LeftLion print ed. #9 - Townies
2008-09-01

This was printed in the August/September edition of LeftLion

Enjoy!

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I remember my first Saturday night in Nottingham like it was yesterday.

My wife and I were spending a brilliantly sunny summer afternoon quaffing pints on Sinatra’s patio. We had just gotten settled and were rewarding ourselves with a night out on the town for finishing our big move across the ocean.

My wife used to live in Nottingham as she had graduated from the (now defunct) performing arts program at Trent so she was playing tour guide. Our plan was to have our own mini-pub crawl hitting the Bell Inn, the Malt Cross and the Castle pub on my first Nottingham night out. I don’t need to tell you how fantastic The Bell or the Malt Cross are, you are a LeftLion reader. It would be like telling you how important air is.

On the way to the Malt Cross, I suggested we stopped for a quick one in Wetherspoons, to which my wife replied, "No, that one isn’t very nice". I discovered what an understatement that was when we passed by it later and saw a couple of its recent inhabitants projectile vomiting onto the side of it.

The Castle Pub tricked me. At first the Castle felt like a nice place with its leaded windows, great beer and even greater music coming through the speakers. It wasn’t until a waitress forcibly pulled my drink from my hands exactly 15 minutes after last call and barked "You should know how long it takes to drink an effing pint" that I’d discovered drinking in Nottingham town centre was a bit off.

When we walked into the Castle pub, it was into a comfortable and pleasant pub. We were surrounded by groups of laughing friends, couples sharing a quiet drink and smiling and polite wait staff. As soon as last call hit, it had all changed. It was as if someone had turned the "crazy" knob all the way up to 11. We walked out of the Castle pub and into Invasion of the Body Snatchers. All the nice people had been taken away and replaced by cackling hens, shouty fat blokes and lots and lots of yellow-jacketed policemen. Had a bomb gone off somewhere? Had civilisation ended while we were in the pub? Is this the revolucion?

I was just about to retreat into the Sierra Maestra Mountains to plan my guerrilla uprising when my wife assured me that society had not collapsed, it was, in fact, just a townie night out in Nottingham.

The word "townie" is such a cutesey-pie word for something so horrible. It’s one of those quaint Brit-isms like "buttie", "cagool" or "twee" that makes life here so interesting. I’m still not sure what cagool means, I think it was something do with pies. When I first heard the word "townie", I imagined a race of tiny people who hid in the little nooks and crannies in the town centre. Little munchkins who get up to all kinds of mischief like pulling people’s trousers down and shooting pigeons with tiny little lightning bolts out of their magic wands. If you catch one, and pull it’s tiny beard, it will grant you a wish!

I hardly expected it to refer to greasy twats in shiny poly blend shirts and slutty chicks stuffed like sausages into sparkly, way too small, way too revealing, evening wear. A race of people who spend their time draining pints of cheap lager, diddling each other on the dance floor and puking, pissing and beating on each other. They do grant you three wishes if you grab them though. If you count a black eye, a mouth full of used kebab and gonorrhea "wishes".

In preparation for this column, I actually had to go inside a townie bar and report back from the front lines, Jeremy Bowen style. I got my disguise all ready; Pink, collared shirt, designer jeans, Ben Sherman’s and a gallon of hair wax. I even filled my mobile up with short clips of deep throat porn just in case a townie lad called my bluff.

We walked into the grand daddy of townie bars, Yates’s, and were immediately greeted by the perfect townie bar trifecta: Fruit machines on the wall, giant disco ball dangling from the roof and a sweaty townie dude hanging off the back of an equally drunken hen (complete with bunny ears).

As if that sight was not off-putting enough, there was a middle-aged townie dude Dad-dancing on stage with his eyes closed. Townies come in all shapes and sizes but the old ones are especially frightening. There is nothing creepier than a late forties townie dude on the pull. Leaning against the bar, eyeing up girls half his age, air guitaring to Living on a Prayer and shouting about his numerous "bird conquests" to his mates.

I don’t know why townie men have a head at all, they might as well just have two cocks. One mounted on their shoulders to do their thinking with and one in their pants to disappoint townie women with. In fact, if their "head cock" had a foreskin they had to pull back every time they had a drink, they might actually take breaths in between pints thus giving the cock in their pants a chance of actually being capable of performing in the off chance it’s called upon.

And the old townie ladies? Man, where do I start? If your midriff is an "outie", then it might not be a good idea to unleash that bad boy. Dark colours and layers are the ticket. We have middle-aged townie women in Canada as well. We call them cougars for their ability to stalk and attack young prey. Unlike their English counterparts, however, Canadian cougars (or "coogs") put in an effort. They spend every penny of their alimony on laser treatments, silicone and botox. Snogging a Canadian coog is like blowing up a lilo (ahem, not like I’d know). I imagine snogging an English townie coog would be like pressing your face up against a climbing wall. Maneuvering your mush around the jagged teeth, two-penny sized moles and scar tissue would be quite a feat.

The younger townie girls wear short skirts. I thought at first that it was to attract the two-cocked townie men, but I’ve since discovered that it’s only so they have less skirt to pee on when they’re squatting in the Broadmarsh entranceway.

Even though I got enough to write about within the first 30 seconds of entering Yates’s, I thought I’d be a good reporter and stay the course. Dodging punches and hens sprawled out across the dancefloor is not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it was nice to have a "Get out of Society free" card for an evening. I took full advantage by necking four pints of Stella in quick succession and unleashing the "c-word" on a cabbie just for kicks, it felt good. It wasn’t an easy task living amongst the townie-folk, but I survived it and can cross off another Nottingham experience off my list.