They really are, aren’t they?
So far today, I’ve watched Jeremy Kyle (which is a daily thing anyway), ignored Jeremy Kyle USA (because it’s shit), watched various CBeebies offerings with the nipper, and waited for the missus to emerge from her pit. I’ve fed the nipper his breakfast and let the hound in the back garden for a richard the third. I’m currently sat on my arse watching Something Special with the nipper and listening to the missus’ ideas of what to do as a family on a bank holiday. None of which we will do because we’re too lazy to get off our collective rumps. This will continue until later on when I will muse over whether it is too wet to mow the lawn (it will be) and if I can be arsed to make something special for dinner (I won’t be).
I miss bank holidays of old. Twenty years ago, as a young Tyneside lad who was only just legal to drink, a bank holiday Monday meant a full day sesh in Whitley Bay.
Whitley on a bank holiday is a thing of legend. You’d start on Whitley Road in The Victoria (before it was The Bedroom) – Wetherspoons wasn’t there in those days. A swift one there then onto World’s End Distillery as you hit the top of South Parade. Then it was Easy Street, The Olive Grove, Pier 39 in later days, Rio, 42nd Street.
By the time you got to the sea front, it was time for a burger. Not for any reason other than you were puggled and it seemed like a good idea at the time. You’d be reunited with your burger later as it exited the way it entered.
Around this time, there’d be a lull in the amount of people staggering around as the afternoon drinkers with less stamina disappeared into taxis and worked out how to puke in the car and not pay the fee. The evening shift were on their way but it wouldn’t be until about 7pm by the time they showed their fresh faces.
This was a chance to take stock of how much cash you had left and whether the mustard you’d spilt down your shirt would affect your chances of getting into Sylvester’s or if you’d have to don your hard hat and go to The Royal. Ewww.
The evening session would bring more of the same as the afternoon – spending, supping, stumbling. At some point – usually before 10pm and in front of a gaggle of fit lasses – the aforementioned burger would make its reappearance. You’d wipe your chin, hope it wasn’t on your shoes and head off to Idol’s where you’d be relentlessly ridiculed by a dj in a baseball cap and Bermuda shorts.
The end of the night would hopefully be spent in Sylvester’s, a former theatre and cinema turned nightclub. Despite the amount of times I ended up in this den of iniquity, all memories of it are vague and perhaps that’s a good thing. Who knows what dubious activities took place in this establishment after the copious quantities of peeve we’d quaffed?
2:15am would bring a walk (stumble) up Esplanade and a right turn onto Whitley Road, the destination being Kebab King. Long before the discovery of the parmo, a pizza or a kebab was the preferred late night pissed-up nosebag – and a kebab must be smothered in chilli sauce. It’s the law. If your clothing had survived stain-free, this far then it would succumb to the chilli sauce (also the law).
If you had any money left, you’d wait in the ridiculously long taxi queue outside Woolworth’s but more often than not, it was shanks’s pony. It was only about a mile and a half but it took ages after a good all-day sup. Many’s the time the sun would be rising as I got home.
Do you know what? I’m absolutely knackered even just writing that. I think I’ll just loaf on the sofa, watching CBeebies with the nipper and annoying the missus. It’s so much easier.
Whitley Bay LOL.