Hmmm

Occasionally something makes you wonder what it says about you.

Yesterday I was running through the books in Tesco when I came across a book which was a guide to the rough pubs of the UK. The country had been scoured and all the pubs sifted out to make a top 50.

All fine and dandy, but the pub in which you are most likely to find me holding up the bar is listed at number 2 and gets 4 pages all to itself.

Then I looked some more and realised another pub that I can be seen in occasionally was in there too.

Then I noticed that one of the pubs I used to be seen in before I moved here was in there as well.

So that's 3 of the roughest pubs in Britain have had me as a regular customer at some stage.

But there's more, a lot of that is because you would be drawing up the list today and some of the pubs I knew have been gentrified or even closed.

Drawing a national list, back then you would have had to include at least another three of my regular haunts, except now, you would not. Because if you had walked in there and started taking photos like they did for this book, it's pretty unlikely you would have left with your camera or on your feet or through the door, well unless it was Monday and the glazier had not been round yet....

Included though was one of my old haunts which looked refreshingly un messed about with.

This was the site of the great village folk festival which was a bit limited in scope as the place had just the one pub.

I should point out that this was the early days of folk before the scene was overpopulated by strange hairy people who had superglued their finger into their ear whilst wandering round with a pewter tankard so they could drink dissolved lead.

But anyway, this festival was a friendly mix of bikers, a bunch from the local RAF camp and half a local TA unit each of which had arrived smelling the whif of bar that might be open a good while and a bit of fun to be had.

As part of the festivities it had been decided to revive the game of Bando. Traditionally this had been played on a local beach when the tide was out. That being the length of the game, till high tide.

The villages at either ends were the combatants, no I mean players and the game was basically about getting a ball, though I also heard it might have been a barrel of beer from one end of the beach to the other as many times as possible. The winning village being the one who succeeded in getting the ball to the right end of the beach the most often.

It was a heady mix of rugby, football, hockey (every player carried a suitably sized stick) with some of the less restrained aspects of murder ball.

This was pretty dangerous stuff so they dealt with health and safety considerations by not having any.

We used the pubs rather large garden. A "try" was deemed to have been scored if the ball touched the right end of the field.

For the sake of sanity it had been decided that if the ball went outside the pub boundaries it was out of play and spectators were required to toss the ball back in.

Inside the pub was also declared out of bounds, a matter dealt with by locking the front door.

The teams were "Wales" and "the rest". This produced a roughly equal divide of the 100 or so who decided they wanted to take part.

There was an unfortunate air of sexism, women were not allowed to play, funnily enough most of them showed no regret, saying something about them not being stupid enough to want to.

It was tremendous fun though, in a way that those brought up in a "lawyers are us" culture of blame and litigation might not get.

Just like today there was a solicitor there, but he was offering a service based on writing wills and they were being written on beer mats.

The game got off to an auspicious start, the ball went straight into the gents. In these days urinals were a wall you went against. So when the ball landed inside, a veritable army poured in after it. Meaning the poor chap in there was smashed into the wall and came out with a great wet streak up his front.

This was the time when Americans often touristed, and one was indeed there. Of course he had decided that the concept of the ball in the bog was outstanding so he placed himself in the best place to catch it as it came out.

This was not one of his better decisions as the ball indeed landed where he wanted it.

And 80 or so blokes smashed into the spot, much to the detriment of, well everything really.

His camera kit got reduced to it's basic components and he didn't do too well either.

I think he went off in the first ambulance.

The game was not limited by tides but the need every 10 minutes or so to reopen the bar so the spectators could buy beer.

It seemed a good idea also to get the most seriously injured off the field.

This was what ended the game.

The Police were already there.

The local bobby had been told that all he had to do to end the game was walk on and take the ball.

He was so selfless that he didn't want to keep it to himself
he decided to share it with the riot squad.

He added some concerns about whether they could do this deed as this was not people trying to rip each others heads off but hell bent on having a laugh.

The game finished when the ambulance control said they could not keep up and asked that we either stopped or gave up on 999.

The daft thing was that we were all pretty injured.

OK a lot injured

But it was fun.

Even the ones on stretchers were smiling.

Well except the guy who bubbled and dribbled a lot but he looked happy

R