Night of the Living Dread

Sometimes you have a night out and it's really one to remember. And sometimes you remember it for all the wrong reasons.

On Friday I travelled to the jewel of the east coast, if jewels were made from used chewing gum, Bridlington.

The main purpose of this trip was to play ukulele with my good friend Ted 'Theodore' Zeppelin and to indulge in some light liquid refreshment.

There was also a punk band called Snatch, who I assumed to be a weightlifting-themed outfit, playing at one of the town's fine hostelries.

As I found out, the hostelry was more of a hostile-ry.

Fuelled up on supermarket cooking beer, we headed to the Old Ship at 9pm.

The band were soundchecking and there were about four people in the bar, which didn't bode well for the band as they were due to start at 9:30.

We ventured into the beer garden where we saw men in yellow wellies smoking dope, a heavily pregnant woman who was also heavily drunk and a man with a tribal facial tattoo who seemed to have some kind of perma-scowl thing going on.

Back inside the band were starting and they were pretty reasonable, playing an assortment of non-punk songs in a punk style to an audience which was only just in double figures. They were offering entertainment which was only rivalled by a man who was probably once quite a hardcase and had arms like tree trunks, but also a belly like a barrel, who had sprayed on some sort of second skin t-shirt and was trying to carry his ridiculously wined-up wife outside.

We left as the band started the second half of their set. Pity wasn't enough to keep us in there. Nor was the low quality East Anglian IPA they had on offer.

We stopped off at another pub on the way back where I was about 30 years older than any other drinker.

“Have you got any pale ale?” we asked the barmaid.

“I don't know,” she replied.

Splendid. It's always good to have in-depth product knowledge with which to dazzle your customers.

On the way home we were almost mown down by a drunken man on a mobility scooter who was riding flat out along the pavement and weaving every which way with an equally drunken woman sitting on his lap who was laughing like a hyena.

Welcome to Bridlington.