You're So Sheer, You're So Chic, Teenage Rebel Of The Week...........

Shite! I've just seen the Aquafresh family on tv and for a brief moment I was nine years old and sitting in front of the tv between ad breaks in the Benny Hill Show. Where did they dig the fuckers up from? There they were, smiling inanely, swaying to some ludicrous barbershop jive in their terry towel bathrobes in some sort of synchronised tooth brushing frenzy. The bastards. Ah yes, dental health. I will openly admit I squandered a mouthfull of fairly strong teeth in my early adolescence by drinking vast amounts of Coca Cola and Pepsi, eating choccy bars for lunch and yes, not brushing my teef. Ever. I think it was when I became marginally self aware (about sixteen, a good two years later than most boys) that I finally learned that a bit of tooth scrubbing might be a good idea, if only to maintain a modicum of breath freshness in front of a lass I might have liked at the time. Same goes for bathing................ I now have at least one tooth with a pretty large cavity, another that seems to have started to crumble and a bit of the old receding gumline. I'd rather lose me hair to be honest. I should go and get it all seen to but the last experience left me a tad traumatised. I took all the wrenching and grinding and gum ripping in good humour, but i'm terrified dear reader. I feel like I'll need a local just to survive the prodding and poking of a checkup. What I do know is that I need to find a mouth quack in the new year or i'll be heading head first towards abcess city, and i'd rather go under the drill than do that again.

So, how are ye? Good? Hope so, no excuse for being glum on a friday night. Unless yr working tomorrow, in which case bad luck............Know how it feels, I spent eight years (man and boy) doing that shite in various pub kitchens. In my case I got into a love-hate thing with the job I was doing (KP, lowest of the low), especially the Bank Restaurant in Queen Street. It seems a million miles off now, but I seriously miss certain things about it now. The back sink full of pots, usually with soup burnt indelibly to the bottom of them. Nah, not that......Fat Barry, Mad Maisie, Rhonda the head chef's burd who could scratch eyes out for Scotland. Errr, well..........Ok, so the tips were good! Ah, no, they weren't. Kitchen staff usually got shafted on them. I remember the pitched battles, the foul mouthed abuse, the huffy strops...........Two hours later we'd all be sitting at the bar getting quite joyfully pished. I think that's the abiding memory of it all I suppose, the lack of bullshit amongst most of us. We all had our rammy's and whatnot, but the idea of a clique was an absolute anathema. Offices? The work is fine, but fuck me if they aren't populated by some of the most socially retarded toss bags you'll ever meet. Anyway Saturdays at The Bank were a riot, a ritual, a brutal reminder that the world didn't just stop at 5pm on a friday and for 8-10 hours you would be in the heart of this machine (well oiled and not-so-well oiled, depending on who was on) and at the end of it all, all you had the energy to do was get wasted..................Grim days? Grand days? They were just days.........