The naffness of bank holiday Wirral!

We went to Hell's Waiting Room, New Brighton, late on Friday and it was rocking with music... just like the old days!
In fact, it was better than the old days. There was this guy called Normanton (no-one gets their real name in this blog, remember!) playing a mean guitar.
Haven't seen him in there often but it turns out he's married to Lulu, a local food technician and New Brighton character.
Food technician, eh? Can't be much demand for her skills in our blessed peninsula - judging by the p***poor standard of restaurants around these parts (more of that later).
Lulu and Normanton had a young friend with them - a blond lad known as The Milky Bar Kid. He displayed a fine talent for swing ballads. Oh, it was all very jolly. Even Mr Craggs, the landlord of HWR, appeared to be enjoying himself.
On Saturday afternoon I planned nothing more energetic than laying on the long black leather sofa in my lounge in New Brighton and reading a novel called Portnoy's Complaint (don't bother getting it, because although it's famous, it's not very good).
However, my relaxation was interrupted by a phone call from my beloved Posh Boots. She had fainted in a café while out shopping with her mum in Birkenhead.
Quick as I could I drove to Birkenhead to pick her up, the poor thing. She looked pale and strained and was in no fit state to drive home.
So I drove her car, with her and her mum in it, back home then walked into Birkenhead from Wallasey to retrieve my own car. Great fun - NOT! - the walking, that is.
On Sunday, I had a meeting at the very nice Home café at the Woodside ferry terminal in Birkenhead with John Gorman (ex member of The Scaffold) and several poets. We are setting up WAPS (the Wirral Alliance of Poetry Societies) to raise the profile of poetry locally.
My own group, the Bards of New Brighton is signing up to the new alliance, as are the two poetry groups based in Birkenhead.
As I said, the café is very nice, tasteful, with good food. Wish I could be equally complimentary about the Mersey Ferries - but as everyone knows, the ferries are these days a most inadequate and crap service.
Monday was entertaining for all the wrong reasons. We had decided to go out and enjoy the fine weather and get a nice pub lunch, forgetting that Wirral doesn't really do "nice pub lunches".
It does do pretentious, over-priced restaurant lunches and nasty greasy, over-priced pub lunches, but not ones that can accurately be described as nice.
We went off for a drive into what are laughably called the "posh" parts of Wirral. First call was a red sandstone pub called the Mirby Ill - or summat like that. From a distance it looked promising, a red sandstone building that advertised tapas, among other things.
Once inside, however, I went off the place. There was an air of chaos and half-heartedness, and through a hatch I spotted a sweaty, hefty lass in the kitchen - the chef apparently.
We were hungry but we didn't fancy eating straight away, so we ordered (over-priced) drinks and sat outside. Dear me! The garden was unkempt, grass to nearly knee level in parts, no ashtrays, an overflowing litter bin.
We saw some lamb burgers being fetched out of the kitchen and didn't like the look of the accompanying chips - bright orange - so we supped up and drove off in search of grub at our next pub...
.... which was called the Farmer's Arse. A huge place, it offered a very basic barbeque outside, operated by two teenage boys. No thanks... not quite good enough for me and Posh Boots.
We would have stayed for a drink but there was only one hassled young slip of a girl behind the bar and we could not be bothered queuing in such a chavvy pub.
Plus there was face-painting for children going on - urgh! Do I not like that! I don't like seeing children in pubs at all. Period. Kids should be at home playing with mud in the garden on bank holidays, or indoors crayoning.
We finally ended up, in desperation, in The Idle Loafer in Thurstaton... apparently a VERY posh village. This was equally naff, but I was so hungry I did partake of its ghastly fry-by-numbers bar menu.
I had something called Smothered Chicken - which was a small breast of chicken with a bit of bacon and cheese on it. It came with catering pack chips and a tiny bit of green veg on the side - and it cost more than eight quid! How awful - it should have cost no more than three quid.
I was dismayed to see this pub also had face-painting going on, and kids running wild everywhere. There was also a very moronic outside disco, played way too loud, which featured such cheesy rubbish as 'Reach For The Stars' by S Club Seven.
Naffness piled upon naffness in a supposedly "posh" part of Wirral.
I really wish we'd gone away for the weekend, like my friends Dr Gyggle and Litherland Lou did.
They went to Torquay and had a ball.
We stayed in Wirral and were forced to reflect on how awful life in our country has become.