HELL’S Waiting Room, my local in New Brighton, is getting back to normal after all the outbreaks of name-calling and aggression in recent weeks.
Well, I say ‘normal’ but ‘normal’ doesn’t really apply in Madford-on-Sea (nor anywhere in Wallasey for that matter) , and certainly not in the Waiting Room.

One regular who had been absent for a while is Rocky Geetar, who has been poorly of late.
But he was in there the other night, having driven himself over from his gaff beyond Vale Park in his newly acquired second-hand mobility scooter.
I could see he was there as I approached because I spotted his scooter parked outside the pub. Glamorous, mobility scooters aren’t, but at least they get parked outside the pub in these parts.
At one pub I used to use in the East End of London, when I was a Hackney Gazette reporter, the old geezers used to drive right inside through the swing doors and park right up against the bar.
So there was Rocky, belting out ‘Blanket On the Ground’, to the delight of the assembled fair maidens of New Brighton (titter ye not).
The he did 'Rhinestone Cowboy'. Fabulous.
As an experiment, I invited friends from Scotland to stay for the weekend recently – and they loved New Brighton.
It was my pal The Dark Booth and his new girlfriend Giselle. I nearly knackered myself tidying my flat in readiness for their stay.
The place had got seriously messy. I had to start the clean-up with a controlled explosion and take things on from there. There was so much washing up to do, I used the bath.
But by the time the Booth and his squeeze arrived I had finished spring cleaning. Triumphantly, I stowed the marigolds, and gave my neighbour young Bezza back her Dyson.
It took some doing getting to grips with this new-style vacuum cleaner. It seemed to come apart in my hands all the time.
And as for the hose attachment you use for sucking toenails and earwigs out of cramped corners... well, that sort of slinks craftily out of the handle, which is all very confusing for an old technophobe like me.
The Dark Booth and Giselle went straight to a pub, the Orifice to wait for me, and I joined them there after about 20 minutes of fannying-around.
If we’d been sensible we would have gone directly back to my flat from there and dumped their bags.
But no, we went for a quick one to the Waiting Room before dinner. Slutty Hardman was in there with his new girlfriend Sarah Lovelights, and so was Annette Calms and her young son Brains.
Me and my chums then jumped a cab to the fantastic New Ying King restaurant in Liscard, where we ate like Ming Dynasty emperors and drank a bottle of red wine each.
(This restaurant is the only place in my entire blog to be given its genuine name, by the way.)
Later me and the Booth and Giselle went to a very old-fashioned members' club called The Rake’s Upstairs before heading back to the Waiting Room where we found an Hogarthian scene of fiddle-playing, incoherent joke-telling, and characterful northern English faces pulled this way and that … and a generally happy if eerie atmosphere.
The usual sort of magical realism vibe that you get in the Waiting Room, really.
Well, drink had been taken in considerable quanties by all concerned by then, so off we went to a late bar down on the seafront, the Pay-Up.
I’m afraid I took a tumble on the dancefloor as 'Cudda Wudda Shudda' belted out and pretty soon after that I made my way home for a nice lay down.
The trouble was I forgot to tell The Dark Booth and Giselle I was going home. After an hour or so of dancing they realised I was missing and panicked. After all, it was 2am, they were in New Brighton, hundreds of miles from home, and had nowhere to stay for the night. I hadn’t even showed ‘em where my flat is.
No worries, as it turns out. Slutty and Sarah, and Tallulah Swells from the pub, guided my Scottish friends to my flat and rang the door bell.
Then rang it again. Then rang my neighbours’ door bell (much to their annoyance). Then rang my bell again. And again.
Eventually, I was roused from my slumbers and came to the door, bleary-eyed, and let everyone in.
Can’t remember anything of what happened next, I’m afraid, but I know that all my beer in the fridge had been consumed by the time I woke up, fully clothed on Sunday morning.

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit