SOME rules of life should always be followed.
The most important of these for any North of England person is: "Remember to have your tea before you go out for the night, drinking."
Thursday night was Slutty Hardman's birthday, but we couldn't go into our favourite pub, Hell's Waiting Room in New Brighton, for the knees-up.

The reasons we couldn't go in there that night are interesting and complex but I'm afraid I couldn't possibily go into details here.
Suffice to say we ended up in the Shallow Cutting, one of two pubs very near to the Waiting Room. The other is the Vagabond.
These others are quite nice pubs in their way, but they simply aren't the Waiting Room, which truly is A Pub Like No Other, and almost an alternative universe in itself.
Dear me, I am digressing terribly. What I meant to say is that I went to Slutty's little party at about 7pm, not having had me tea first.
More or less all the posse were there... Tallulah Swells with her husband Alberre, Dixie the Jazzman, Annette Calms and her son Brains and daughter Felina (who was dressed St Trinian's style because she had just left secondary school).
Also in the pub were: Stella Feathercut and her pal Megsy Barnet, Eamonn Lairyshirts, Quiet Jack, and, of course, the Barcardi Queen with her zany sons, Dick and Dom.
There were one or two others I haven't yet mentioned in this blog, including Lofty the gob-iron player, who in recent days has greatly boosted the quality of live music in the Waiting Room by playing his new banjo.
Okay, I am coming to the point, which is this...
Because I hadn't had my tea before arriving at the Shallow Cutting, the drink started to get to me, partcularly after a couple of Zambucca shots.
I felt woozy and, in truth, a little depressed. The reasons for me feeling down might be connected to the fact that on both Wednesday and Thursday I had been in Manchester for work-related meetings.
I don't like meetings and I don't like Manchester, so maybe that's why I was in a funk.
Even the company of my work colleagues from Liverpool on one of the trips to Manchester, Father Davey and Rosa, couldn't cheer me up. They usually do cheer me up, mind, those two. They are both elegant and funny. It is not often you can describe a man as elegant, I know, but in Davey's case it is apt.
Oh, I am rambling today, aren't I? So there I was on Thursday night in the Shallow Cutting, New Brighton, trying to help Slutty celebrate his birthday.
But like I say the drink got to me so I told everyone, at around 9.30pm, that I would have to go home for some sandwiches and a pot of tea and that I would rejoin the drink-up after my snackette.
On the way home, I was approached by a young guy in a hoodie as I delved into the boot of my car to retrieve some shopping.
He gave me some some tale of woe about needing a room for the night and that his mate, who he was relying on for a roof over his head, could not be contacted.
I let the lad (I guess he was in his mid-20s) use my phone a couple of times to try to contact his mate but it was no use. The fellow could not be raised.
Turns out the young man was Polish. There are a great many Polish polish people in Wallasey just now, probably more than there are in Warsaw. They are economic migrants.
It was raining and I felt sorry for him but you just can't take the risk of offering strangers on the street a bed for the night so I sent him off in the direction of a sort of hotel used mainly by contractors (men working on the Mersey tunnels, etc) but I didn't hang arouind to find out how he got on.
The trouble is ... when I'd gone home and eaten my butties and had a cup of tea, I felt tired. No I felt weary - that's the right word. Call it the Manchester Effect.
So I didn't go back to the pub. I just went to bed and listened to the BBC World Service more or less all night because I couldn't sleep.
As a result, I'm now something of an expert on the Brazilian mafia and and the poppy harvest in Afghanistan but my mood has not improved.
The moral of this story is, follow the rule. If you are going out for a night in the pub, always have you tea first, and so you are prepared for the boozing. It won't make you feel woozy or weary.
Of course it doesn't always work out like that. A few nights ago, both myself and Stella Feathercut came into the Waiting Room early doors, each loaded with grocieries and each intending to have just a quick slurp before going home and cooking a nice evening meal for ourselves.
I had lardons (bacon bits to the unsophisticated), smoked mackeral and sweetcorn, which were to have been ingredients in a sort of risotto which is one of my signature dishes.
Stella had a pack of pork faggots in gravy and some feta cheese. Quite what she was going to make by combining those I can't imagine.
But of course neither of us could simply make do with just one drink. So we stayed supping, as our food supplies sweated in their plastics bags, until closing times.
It was a good night for the music. Duncan Kindlyface was singing and playing the guitar. He did a comic version of Hotel California that cracked us up.
There have been quite a few excellent nights in the Waiting Room recently. One one occasion two mysterious Coleens of great beauty came in. I think I fell in love with the pair of them but was too shy to speak to them.
On another night, even the landlord Mr Craggs was up dancing.
But, anyway, last Tuesday all that Stella or me had by way of food all night was one bag of mini-cheddars between us and about ten Silk Cuts each. Despite being loaded up with culinary ingredients.
I eventually made the risotto, though, some days later.
But I haven't a clue what happened to Stella's faggots.
For all I know they ended up as a sticky mess.
It wouldn't be the first time that's been the fate of faggots in New Brighton.

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