An Odd Pub Crawl - the RSL

We ended the evening at the RSL - where else? The unexpected closure of the Pallisades had left us dangerously close to returning home at 10.30pm, which is a terrible waste of a babysitter.

"I wonder whether they'll let us in?" I wondered, as Darren navigated me through the backstreets of the city back to South Dowling Street. "It's Easter Saturday, they're bound to have a turn on". I remember the days when you couldn't get into the Penketh Labour Club unless you were a member, especially not on "Star Night" and especially not if Roy Allen was singing, who fancied himself as Barry Manilow.

They did have a turn on. It was a bloke with a synthesizer and an electric guitar. His mate joined him ten minutes later, the latter bearing a close resemblence to Eddie Large, though with ginger hair and roots that needed touching up even more than mine do.

Now the RSL is being refurbished and there wasn't enough of an audience to merit using "the big room" so the management had positioned the act in the bar, right in front of a sign reading "Danger, demolition in progress". When I say there wasn't enough of an audience, I mean there were six of us in total. This included an elderly lady in a headscarf and long silk dressing gown and a lady in a nylon dress who had brought her own sandwiches. Their husbands had one eye on the telly (which was showing just about any sport it's possible to bet on, including chariot racing) while the ladies bopped their shoulders to songs they recognised and songs they clearly didn't. The act made "witty repartee" between songs, which added to the pain of the situation.

The lady in the dressing gown continued to bop along to the music as her husband got up and left. "How much worse can it get?" said Darren. "16% of the audience just left at once".

A few minutes later they launched into "Always look on the bright side of life". We couldn't stand it any longer. Another 32% left as soon as they'd downed their drinks.