CHAPTER 17

THE CHRISTMAS OUTING

The venue they chose for their Christmas get-together was one of the oldest public houses in Llandudno, The Kings’s Head, situated at the foot of the Great Orme. The pub itself was first made famous in 1844, when the decision to build it was based on the suggestion made by a Liverpool architect after he proposed that it would make an ideal watering hole.

Almost everybody was in attendance at the Christmas outing, except of course for Will and Stacey, plus Guy who had already informed them that he was running a bit late. The rest of the team, and their wags were sitting in the upper circle overlooking the bar.

In between chit-chats with the guys, Geoff took a sup of his Guinness and watched contentedly how everybody seemed to interact so effortlessly. Even the wives and girlfriends who had never even met before, rabbited on like long lost school pals.

Charlie’s missus, Clare who was just a notch above average looking and had a blonde bob haircut, was chatting with Geoff’s wife Jan about clothes (what a surprise) But what really interested Geoff about Clare was that whenever she described something, she always seemed to pull the strangest expressions as if she was actually tasting her words. Weird!

Mike’s fiancée Sienna, a heavy-set coffee-skinned black girl, had the most astonishing shade of brown eyes he’d ever seen. She was having a tete-a-tete about holidays with Phil’s wife Norma. However, Tom had arrived without his girlfriend Karen, and when Mike enquired where she was, he replied that she would be coming later.

Geoff suspected that perhaps they might have had an argument and Tom was embarrassed to admit it.

Then there was Brad, the only other member of the team who had arrived unaccompanied. Yet by the way he was eyeing up all the young ladies swanning around the place, he was certainly looking to remedy that. Not wanting Brad to feel left out, Geoff leaned over to chat with him.

‘Hey Brad?’ He almost had to shout over the din, and Brad raised his brow in response.

‘So how long have you been living in North Wales?’

‘About two years now. I’m originally from Brussels, but my family moved to Cardiff when I was six. Then I came up here to look for work.’

Geoff was curious why Brad hadn’t picked up a South Walien accent, but didn’t mention it. ‘Are you settled here now then, or are you planning to move on?’

Brad gulped down a mouthful of Magner’s cider. ‘Yes, I’m settled for now, and I’m considering going to tech here to study psychology.’

Geoff nodded with admiration just as he spotted Guy and his wife, enter through the door. Geoff waved down at him until he caught his eye. Guy thumbed back up his glasses and led his wife up towards them. Although Geoff and Guy had known each other for a number of years, Geoff had only been introduced to his wife, Joyce, just the one time. That was ten years ago, and those first impressions still remained.

With regards to that first meeting with dear old Joyce, Geoff found that as hard as he tried, he just couldn’t seem to warm to her. Although, this certainly wasn’t an indication that he disliked her in any way, he merely put it down to the fact that because she was so shy, she probably had very limited social skills.

Geoff always felt that she belonged to a certain breed of woman, whose sole purpose in life was to have a short courtship, marry, settle down, and that’s it! She was a throw-back to those old-fashioned post war-time wives, who hardly ever used to go out, except to shop for their families. They hardly ever socialised except when there was a wedding, or funeral to attend to, and they only ever made love for one purpose alone, procreation.

Not that there was anything wrong with this, different strokes for different folks etc. Maybe she was simply born in the wrong era?

Yet to be fair to her, in her prime she was an attractive woman, not in a glamorous sense, but in today’s lingo, what we term a yummy-mummy. The problem was she never realised how attractive she was, or simply, it was never that important to her. Geoff found himself pondering about this all over again.

Shame, Geoff sympathised, as she clung to Guy’s arm like a lost child as they reached the group. Looking at her now as she approached middle-age, she reminded him of a beautiful garden rose that had always been kept in the shade and never had the privilege of basking in the sunlight. Geoff stood up from the table to greet them, and tapped Guy heartily on the back. As for Joyce, he planted a respectful peck on her warm, scented cheek. In a way, Geoff could feel her agony, her pain, her torture at having to step out of her safe little world and expose herself like this to the prying, critical eyes of her peers.

Soon the next round of drinks arrived, and everyone clanked their glasses together. The place itself, appeared to be filling up quite a bit now, and new arrivals had to cluster together by the entrance until they could find a spot to stand or sit. Geoff looked over the wooden balustrade and jeered at the sight of a group of tarty looking women wrapped up in Christmas tinsel. By now the noise levels were rising to an almost deafening babble.

Geoff felt a tap on his arm; it was Tom, so he leaned over to hear what he wanted. Tom’s face was becoming a tad flushed, and his eyes were already beginning to glaze over with effects of the alcohol.

‘Yer mate Will not coming then?’ He asked.

Geoff shook his head. ‘Got women trouble to sort out.’

‘Where the hell did you dig him up from?’ Tom was almost shouting now because of the noise.

‘He’s an old friend and training partner.’

‘Yeah, but what’s he all about?’

Geoff blew heavily. ‘That’s a long story which I don’t think we could get through in one evening.’

‘Well, what was he a boxer or something?’

‘No, not at first, he started off as a karate student just like you, then he began delving into other styles, exploring other methods of self defence to see what they had to offer. In the end he picked what he wanted from everything he’d learned, and formed his own way of fighting.’

‘What like Bruce Lee?’ Tom jeered.

‘Not quite.’

Charlie chimed in. ‘Sort of, wos his name, Frankenstein, taking the best body parts and building the ultimate human being?’

Geoff smiled at his analogy. ‘Exactly.’

‘Think he’s ever killed anyone?’ Tom asked morbidly.

‘I don’t know about that. But whether he has or not, he doesn’t do it anymore.’ Geoff replied diving into his Guinness to duck out of any more stupid questions.

‘I think he has.’ Tom winked knowingly.

Geoff swallowed a mouthful, and put his pint back down. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because he’s got that look.’

‘What look?

‘Like he doesn’t give a shit. Like he could stomp on you as if you were a spider, and then carry on eating his cornflakes.’

Geoff took another swig to hide his derision. Behind their group, a handful of folks at another table began singing Christmas songs, and one or two of Geoff’s lot joined in. After the songs, and the cheers ended, most of the women visited the ladies while others nipped off to the bar for refills.

Mike, the only coloured member of the team, came to sit by the lads, and Geoff saluted his arrival. Taking advantage of the opportunity he decided to get a bit of background on his team member.

‘Hey Mike, how did you get hooked up to these two then? (meaning Tom and Charlie)

Mike shrugged bashfully. ‘Oh, I was training for the marines and got discharged for beating up another trainee.’

‘Why was that?’

‘He kept on harassing me and making comments about the colour of my skin. So in the end, I waited until he was on toilet cleaning duties, then I did a crap and used his head as a bog brush.’

Although Tom and Charlie had heard this story before, they still couldn’t help giggling like a pack of hyenas.

‘Nice,’ Geoff remarked.

‘Yeah, so I came out of the marines and went to stay with my girlfriend Sienna in Llandudno, and based on my recent faux pas…’

‘Ohhh.’ Tom mocked his fancy turn of phrase.

‘She suggested that I’d be better suited channelling all that pent-up energy and hostility into becoming a doorman. And that’s where I met tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum here.’

They both gave him a look for his cheek. Nudging Geoff’s arm, Brad nodded down to puny-looking Guy getting jostled in the queue for the bar. All of them craned their necks over the wooden balustrade and found it amusing to see him being bounced around like a rugby ball in a scrum.

Geoff sat back with a note of caution. ‘Yeah but they’d soon start flying if he began to throw that hip of his.’

Tom sneered. ‘To look at him you’d think he’d get beaten up by a gang of field mice.’

Geoff raised a brow. “Once, in our youth when he wasn’t throwing petrol bombs, he was throwing six foot four guys out of the Boulevards.’

Everyone found this difficult to believe.

‘Oh yes, once this nipple-head, another bouncer at a club in Rhyl, was on a night out showing off to his girlfriend and all the other bouncers that he was the top dog. So what does he do? He picks on the smallest guy in the place and accuses him of spilling his drink. Even though Guy was nowhere near him, he still apologised and offered to buy him another. But that wouldn’t satisfy this chap’s ego, and he expected Guy to crawl on his hands and knees like a dog.’

‘Cheeky bastard,’ Tom huffed, checking that none of the women had heard his language.

‘Anyhow, Guy tried to walk off and the chap grabbed him by the collar. Next thing this sixteen stone tower of a man was wind-milled over and crashed into the table full of drinks. What a sight! And there was little Guy standing over him.’

‘So what happened then?’ Brad asked.

‘Well, he didn’t stay around waiting for him to get back up, he was off, job done.’

Phil the copper then arrived with a fresh tray of drinks, and everyone welcomed the sight of more Christmas cheer. Later Geoff collared Phil for a quiet word and asked about the possibility of acquiring some stab-proof vests for the team. Phil blew hard at the request, but said he would try his best.

Towards the latter part of the evening, most of Geoff’s party were becoming a little worse for wear. By now everybody had on their beer goggles, and there were the usual teary sniffles from some of the women, (namely Phil’s wife) who had drank just a bit too much vodka and orange. Now they were down to their last round of drinks.

Standing by the entrance to the toilet, Brad was chatting up a cute-looking brunette in a stripy jacket, and a short denim skirt. From their balcony table, Geoff and Guy smiled admiringly. ‘Fair play to him, nice to see him making the effort.’

Guy thumbed his glasses back up. ‘Yeah, especially after he caught his fiancée cheating on him a couple of years ago.’

‘Shit, what did he do?’ Geoff asked.

‘He jumped straight on the chap she was with, but unbeknownst to him, he turned out to be a judo brown belt.’

‘Did he get beaten?’

‘No, no, he managed to survive, just. But for a while he said he was getting tied up in knots. That’s why he came to my dojo and started learning the art.’

Listening to this, Charlie, bleary-eyed, joined in on the conversation.

‘I was thinking of starting judo classes once,’ he slurred.

‘I didn’t know that?’ Guy replied.

‘Yeah, me old man, used to do a bit in his youth, before he hit the bottle that is. And he started to, you know, teach me a bit.’

Guy nodded, interested. ‘So did your father pick it back up later on in his life?’

Charlie’s glazed eyes dropped to the beer-spilt table. ‘Naw, the drinking saw that he never got the chance again, boom, boom.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ Guy said flashing Geoff an uneasy glance.

Finally the Christmas night out began to draw to a close, and couple by couple they started to depart. With only a handful left, and with their taxi waiting outside, it was Geoff and Jan’s turn to bid everyone good night. Tom, still tanked up, but coherent enough, stood up and gave Geoff an almighty bear hug. Geoff strained in his tight embrace, and waved to everyone else before lumbering out of the King’s Head clutching his wife’s hand. Feeling fuzzy-headed himself, but not completely cabbaged like some of his chums inside, he flopped in the back seat of the taxi with Jan. The taxi was warm and cosy, and had a sobering scent of tobacco about it. As they pulled off, Jan leant her weary head on her husband’s shoulder.

What a night, Geoff said to himself, not only did everyone thoroughly enjoy themselves, but they also got to know a bit of history about one another.

First there was Brad from Brussels and the judo lesson from his cheating girl’s lover. Then there was Mike getting discharged from the marines for using someone’s head as a toilet brush. And last but not least, they had Charlie who lost his judo teaching father to the bottle. What a motley crew of neighbourhood watch avengers.

Geoff felt a silly smile grow on his face and thought that on the whole it turned out to be a cracking evening. Shame Tom’s girlfriend, Karen, didn’t show up though?