Something I wrote last month



The Bear and Ragged Staff

It’s Saturday evening and I have found myself agreeing to accompany my niece Sheila to this establishment as she wants to see a rock band but does not want to go alone, quite understandable I think, as in her description of the venue she used the phrase “could be a bit rough”.

She drove me down to tattoo land, otherwise known as Crayford just south of the river, over the Dartford Bridge and turn right. We found the Bear and Ragged Staff without any problem, from the outside I would have to say that the best looking bit was the car park. We stepped out of the car having put all belonging out of sight, to be greeted by a burning smell. We were told later that not long before a cars engine had been on fire but the vehicle had since been removed. A large sign proclaimed, “Kent’s no 1 Music venue”

The band were setting up and thankfully the pub was not crowded, probably because it is August and people are away, décor was what you would describe as “in need of refurbishment” although it’s write up on the beerintheevening website mentioned a 2004 refurbishment. Mind you to be fair it also mentioned “necessary unfriendly bouncers” but there were none in attendance this evening.

The singer seemed to know everybody female within 20 yards of the band and greeted them all equally, “hallo darling” accompanied by a grope of a buttock, or a hand resting on a thigh as he kissed them. He knew my niece as this band had played at her wedding some years ago; she had a photo to show him.

About ten o’clock the band started, loud and heavy, the singer using his mike stand suggestively as he gyrated in time with the music. The lead guitarist was good, crystal clear riffs cutting through the racket; he was playing an old Gibson Les Paul.

I’ve never been to a pole dancing club but was given some idea of what it could be like when a couple of nearly sixty year old lardy looking women started to gyrate around a metal pole that was holding up a girder, in a highly suggestive manner running their hands through some old geezers hair who was sitting right there. The dress code for women seemed to be what I could only describe as “out of the back of a white van at a boot sale”, most of them had their cleavages on display and were in general, overweight. Their was a “chorus line” of three fairly ugly younger women over to the right, mouthing along to all the words, fag ash falling down onto their short skirts, clutching their breezers brought by a young man covered in tattoo’s. I thought a hooker had wandered in but “she” seemed very tall and it wasn’t just the high-heeled boots, she was definitely a he, where on earth do you buy a Basque like that?

Behind us whilst I was talking to the guitarist in the break, a younger couple were having a row, more like a screaming match, “you have been drinking too much”, I think she might have been pregnant but that wasn’t going to stop her from dancing her tits off during the second set.

The highlight was yet to come. The band was well warmed up and into their second set when three feet from my face I was treated to the sight of two well fit forty (?) year old lesbians dancing together. I always thought dancing was supposed to be a precursor to sex; this was some way beyond that. Compared to the pub benchmark both had good bodies and knew how to move them.

Five pints in and I was belting out the words to “Born to be Wild” with the best of them but resisted embarrassing my niece by displaying my air guitar skills. At the bar I was greeted as if I was a long lost local back from an enforced category ‘A’ holiday in Belmarsh ten minutes down the road. “All right Mate” “yeah Mate, I’m all right, you” “Yeah I’m all right too Mate”, best South London accents.

We passed safely over the border back into Essex about a quarter to one, the car had not been torched or broken into, there had been no bother and everyone had been very friendly.