Friday 29th June
The bad old days
Memory can be a seductively selective thing. As I sit listlessly in a rather dreary Top Gun on this uninspired and uninspiring Friday night my thoughts float back to early days on the Blok, and the old Top Gun that has a special place in the heart of every long-time Blokker. Of course, it’s easy to call up flashbacks of the great nights, the wild and wacky sessions we used to have then - but that’s not the whole story.
So I dig deeper, and dredge up recollections of Bad Nights from long ago. Arguably my worst memory is one early evening in the rainy season, when Top Gun is slow to fill up because of flooding down in Bangka and Buncit. The poor sodden Sweet Young Things are too busy rescuing their belongings and bailing out their rooms to even think of attempting to reach the Blok, and the vacuum is filled by a motley handful of Sour Old Things who have the same effect on Top Gun as a heavy shower on Wimbledon.
A morose Mr Gimpy (Bouncer in Chief and Security Supremo) shuffles lopsidedly around the bar, looking like Kasimodo doing a passable imitation of Napoleon on his retreat from Moscow; the buxom barmaids gather in joyless huddles around the counter, and the few guys who’ve braved the elements to reach the Blok are hunched over their beers in muted desultory conversation. The pool table, usually doing a roaring trade at this hour, is unoccupied; the back-room restaurant cavernous in its emptiness. Jaunty pop tunes blaring from the bar’s two tatty old loudspeakers serve only to make the mood more doleful by their absurd counterpoint to the leaden atmosphere.
The moral of this little tale is that no matter how bad an evening down Blok M can seem at the time, it’s nowhere near as bad as it can be.
For some peculiar reason known only to the management there are fewer tables and quite a lot fewer bar stools tonight, making movement around the bar for all the world like some demented game of musical chairs. No sooner do I get up to play pool than my stool and table are jumped on by a couple of guys and their floozies. My game being predictably short and sweet, I’m left to wander the bar like a latter-day Flying Dutchman in search of a seat, humming the leitmotif from Wagner’s opera of the same name as I go.
Whilst on my quest for a billet I’m pulled up short by a hoarse shriek of laugher behind me - ah, that’s Rosa, I smile. This dear girl has been a fixture of Top Gun since any of us can remember, and her laughter is unforgettable. For those of you who are Fawlty Towers aficionados, she sounds just like Sybil.
Ten o’clock arrives, but the place is still fairly empty. The word goes round that a lot of the chaps are lingering in D’s Place for the Guys’ Lucky Draw, which has a hefty rollover jackpot this week. Then, right on cue, in lope the night’s musicians - a mixed bag of pimply youths sporting a shabby wreckage of jeans, tee shirts and jackets - all painstakingly slashed and gashed, faded and frayed, in full compliance with the dictates of teenage fashion. As they pass my table I sing “A wand’ring minstrel I, a thing of shreds and patches” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado.
The highlight of this ghastly parade has got to be the lead singer, a rather buxom lass who’s really a bit too long in the tooth for such youthful attire. But her pièce de résistance, a true sartorial coup de grâce, is what look like a pair of dark beige and badly scuffed velveteen waders that hug the ample curves of her plump legs and thighs. “It reminds me of my daughter’s buying clothes when she was at college in the States,” reminisces my old friend Mike - “she used to buy clothing by the pound weight”.
It’s a bad night for girl watching. The ubiquitous OEM’s are drearily inert, radiating force-fields of gloom and boredom. The few Sweet Young Things are chatting to each other rather than the guys, having given up the evening as a viable commercial venture. A cluster of rather timid youngsters is hiding behind the pillar by the bar door, reluctant to venture in for fear they impinge on someone else’s turf.
There is obviously a conspiracy afoot tonight - it’s as though there’s an unspoken competition to see who can wear the tackiest outfit. Dumb and Dumber seems to be in the running sporting tight blue jeans and velveteen high-heeled shoes, followed by a somewhat beefy maiden in a black pleated miniskirt that’s at least one size too small. But these aspiring winners are instantly trumped by a truly horrible sight down by the cash desk - a girl with a fuller figure wearing what I must presume is a white stretch Lycra miniskirt and matching top that leaves her rather fleshy midriff bare.
The award for the ‘worst wording gaffe’ goes to a very attractive Sweet Young Thing who’s wearing a black tee shirt with the slogan “D&C” emblazoned on it in large white letters. Clearly the poor girl is blissfully unaware of the medical meaning of D&C.
At about eleven the Night Shift arrives, a gang of likely lads who are obviously well primed to face the rigours of Top Gun. They strut into the bar with chests out, chins up and arms swinging with jaunty authority. “Tarzan’s here” is Mike’s laconic comment as they march into the Twilight Zone with the ferocious intensity of Men on the Hunt. I can’t help feeling sorry for them, as there are but slim pickings down that end of the bar and they’ll probably end up drinking themselves into macho oblivion rather than wenching.
Their entry is the cue for my departure, so I bid farewell to Mike and the remaining diehards to make my way home. Walking down the street I’m waved at by a giggling threesome of inbound Sweet Young Things. Courteously returning their welcome but quietly ignoring their dangerously seductive invitation to join them in whichever bar they’re headed for, I revert to my musical mood and hum the tune of another of my favourite songs from The Mikado - ‘Three little maids from school are we…’