2334 Hrs ANOTHER PROPOSITION

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!