Once again I found myself trudging along the Harrow Road with The Fox on a Sunday evening. The night before I had rendered myself useless to all activities requiring brain power, via a persistent abuse of alcohol. So a game of pool was the perfect, non-taxing, pastime I needed.
The Fox was about to introduce me to the Cockney Arms; a pub not far from the now; closed-down-how-the-hell-did-it-ever-stay-open? Filth Bucket.
Looking at the Cockney Arms I could tell that it was the sort of pub you go to on a Saturday night when you’re really desperate for a fight. Having never been desperate for a fight, it’s a pub I had never even noticed before. The Fox tells me as we go in that the last time he had come here; there were some rather large bald chaps with football tops stretched over their beer bellies and menacing scowls on their faces. This bit of info not only causes me to check in the windows before we walk in, but also gives me a small twinge of longing for The Filth Bucket.
At least there was no danger of getting beaten up in the Filth Bucket.
The Cockney Arms
The Cockney Arms definitely falls into the Jekyll & Hyde category of pool pubs; on one day it might be full of people who look like they want to defenestrate you. Simply because they’re curious about how your head will react at high speed with the pub window.
On any other day the place will be deserted save for a handful of regulars over the age of sixty, listening to music that I’d happily commit suicide to; I think it’s Irish folk music, but folk music no matter where in the world it’s from (is there any non Cornish/Irish folk music?) has always had that effect on me. In fact anytime I hear folk music I wonder how anyone can listen to it and keep from harming themselves. The fact that folk music was around before thhe invention of the motor car or the fast train has probably saved many, many lives. Without access to a rubber hose pipe and an internal combustion engine or at the very least a level crossing meant that the early listeners of folk music probably had to make do with trying to gas themselves up a cow’s arse or something.
Anyway I digress; this particular evening was a regular night which was perfect for playing pool as none of the regulars liked pool. In the Cockney Arms there are two entrances leading to the two different halves of the pub, most of the regulars being old and moribund sit round the non pool part. My theory is that most of them have never even seen the other half of the pub and don’t even know there’s a table there, they act like that anyway. Another theory for the pool area always being empty on regular nights is that since the UK-wide smoking ban the pub has installed an industrial strength, automatic air freshener.
The hellish gadget squirts out a pressurised spray of noxious liquid that enters your lungs and reminds you that there are worse things than smoking. The taste remains in the back of your throat for the duration of your pint and is guaranteed to ruin the taste of even the finest ale.
It is far more offensive than the fattest, sweatiest man blowing the foulest cigar smoke directly into your face whilst exposing and playing with himself. They’ve put this ‘freshener’ there because the smell of farts and stale beer is starkly apparent without tobacco smoke. However I would rather be encircled by chronically flatulent old men smoking eight year old, Old Holborn rolling tobacco than have that sorry excuse for an air freshener anywhere near me.
It doesn’t so much freshen the air, as make it smell like a cheap brothel. It would seem that they decided to put that foul tool of Satan there, because of the fact that it’s the quietest place in the whole pub, which of course is self perpetuating, because no one likes a pint that tastes of eau de prostitute.
Unfortunately these are the kind of things one has to do these days just to get a nice relaxing game of pool. Surprisingly there are actually two people at the table when we walk in, I get the drinks in and The Fox puts our money down.
The first man is the epitome of the type of person I grew up with he can be summarised as; Loud Cockney Man, shortly after entering the pub, Loud Cockney Man gives his equivalent of a lion’s roar. It can be used for mating or just to warn any nearby rivals that he’s still got lead in his pencil, it goes something like; oi ooooiiii ahhh!!!! This is followed by an incoherent stream of deep cockney which only those; such as myself, whose ears are attuned to, can understand. Loud Cockney Man’s pool partner also represents a type of person I grew up with though not until my early teen years when I moved to Kilburn, this person is Little Irish Fella.
Little Irish Fella doesn’t feel the need to boom a mating call upon our arrival, but he’s just as incoherent as Loud Cockney Man, even though my ears are attuned to his thick Tipperary accent, Little Irish Fella is so drunk that I don’t have a hope of understanding what he’s saying to me.
Alcoholic Ballet
I wonder to myself if they can understand each other; there’s a good chance they can’t actually understand the words they’re speaking to each other, but I feel that through the common camaraderie of alcoholic intoxication there is some kind of deep bond they’ve established. In much the same way two captive animals of different species might form a bond of understanding even though their common ‘language’ is different.
The two men lurch around the table playing terrible shots, giving the impression that they’re part of a chaotic preordained ballet. Or perhaps it’s a sketch from a TV comedy show; on more than one occasion Little Irish Fella cues up on a red or yellow instead of the white.
The two are babbling at each other and occasionally to myself and The Fox, The Fox unfortunately can’t speak cockney and thus I whisper translations for phrases such as;
“ear are, ees ri ‘ucking tucked me up ere, tryin to stitch me ri up proper.”
Roughly translated as;
“Look, he’s snookered me.”
I could tell the stress was getting to The Fox, it’s hard to tell if someone is angry with you, if you can’t understand them and he was wondering if my translating of everything the man was saying was offending him or not.
Occasionally I’d be able to translate what Little Irish Fella was saying but it was much harder, especially with sentences like;
“oo da lidl divil wans mi oo (no translation) on oor wee bot der.”
Roughly translated as;
“Look he’s snookered me.”
The game had taken an unreasonable amount of time but The Fox was happy to let me take the next game as this would relieve the strain of having to talk to the winner, who rather remarkably, turned out to be Little Irish Fella.
I ordered two new pints and put my money into the table; before each game of pool I like to try and descend into a Zen-like pool trance. This is usually achieved about halfway to three quarters of the way through the second pint of lager. It is pool nirvana and every pub pool player has experienced this at one time or another. It is a feeling of calm and bliss, it is a moment where all the pockets seem like buckets and every shot you play comes off.
I was particularly trying to get there because I’d seen Little Irish Fella play and he played typical annoying old man pool which consists of trying to give your opponent the toughest shot to play on every single shot. It is extremely frustrating and for this reason I try and avoid playing old men but sometimes; as in this case, it’s simply unavoidable.
This is especially true if you’re in a Jekyll & Hyde or Old Man Pub; sure enough he attempts to snooker me on his second shot I sigh to myself this is going to be a long game, but I’m determined.
I manage to not let his incoherent musings put me off my game and I soon realise that he’s far too drunk to play effective ‘annoying old man pool’. He keeps trying to snooker me when he shouldn’t and it’s almost like he’s playing his own private game whereby the object is to try and keep all of your balls bunched up around the middle of the table, while moving them around a bit.
I was finding it increasingly difficult not to laugh as I continued to watch him play; after each terrible shot more indecipherable mutterings would come out of his mouth.
By this time I’m managing to converse with him by simply reading his expressions I can tell I’m doing well because with each answer I give he smiles and says something that sounds like,
“snap ere aarr do will i sii rit noow.”
In order to disguise my finding him extremely funny I engage myself in as many amusing anecdotes with The Fox as I can; that way I’m able to burst out laughing at regular intervals without seeming rude or insane.
Once I’ve dispatched with Little Irish Fella, The Fox gets up to put his money into the table. By this time Loud Cockney Man has come back to the table and attempts to put his money into the table at the same instant. This is the moment I’ve been dreading - The Fox doesn’t have a violent bone in his body and on top of that is blind as a bat. Whilst I have the capability to be violent; I, just like most people try and avoid confrontation at all costs.
I do a quick visual sweep of the pub as I put on my most disarming smile and inform Loud Cockney Man that we had put two coins on the table while he was still playing earlier. His reaction helped dispel the mental images I was having of having to fight my way out of the pub.
“No worries mate.”
Mine and The Fox’s game past without incident I had managed to find my pool nirvana and was playing well enough to beat him. So next it was Loud Cockney Man to the fore and once I had established in my own mind at least that he or any of his previously unnoticed friends weren’t going to stab me at any given moment, I got down to some quite good pool playing.
Star Crossed Players
Nothing though could have prepared me for his secret weapon, after a particularly comic miss, he looked up at me and for the first time I realised he was completely cross eyed. Considering the fact that the way he was playing pool would have made a gut-bustingly funny comedy sketch, I demonstrated a heroic amount of self control and not only did not drop on the floor and roll about laughing, but entirely managed to conceal my amusement.
At the end of the day the image of the cross eyed pool player had helped me realise that this place was a benign and friendly, if only a bit stark pub, I knew then that my research was going to take me to a lot worse places than this especially once I traveled out of the safe and warm confines of West London. How would I fare in North, East London or, God have mercy South London?
CryptoGee