The Stiffs go for glory this weekend in a winner takes all game at the All Alone Road Oval with promotion already in the bag. Good luck boys and remember…“clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!”
Coach Taylor – Friday Night Lights.
Slimmers’ World At The Scruffy.
There was a time we sat down at weekly prayers and discussed anything that kept us insulated from reality, aided and abetted by a steady flow of mind altering substances served by Norman our trans-sexual barman/maid.
Patch was late for this particular session and arrived with a worried look ordering a strange substance that looked like a coke.
“Guess my weight?” he challenged in a rather gloomy opening salvo, his usual hang-dog look depicting a St Bernard out of rum.
We sat back wondering if he was being serious and if the usual piss-taking might be a little lacking in sensitivity. Even the convict, so close to repatriation, looked more confused than usual, sat with cap on sideways en vogue.
“Fifteen stone?” I offered, which was not perhaps the best opener for the little man. Fortunately he did not break out in tears and storm out in a hissy hauling his handbag over his shoulder.
Big Al was not keen on a night discussing weight and diets preferring to focus on the latest blonde in his grasp, a cloudy 4% offering with a fine body and a sweet taste all the way down.
“Eleven stone” he mumbled hoping Patch would consider him kind if not already pissed. Andy and the convict took respective guesses before Patch rose to his feet.
“My name is Patch, I weigh thirteen stone because I love crisps and beer; I have sinned” as he stood at the head of the table. I felt we should break out into sympathetic applause and take turns to pat him on the knee in support, waving our beer mats.
“You fat bastard!” came my involuntary and somewhat uncharitable response; if only I could have that built in ten-second delay they have on the television.
The first meeting of Slimmers’ World at The Scruffy had duly been convened.
As we sat there wondering if anybody dared to order the weekly Wotsits, landlady Sara joined us, herself a devotee of Slimmers World largely due to having had a baby. Although Patch looks pregnant, The Scruffy is not about to witness a miracle.
Very kindly she began a free one-on-one counselling session allowing us to talk about something else. In reality she was desperate not to lose a customer especially with Patch now drinking JD & cokes like water.
Our troubled friend was searching for an App on his phone – not the usual BetFred – which would tell him how many “sins” were contained in many of his daily demons.
I made a silent promise if it ever came to this I would end it there and then by choking on a pork-scratching as a form of assisted suicide.
To the delight of Big Al we were informed that each of us – should we participate as a gesture of support – would be allowed twenty-five sins a day and that a pint of beer represented nine. A bag of chips is double so life’s pleasures appear few in this world.
Sex was not on the menu but for most of us it was a bygone pleasure anyway.
“What happens if I jog to the bar and back?” asked Big Al hopeful of redemption though resigned to the fiery gates of Slimmers’ World hell and an after-life surrounded by huge tattooed girls in grey leggings called Britney and Mandy.
Sara had brought down some freebies to encourage Patch including a version of a Bounty bar. Apparently this represented only seventy calories, that is if you could find it to eat it; they must include the calories in the wrapper.
With Patch eyeing up his banoffee breakfast bar as a secret snack in the taxi for the half-mile trip downhill back home, out came Sara’s Supper as Mick the Quiz staggered back to the corner with his pint of Echo Falls stuffing his mike in his shorts.
In celebration of Britain’s new post-Brexit extradition treaty with Australia, the convict goes back shortly. He too is on a diet of JD Honey which can be worrying when he asks for a drink it does sound like he calls me “honey”.
Arriving as a fat lad who could bowl sharp we are sending back an anorexic trundler barely quicker than Molly.
A seductive aroma had already flooded the bar well before the arrival of surprise hot roast beef sandwiches creating a stampede akin to Spanish bull-running as the regulars battled each other to get to the steaming plates.
Old Homeless looked like all his birthdays had come at once and even the Fishermen broke out in smiles, still maintaining hands over their prized quiz answers, the competitive senses not dulled by meaty aromas.
The convict looked so happy I feared he may seek an extended stay as Sara plonked a bowl of gravy and lashings of bread and dripping in front of him.
Curiously the App could not find how many sins a hot beef sandwich contained which was just as well as Patch was sat devouring a stack of them.
For the next few months we will now be having a Sunday weigh-in with Sara monitoring the scales – “you can **** off!” said Big Al in the true spirit of the challenge – and all of us clapping each lost ounce.
You can support Patch on www.youlittlefatbastard.com
Why Lunatics Need To Be Locked In Asylums.
Your dopey Council has had its grand plan to concrete larges swathes of the city ratified by some central government plonker who has probably never lived anywhere near Bradford.
Having written about this idiocy many times nobody has yet to convince me why Bradford needs another 42,000 new homes or how many immigrants can afford five bedrooms.
Worse still, as a city not bursting with an excess of attractions, the fact that the metropolitan area is over 60% rural – and often beautiful – should be something we should seek to promote and protect not bulldoze.
That over a quarter of these new homes are destined to be built on green belt defies belief.
However, take a shred of comfort if you will for where are the thousands of trained brick-layers, carpenters and roofers coming from to build what will amount to an annual new build far in excess of anything ever achieved?
It is simply pie in the sky and deep down they know it, half-wits that they all are.
Villas Christmas Calendar.
Since the start of the season readers will have “enjoyed” pictures of a few contenders for the Villas Calendar Boys. From an anonymous source I give you Mr August complete with multi-coloured Speedos.
Keep them coming!
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