Showing posts with label Gordon Williams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gordon Williams. Show all posts

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Hazell and the Three-Card Trick by P.B Yuill (Penguin Books 1975)



The pub Minty chose was rough even by Hammersmith standards. Of course there's good parts and bad parts of Hammersmith. This pub was as bad as any going.

Minty was already at the slopping bar when I pushed through the dingy saloon door.

It wasn't rough meaning violent - just horrible. The paper was coming off the walls in damp patches and the decor was like an old railway waiting-room with one difference. The lighting. I've never been in such a brightly-lit boozer. It was glaring.

The staff was an Irish bloke about twenty-five. He had the beer gut of a much older man. It was straining against a grey vest that in its turn was trying to pop out where his shirt buttons were missing.

From his pained movements and sharp sighs and groans it was possible he was suffering the worst hangover since Pisa. He hadn't shaved that day, although that was hardly likely to upset the clientele.

Actually I feel sorry for the Irish who come over here to wear big letters on their backs. They generally leave the wife at home on holy soil and only see her at Xmas to father next year's crop. In between Xmases they doss down in cheap rooms and send the wife's money home by postal order and drink themselves silly to fill up the void.

Thumping each other and kicking Chinese waiters is about the height of their swinging lives. They don't seem to have much interest in the local women and they tend to stick to their own pubs. 'It's gone Irish,' you'll hear people say about a rub-a-dub that's been taken over by the big men with the pixie ears. It's not meant as a recommendation.

I say sorry but not enough to want ten of them home for a cooked meal.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Hazell Plays Solomon by P. B. Yuill (Penguin Books 1974)


Back at Claridges they tried Mrs Gunning's suite again. No joy. I sat in the lounge and read the Standard. A loud cross-section of rich America trailed back and forth from the door to the desk.

I crossed my legs a lot. Nothing much was happening in the papers, a wages gang had got away with £89,000 in Pinner, London's new Labour bosses were planning radical moves but not now, an old widow had been raped and strangled in Camden Town, David Frost had a new girl, Battersea basements had been flooded by a cloudburst, new revelations were rocking the White House, the London football managers were again guaranteeing brighter soccer to bring back the missing millions, Centre Point was still empty, a teenager had been stabbed to death on his own doorstep, more old buildings were to come down to make way for more empty office blocks, London airport customs had pounced on cannabis worth £800,000 while London airport police were looking for a stolen consignment of diamonds worth £300,000. Oh yes, and our trade figures were the best for ten years. Or the worst, I can't remember.

Seeing it was dry again I went out and had a stroll round the interior of Mayfair. Wealthy middle-aged people brayed to each other in the entrances to restaurants that didn't have price menus outside. There's class for you. Uniformed chauffeurs relaxed with cigarettes in their masters' Rolls-Royces. A covey of bright young things in society gear whinnied on a balcony.

I knew they couldn't be real society. I mean, nobody hangs around dreary London in August, Jeremy. They didn't even chuck plovers' eggs at me.