The walking wounded

Better late than never, here’s the April diary - a rather slim volume, as the Reveller has had a multi-whammy month. Recovering steadily from his shattered arm, what does he do but trip and tumble arse over elbow into the drain outside his front gate one night. The left knee takes a wallop and the face is a bit bashed up, otherwise there’s no serious damage. With his bruised face, an arm in a sling and a pronounced limp, the Reveller now sports a distinctly piratical air, and as he hobbles into D’s Place one evening can be heard growling to the bar staff "Arr, avast there me fine beauties, look shipshape now, where be me grog!" and other piratical nonsense. Tragically the Reveller’s thespian accomplishments are totally wasted on the dear things, so he slips back into real English, sighs, and orders a Pernod.

The needy and the greedy

It’s a pretty nondescript Monday night, so the Reveller settles down for a chinwag with his friend who passes through the Blok every few months on his regional travels. As we swap pleasantries and catch up on the news, we watch the girls massing for the early-evening lucky draw in D’s upstairs bar. "A bit of déjà vu if you ask me", remarks one of the guys at the table. "You can say that again", quips the Reveller. Yes, it’s the usual suspects, the same old crowd - not many youngsters, and no new blood.

Now the girls may be here for the lucky draw, but they’re clearly in hunting mood and prowl the bar in ones and twos, stalking their prey with grim tenacity. "They’re off the mark pretty early tonight", comments the Reveller; "Yes, we used to call Monday night girls the Needy and the Greedy", replies his friend, "they’ve either failed to score over the weekend and are desperate to get some cash, or did score but reckon they might be on a winning streak".

Mulling over this profound observation the Reveller watches with amusement as most of the guys clearly don’t want to play, and brush off the girls with practised ease.

Bar chat

Tuning in tothe gossip, one common thread seems to be that My Bar is really gathering momentum and has been pretty well packed some nights. It seems that the management policy of "razzle them, dazzle them" is working nicely, and the place is firmly on the regulars’ late-night carousing circuit. The general feeling is that My Bar has now got its own personality, and complements the other bars on the street rather than tries to beat them at their own game. It’s a winning strategy, and can only be to the benefit of the whole Blok M community.

The other places? Everest seems to be on nobody’s "must drop in" list, and the guys who have wandered in (by accident, or lost bearings) comment that it’s empty. Top Gun tends to be an early-evening transit point for many of the blokes, who pop by to see if their mates are around and maybe have a bite to eat as the food is still good there. Oscars is likewise a port-of-call rather than base camp for an evening’s debauchery, but the Club - surprise of surprises - is said to be quite lively early on midweek evenings, worth popping in if you’ve nowhere else immediately in mind.

Highlights that the Reveller missed are a pretty good punch-up between two guys that apparently started in D’s Place and spilled over into the street, and a couple of sweet young things who emerged from the upstairs ladies in Oscars somewhat déshabillé and proceeded to dance for a few minutes before disappearing into the ladies to dress. Now anywhere but Oscars, and the Reveller would have said it was a clever management stunt designed to give the place a bit of notoriety - but the Oscars management has about as much imagination as a suet dumpling, so it was presumably an initiative of the girls themselves.

W(h)ither Lintas Melawai?

"Woe, woe, and thrice woe" might be the catchword for Lintas Melawai at the moment. As the Reveller reported not long ago, his last couple of sorties to LM were pretty disastrous affairs, and he hears that over the last week quite a few guys have drifted into the old place between one and two in the morning only to float straight back out because it’s moribund. Rumour has it that it’s finally dawned on the management that there’s trouble down at t’ mill, and Something Must Be Done. Another whisper is that in an act of desperation they’re trying to entice a well-known Blok M personality previously associated with LM to come in and sort things out. But the Reveller reckons the place is now so dead they’d need a Dr Frankenstein to resurrect it.

Epilogue

Well, that’s the news in brief. Although there’s not a lot to report, the straws in the wind are all blowing in a healthy direction and the bar owners are bullish that business is going to continue doing well - as long as the presidential elections don’t go pear-shaped. It’s rumoured that quite a number of international companies are waiting on the touchline ready to move substantial investment back into the country if the transition of power is smooth, and the new leader is palatable to the international community.

But of course, the realms of high-finance, politics and diplomacy are - when all’s said and done - an Aristophanic charade, a Cloud Cuckoo Land of make-believe, a fairy-tale of wishful thinking laced with pure fantasy. By comparison, the world of Blok M that we know and cherish is a haven of normality in a crazy world.