Saturday night entertainment in Lichfield in the 1980's
Lichfield was still pondering the changes when Onsite got an evaluation trenching contract before development commenced on a new mall complex including a Cinema on what was the existing council carpark and the area surrounding the bus station:
This project was the biggest upheaval in Lichfield's history since Prince Rupert of the Rhine demolished the cathedral's spire during the English Civil War. It was such an upheaval, in fact, that the local newspapers were full of letters from the older generation (of which Lichfield is made up of about 80%, Lichfield being somewhere you go to die, not live...) debasing the coming cinema. The cinema would give the local 'youths' somewhere to gather. Obviously this would lead to them all hanging around in groups and smoking Ecstasy until they were ripped off their tits on LSD Acid. What the letter writers failed to note was that the local 'youths' had nowhere to go and hung around in groups smoking ecstasy anyway. At least a Cinema would give them a focal point and help release some of that tension that living in a town populated by geriatrics who get excited at the prospect of a Christmas show from Phil Cool can generate. This was the kind of attitude we were up against in Lichfield. Development and change=BAD, sitting on your arse for centuries doing nothing=GOOD. laissez le bon temps d'arrêt.
The Church says NO(to the cinema)!
It wasn't all bad, Lichfield had it's share of characters as only parochial places can. We stayed in Pauline's B&B for the most part and I have covered my adventures there in this post. I forgot to mention in that post that the dentist Daniel was mistaken for turned out be a Hungarian/Bulgarian/Romanian (I was never quite clear which) man with quite a dour demeanor and a hatred of 'the Muslim'. He was never seen in daylight hours and I'm fairly positive that 'Vlad the Extractor' slept in a coffin lined with soil from his homeland...
'Please be to opening ze mouth and saying ze Arrrghhhh'
There was Sven the bartender in one of the pubs, a Margret Thatcher supporting Wiccan Wizard. He spotted my Tenhornedbeast t-shirt and asked if it was a Star of David I was wearing. A Star of David with ten points? I thought you were an authority on Magic Symbols Sven? He also bored me for a while with his stories of laylines instead of allowing me to try my lay lines on the attractive barmaid he was working with.
'One for the road, Lads?'
Vlad and Sven were not the only weirdos that we met within the city walls of Lichfield and I'm sure Duck L'Orange can wax lyrical about them for hours, but that is not the purpose of this piece. Lichfield marked the last job I would work for Onsite for nearly two years. This probably had something to do with what happened on the day before I left the company. We had been erecting fences around the holes we were digging in the carpark, Nick had come down from York to oversee Lauren and myself, as Barry was off eating pies or something. Lauren had been tasked with watching the machine as it cut it's way into the ground. I was, single handedly mind you, building the fences around the holes. In a brief pause I placed a spare fence panel absentmindedly against the half built fence. The wind took the panel and it fell into the carpark. It fell into an empty bay, unfortunately the next bay was occupied by a vehicle (I don't remember the particular make, it's all a bit of a blur after this..). The fence panel was exactly the right size to fall on the car's left side and scratch about twenty identically spaced lines down each panel of the vehicle.
How the car looked to me in those pregnant seconds after dropping the fence panel...
I looked at the fence panel, looked at the car, looked at the fence panel, wondered if I could get away without saying anything. I decided it was far too obvious and had to 'fess up to Nick. Nick looked at the fence panel, looked at me, looked at the car, looked at the fence panel, looked at me, wondered if he could get away with smashing my teeth down my throat in broad daylight. He decided it was far too obvious and left a note on the car to get in touch with him about insurance. Apparently the lady did and although I never found out exactly how much Nick paid out in insurance for the repair job he reminded me of the incident every time I talked to him on the phone for the next eighteen months. I sheepishly left Onsite for France, but I'll talk more about that in the next instalment, so while you think about that, I'll give you another bonus from the Singapore blog:
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Today is Vesak Day, we had the day off and I was going to spend it lying prostrate in front of a massive Golden Buddha, releasing a load of doves and then taking part in a candle lit procession like the good Buddhist I am. I got on the MRT and was heading down to Chinatown when B*** called me, telling me to come back to Yishun. Apparently I was needed as we were going to change our flights back to the UK. I thought they only needed my passport, which I had dropped off earlier. But, no, that wasn't good enough for Singapore Airlines. I needed to be there in person T**** had been told on the phone. So I duly arrived back at their apartment and we all set off down town. When we got there it turns out we didn't all need to go and least of all we didn't even need our passports...
Having ruined my Vesak day, which I had been looking forward to since the last one, me and B*** went in search of a Gun Shop he had read about in the Yellow Pages. God I was so angry I was gonna get a gun and just start blasting! Imagine, ruining MY BUDDHIST CELEBRATIONS!!
The shop was shut, so I went around the Arab quarter which was really nice, like Morroco, but better. Then walked back into town and bought myself a guitar for about £50. This is how nice people are here, I bought the guitar, the guys in the shop gave me a load of plectrums for free and then took a dollar off the price as they had no change. I then went up stairs to see Dean in To Megatherion, I bought the CD I am listening to now and he knocked two dollars off the price, again because he had no change. Imagine that in the UK?
And further to this, we needed some tyres for the array, the ones that were provided have copper banding in them. The instrument is looking for metal in the ground, so obviously having metal in the wheels fucks up the readings, as the machine reads the wheels and not the ground. We went to this bike shop called Cheap John's (true.), told the guy (I presumed it was John) our problem and he said "here, take this wheel, it's plastic, has no metal in the tyres." We said,"OK,How much do you want for it?" 'John' said "Don't worry, try it out and if it works then pay me, if not, then bring it back whenever." We were Gobsmacked. The upshot of the story was we couldn't be bothered to change the wheels over so we took it back to 'John' anyway. We are well on the way to finishing the second area of the site, there are quite few large anomolies that we have picked up with on the scanner but they shouldn't be a problem, unless they are 2,500lb Japanese Bombs. Mind you, we won't have any more problems if they go off...
Only B*** and I have been on the site for the past couple of days, T**** seems to have gone down with Dengue, the disease spread by mosquitos. It's like flu but takes about a month to get over. One of us had to get it. I expect we will all come down with it at some point. It's not fateful but there is nothing you can do about it. Mind you Dengue is the least of the problems if there is a Japanese bomb sitting under the ground, we'll find out tomorrow....
