Played host to a section of my harem today, with three of the core members - A, Athena the tiny half-person infant Greek child, and Michelle joining me in Liverpool from London, Southampton and Manchester respectively. It's customary for different divisions of the harem to get together at different points of the year, a little like a conference, and we always have a high old time. We discuss who likes me the most, that sort of thing. It's all very civilised.
No - I don't have a harem. Renata jokes that I do, but it's really that I'm lucky enough to have a lot of female friends. I am not linked to them by Middle Eastern law in any respect, and whilst I do insist they do my bidding and hide their faces in public, this is completely their decision.
Remarkably I'll have known A and Michelle for ten years this August. They knew me when I was a wee slip-of-a-lad, wide eyed and stupid, and now they've seen me grow, outwards, into a 29 year old male who has (the most extreme age-guess estimate having been put at 43 by a man in Leeds) become so different to the ten year ago me that all are agreed that I don't look like an older me, but a different person entirely. Still wide eyed and stupid, but unrecognisable in every other respect. What's worrying about this is I have exactly the same hair style and dress in an identical way, and yet it's true, I bear absolutely no resemblance to the 19 year old me at all. I couldn't begin to tell you why this is. I've not been working down a copper mine in complete darkness. I've not been a professional fisherman working off Orkney. I drink, but I don't think I've got a drinkers face or it's aged me. I've metamorphosised into another person through genetics alone and that's a rather curious thing. A and Michelle look the same as she did ten years ago in my eyes.
Anyway they had a staggered arrival for this long planned weekend. There was no actual or specific reason for us all convening but we do from time to time and it's a nice tradition to uphold. Michelle arrived at mine in a Taxi from her Mum's in Atherton, Manchester, and we drove to the station to meet firstly Athena fresh from four train journeys that had taken her from Southampton, followed conveniently by A off the London service. Ferried back to mine with a quick turnabout we were soon up on Hope Street having a cocktail in The Residents Lounge at the Hope Street Hotel. It's a decent enough venue but the service is pitifully slow. It's that thing of standing at the bar for a drink and being told "don't worry, someone will come to your table." The trouble with this is it's no convenience. True, you don't have to carry a drink to a table but what sort of hassle's that? Instead of being served, you get put in a cueing system that's up to the waiter. The bar was near empty and we waited upwards of twenty minutes for our simple drinks -
"Oh stop it Stanley, you're life is so difficult, how did you cope?"
Shut up. We waited about twenty minutes and then when the drinks did arrive we ordered another round immediately thinking that we might as well equate this poor service into our rhythm if we wanted another drink by the time we finished the first and so it turned out to be. Order a drink, then when it eventually arrives order another, safe in the knowledge that it will take you about fifteen to twenty minutes to make your second simple cocktail and so you can settle into a sort of pattern. It's ridiculous that a reputable bar should operate this way. I've said it before and I'll say it again - wouldn't happen in America.
It's a rather British thing to have to craftily make the most of appalling service and then feel pleased with yourself that you've found a way to adapt to it. It's like paying to watch a dreadful game of football and feeling pleased that you've invented a game in your own head where the winner is the one who gets the most amount of throw-ins. You're being ripped off but you've had to find an unsatisfactory way of making the circumstances work.
So we only gave it a couple of rounds there and then moved on to the poorly named Bumpers on Hardman Street which plays an agreeable, if unsuitably loud, selection of Motown but in comfortable, retro indie surroundings. Moving onto Magnet, A said she was tired and really could do with getting home and the rest of us were shocked to see it was four in the morning. It felt like midnight, if that. I tell thee, the so called new licensing laws have been a massive let down (pop out for a pint at 5am - no chance) but the fact that some venues are open later really does mean you have a more relaxed evening and you concentrate less on the clock. Now all that needs to happen is that licensees begin to actually use the powers available to them and start taking a few financial risks when it comes to keeping staff on and having the door open a few extra hours. No-one seems to be taking the 24 hour plunge. Magnet is 5am now, on a weekend, and does well on the rumour - unfounded- that it's open 24 hours so people tend to head there. I don't think they ever do open 24 hours. If they do, and I suppose we could arrange this, Trevor and I had the idea to try a noon-till-noon session sat in the same place. That's considerably more difficult than it immediately sounds and would be interesting to try - if we arrange it with Magnet I'll post the date here and you can all come along for the filthy ride.
So the four of us left for home and A and I were conked out in our respective beds minutes after getting through the door but Athena, the world's best and inexplicably capable drinker (she's the size of a thimble but she'd quaff a rugby team under the table) and Michelle (officially the worst at drinking in the Northern Hemisphere) stayed up nattering. It's nice to have the girls here. Not every 43 year old has the privilege.
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