Plombium

Modern Soul music, (none of my friends ever know what is meant by this, guessing at Motown or Northern, thus the example in the previous post) is one of the friendliest and most enjoyable things I have ever been involved with. The cherry on the cake--who may perhaps turn out to be called Cherry--that of meeting a woman who likes dancing as much as I do, remains to be set down, but that aside, the weekend left me with a resolution to do more of this.

Simon, who has laboured through the saga of this blog for several years, and shares both my musical tastes and those contained in a pint or six of real ale, generously made the long journey up from Berkshire to Lytham. Having punctuated the weekend with a couple of visits to some first rate pubs, it was a relief to wake up in the late afternoon after an indulgent doze, to find that he too had fallen asleep. I corrected my slack face and wide open gob, checked for dribble, and thought that it was probably a good job I hadn't met Cherry that particular afternoon.

My least successful conversation of the weekend involved going up to someone who I thought was a DJ and saying "Hello, are you on again?" He looked at me uncomprehendingly. "I'm not a DJ," he said eventually. "Oh, I'm sorry, I got you confused - it was just your shirt, your shirt looks similar to one a DJ who was on earlier was wearing." Every word I said made things worse as I fell unstoppably into idiocy.

Before I left I wanted to quickly pop into The Town House, a pub whose lack of character can't erase some vivid memories associated with it. I was a TEFL teacher in Lytham many years ago. I had a secret and I hope completely invisible crush on two of my 15-year-old pupils, Fabienne and Morgane, who beguiled me with their girlish Frenchness. Partly their Frenchness. They had other attractions as well, but as Wittgenstein said in his well-known meditation on TEFL teaching, "of that which we cannot speak, let us remain silent."

Hoping to revive something of Fabienne and Morgane's presence, I walked in and ordered a pint of the only real ale, Abbot Ale. I will repeat the barman's reply verbatim. "I'm sorry, that's a recently terminated transaction". He went on to offer me a piss-coloured pint of liquified agrochemicals and diglyceride esters. Even with the possibility of something of Fabienne and Morgane lingering in the air, that was too much Newspeak, and I left.

I took my daughter Jenny to the dentist today. She's going to have braces as her teeth are a bit of a jumble sale at the moment. Whilst waiting, she told me of a new way her friends have found of confusing chavs.

British readers will recall that a couple of years ago, young female members of the chemically oranged classes started bearing gaudy bags and T-shirts which advertised the girl's love for someone called "PB". It turned out to be a clothes and accessories brand which provides a slatternly way of dressing to be matched with false eyelashes and unattractively short skirts on girls too young to be sexualised, although I realise that a man who used to take two 15-year-old French girls he fancied down the pub might appear somewhat inconsistent in saying this.

Jenny said, "We ask them, 'do you love lead?'"