SO here's me (above) pictured in a restaurant on a recent stag weekend in Krakow.
I went with pals from the New Brighton / Wallasey area and hooked up with some other fellas from London, Liverpool and, er, Ireland, I think.
We were in the Polish city to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of Tornton Hutt, our esteemed Cockerney-Oirish friend, who will marry the saintly Bernadette in August.
Most of the guys on the trip were married – so naturally they were reluctant to let rip, libertine-style. Well, that’s the official line anyway.

The Wallasey contingent comprised: Tornton Hutt, Commuting Mitch, Patriarch Narkus, Spuggy, The Beast, Fronk Feremone, Wavy Davy (from Liverpool) and me.
Let’s get the propaganda out of the way first – so that the Wallasey WAGS will not think anything saucy went on in Krakow. And nothing did. Honest.
Girls, let me tell you, the boys hardly went into bars at all, let alone the type of establishment were female women critters are known to gyrate wildly on poles. The very idea …
All the lads were extremely well behaved. They mostly entertained themselves by studying a festival of medieval folklore which happened to be going on in the city.
And they went inside churches. A lot of churches. To attend Benediction etc., and to study elaborate baroque frescos.
Actually, I believe some of the fellas had quite profound religious experiences in the holy city of Krakow (where the late Pope John Paul II was once Archbishop), as they told me they would be resuming regular Mass attendance when they returned to Wallasey.
What a shame, in that case, that SS Peter and Paul’s Church, New Brighton (pictured above), is to be closed within two years and has already plunged into a sharp decline.
While in Krakow, I was amazed at the number of churches kept open all day, offering many, many services.
The city has a warm, welcoming, vibrant Catholic culture, very much like the one I grew up with in Wigan in the 1960s, and quite different to the cold, half-hearted, wishy-washy locked-down faith now presented in New Brighton – thanks to the actions of the defeatist Diocese of Shrewsbury.
While in Krakow I visited a suburban church that is smaller than SS Peter and Paul and discovered it offered Sunday Mass at the following times: 7am, 8am, 9am, 10.30am, 12 midday, 1.30pm, 5pm, 7pm, 8.20pm and 9.30pm.So that’s ten Masses each Sunday. Excellent! No wonder the Catholic faith is alive and well in Poland.
In contrast, how many Masses does SS Peter and Paul offer on a Sunday, now that the Diocese of Shrewsbury has decided to close this magnificent church? Errr… one. Yes, just one, at 8.30am.
That’s just not good enough. In fact, it’s pathetic, and an insult to our martyred dead and the faithful departed.
Local Catholics are very, very angry with the Shrewsbury diocese.
But enough of religion for the moment. Being a bachelor boy there were no restraints on me during the stag weekend, so I felt quite free to spend quite a bit of time caning it.
In one of the pictures at the top of this posting you will see me in a bar /restaurant where the barmaids wear tight red micro-pants. I am told this is the official Polish national costume for females aged from 16 to 25.
I only went inside a church on two occasions during the weekend – including once to kneel before the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and say some prayers for private intentions, including saving SS Peter and Paul from demolition.
And a few hours after that I found myself – because of a misunderstanding over taxis – inside a club where Polish girls did topless dirty dancing.
Well, I say a taxi mix-up, but actually I was more-or-less kidnapped by Torton Hutt and his London Oirish wide-boys and taken to the dodgy club.
That was very annoying because I had intended to go to a madrigal recital with the Wallasey lads that evening.
Still, I suppose it is good for me, as a poet, to experience human life in all its variety.
One of the pole-dancers asked if I wanted a private demonstration of her talents in a separate booth. In the best traditions of journalism, I declined, telling her “you’re a very pretty girl, though”.

*** WHILE I was away there was quite a lot of botheration at my local, Hell’s Waiting Room in New Brighton.
Apparently, Rocky Geetar decided to add further decorations to the ones he has already affixed to the walls of the pub’s music lounge as part of a shrine he has made to his own honour.
Landlady Eleganta Chignon did not like the latest photo of Rocky Geetar, looking quite befuddled with drink, that he had fixed to the wall with builders’ mastic.
Eleganta thought the photo would give the wrong impression of the pub and its clientele – so down off the wall it had to come.
But she was even more displeased when, on taking down the picture, several sections of the music room’s special ‘Louis XIV’ wallpaper came away with it, leaving ugly blemishes. Drips from the mastic also damaged the leatherette banquette.
The wrenching down of the picture was the (hopefully) final act in the Art Wars that raged bitterly last weekend.
The chief protagonists were on one hand, Rocky, and on the other hand, Paulette, who is one of the daytime crowd.
Paulette likes to water the pub’s plants and put up pictures she finds in charity shops.
I’m not sure whose objets d'art are the worst – Paulette’s dreadful country cottage- style crap or Rocky’s poems and pictures of whisky-fuelled egoism.
I have offered to supply a lovely framed picture of SS Peter and Paul to cover the ugly spots where the wallpaper has come away because of the mastic. Watch this space.

*** THERE was even more bitterness in the music lounge last Sunday night, kicking off just as me and the lads were flying home from Poland, apparently.
As is usual when there is trouble in a New Brighton pub, it was wimmin wot caused it all.
One bird was making wild allegations against Corky, the frontman with Wallasey band Recklessly Hellbent, while another was giving Mini Marvin a hard time and stealing Popstar Paul’s beer and fags.
Duncan Kindlyface intervened to restore order, getting quite shouty in the process apparently.
I’m glad I missed that … ‘cos Duncan can be very frikening when he’s got a nark on. Well, he is a football ref.

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