on this blog I'm very polite and nice to people and don't go around complaining and pushing people around. But when the clock hit 30 mins I got up and went inside and politely enquired about the status of my pizza. The barmaid who'd taken my order went to the kitchen and came back to inform me that it would be another five minutes, but "the chef would like to offer you a free dessert for your wait". Which is another way of saying "I fucked up. Sorry".

Finally the pizza arrived and it was standard pub fare. Nuthin' fancy or special, just solid grub. After finishing I went inside as it was now getting dark out. Now, when I'd first arrived there had been some decent music playing, and I'd assumed it was the staff's decision but now it was all modern hip-hop and R & B rubbish. I heard a couple of the girls behind the desk talking about what to put on the jukebox next, and one of them was very specific in that it should be "something recent", which again is code, this time for "crap".

So. The bar had a jukebox. The staff had no control over the music except for their own hard-earned money. A lightbulb came on above my head. I went round to where the blasted thing stood and proceeded to feed that machine my life's earnings. 24 fuckin' songs in a row I played, edumacating those young tarts behind the bar in proper classic rock, with some country thrown in for sheer punishment.

We're talking Creedence, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Elvis and Hank Williams. We're talking "Hurt" & "The Man comes around", we're talking "Tougher than the rest" and "Ghost of Tom Joad". We're even talking "Okie from Muskoggee" & "I saw the light", which I put on not because I particularly fancy them, but because they were the most deliciously inbred music I could find on that machine. I got some appreciative nods from other customers, but the barmaids made themselves strangely scarce over the next couple of hours.

You can forget my food, biatch - but don't fuck with mah music!