It takes all sorts

Sticks and stones

Getting a slew of anonymous hate mail is a sure sign that you’re hitting the spot and touching a raw nerve, so I take it as a great compliment when I receive any – and today one of my gentle readers is apparently so touched by my humble scribblings that he feels an uncontrollable urge to vent a flood of semi-literate and ungrammatical invective in a batch of obscene comments on my last blog posting.

I’m deeply flattered that this deranged but dedicated soul should log on for one hour, seven minutes and forty-five seconds in the early hours of Saturday 24th March (6.20 am to be precise) in order to post no less than six comments under a ragbag of misspelt and laughingly childish pseudonyms. It shows dedication above and beyond the call of duty that this intellectual should spend so much of his valuable time in verbal rather than manual masturbation.

I must confess, though, that his ramblings leave me feeling somewhat depressed. Clearly our unsung hero has been tragically let down by the education system of whichever hapless country spawned him. His scrawl is a mishmash of risibly childish spelling, fractured grammar and chaotic structure – the lamentable product of an educationally impoverished childhood (or a double-digit IQ).

Unless, of course, there’s a double bluff going on, and it’s a shrewd and intelligent prankster hiding behind the persona of a semi-literate slob in order to vent his spleen by maliciously winding up the Reveller. If that is indeed the case, then all I can say is “nice try, but no cigar!” Or as the immortal CJ would have said, “I didn’t get where I am today without recognizing bullshit when I read it.”

Gorillas in the midst

Chatting at the bar in Top Gun with a trio of the Indramayu Sweet Young Things the talk turns to My Bar, and they ask me why I no longer frequent that fine establishment. I put it in simple words, but the upshot is that the place has gone to shit. I ask them what they think about it, and the youngest tells of the rough treatment she and her friends have been getting from some of the orang hitam who hang out there late at night. She complains that one of them in particular is rude, aggressive and disrespectful, and graphically recounts the manhandling she had from him on Friday night.

Now in all my years down the Blok I’ve been impressed by the respect shown to the girls by management and customers alike. In the rare cases of verbal or physical nastiness that I’ve witnessed or heard about, the other punters and the bar staff have stepped in and made it quite clear that such behaviour just won’t be tolerated. It saddens me that not only is this sort of thing going on in My Bar, but it’s not being stamped on by the bar staff or the other customers – who may be understandably reluctant to tangle with the sub-Saharan heavies.

Top Gun totty

I’m delighted to report, after so much doom and gloom in recent postings, that Top Gun is on a winning streak and just keeps on getting better and better. Saturday night is vintage Blok M, a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Late though it starts, the old place slowly picks up momentum and by nine thirty is humming with lively conversation and the buzz of people having fun.

As the witching hour of ten o’clock draws near, the band assembles and ominously prepares to perform. Time to call for the bill and scarper, I sadly reflect – but as they strike into their first number, I’m pleasantly surprised. There’s actually a recognizable tune being played, and – wonder of wonders – the volume is set just right so as to create a festive ambience without drowning out the conversation. So I call for another bottle, and sally forth to see the sights.

As the night draws on, more and more Sweet Young Things pour into the bar until the place is quite crowded. Now it takes a lot of people to fill Top Gun since they ripped out the walls and made it an open-plan bar, and what a difference it makes to the atmosphere when it’s full! As I wander round I marvel at the variety of totty on display – the Indramayu girls are there in force, plus a whole lot of ex-D’s Place and erstwhile My Bar regulars. And what’s this? The original Little Miss White Mini Skirt saunters past! Alas, she’s put on more than a little weight, but is just as sombong as ever and doesn’t even say hello. And who’s that in the corner? A particularly charming Sweet Young Thing who hasn’t been down the Blok for more than a year, and has returned in triumph.

There are a lot of younger guys in the bar tonight, obviously on the prowl and ready for action. As I wander out just before midnight the place has got a real late-night atmosphere building up, and there’s even a trace of sleaze about it – but what destroys the ambience for me is the glare from the whopping great TV screens, which no-one is watching. But this is a minor niggle, and it doesn’t spoil what has been a memorable night on the Blok.

English as she is wrote

As this blog post opens with reflections on the linguistic lacunae of a disgruntled reader, it closes with a dire example of the maiming and mangling to which our beloved language is daily being subjected in Blok M. Here, alas, is the damning evidence, the smoking gun – a snapshot of the front of one of the girls’ T-shirts:

Behind the mangled prose there’s clearly a message struggling to get out, a pithy epigraph desperately trying to impart wisdom to the world in general and young girls in particular. As I wander out of the bar and stroll off down the street I cannot help but interpret the last two lines as a warning to those stuck-up little Madams whose over-choosiness leaves them all alone at the end of the night, without a partner from whom to blag their taxi fare or a charitable donation towards the payment of their rent. One hopes that the message on this T-shirt will help them to see the error of their ways.