Six Oclock Swill

chatting with RH, over a beer

2009-04-12T23:11:00.000+10:00

RH on the refurb of The Duke Of Windsor in Chapel St:

What a surprise.
Well it was rundown, that pub.
Grubby.
Definitely non-croissant.
A tart-up might have saved it. But who knows?
Only a Jesus Christ estate agent would know.
Other pubs have disappeared along Chapel Street.
But my dad's old drunk palace is still there, right on the corner of Simmons Street.
It's a sacred site for me, that corner, but only in the ordinary way of things. Ordinary. Humdrum. Common white fella grief.

Hi RH - your comments are always a joy. But do you not think, as I do, that the torn vinyl, grot, and the sticky carpet IS the charm? (ref: Espy worship)

.
Thanks Miss Swill. Dirty places are usually cheap.
Nice and relaxing. But the better classes abhor dirt.
It horrifies them. That's their upbringing.

(Miss Swill begs to differ - the bourgeoisie tend to demand cleanliness and the 'upper' classes are just as messy as the 'drinking' classes.)

A bloke I knew helped rip up the old carpet in The George.
He told me there were nice tiles underneath.
But I'm thinking maybe some got a bit scratched, they used shovels.

I liked the Esplanade, the big windows upstairs.
My best pal (now in Qld) was always getting his car pinched around St Kilda.
The local bums took it for joyrides.
One day we'd driven to the Esplanade, and were just settling down with our drinks. "Nice view," he said. "Yes," said I.
Then we saw his car go sailing along the tramlines.
He took it quite calmly. He was like that.
Always calm. Easy.

From RH: our Guest Poster.

2009-04-09T14:36:00.000+10:00

The George. Oh golly.
Old Ma Macdougall (aka "Toothless")
bowls in with her teenage daughter, Little Debbie.
Big Lance, blind drunk, seizes Old Ma and swings her into the air.
The crowd roars. But Lance wants more.
He flips Old Ma so her beady eyes are level with his groin. "Givvus a head job Ma!" That's what he yells.
Little Debbie smashes a jug over Lance's head.
"How's that for a head job!" she says, but Lance doesn't answer, he hits the floor with Ma's skinny carcass.
It looks like a victory, for Little Debbie.
But then Fat Janice steps in.
"Don't fucken come here stackin' on a blue!" she says, and cracks Little Debbie on the jaw, knocking her out.
"Bloody right!" yells 'Tiddles' Harris, who's lost his jug of beer.
Fat Janice looks around, and it's all approval.
The barman comes over for a brief looksee.
"What a mess." he says, and has a laugh.
Old Ma's slippers flew across the bar, he hands them to her, and all is well.
Lance is on the floor, having a snooze. Little Debbie is awake, but looking funny.
"Well she done the wrong thing," determines Old Ma. Fat Janice has a cackle, and all is well.
And so on it goes, as they all become Irish.
'Wrong-body' Gottschalk sings Galway Bay.
On it goes, poor old Ireland. Everyone's Irish, just for today.
The publican, as they know, is a definite Irishman.
They demand he come out to the bar.
And he would, but he can't, dear old Blarney tyke!
He's down in the cellar, watering the beer.

Posted Sunday 7am. Comments 986.

7/16/2005
('Curmudgeon' of Newport declines to have a blog,
so we are stealing his Comments and posting for him.)

Christmas In Fitzroy

2008-11-10T21:38:00.000+11:00

This is a comment clipped from Copperwitch just so RH cannot delete it:
R.H. said...
IN MISS BROWNIE'S WINE CASK THERE ARE MANY MANSIONS!
au contraire, que que que, and I'm feeling like Hal Porter in The Extra, rushing about visiting people. But unlike with Hal, they seem not awfully delighted. How surprising.
But never mind, off today to see Dirty Lyn: filthiest human being of our times (and perhaps all time).
She has a little terrace in Fitzroy, one of half a dozen, and all beautifully restored -except hers, which being somewhere in the middle, stands out like a black turd.
(Well goodness me, poor croissant eaters: when they said they wanted diversity, was this what they meant? Certainly not! But what can they do?)
And so anyway, there I am, on Lyn's little veranda, tapping at her boudoir window, sweetly calling her name: "Lyn?" "Lyn?"
But no answer.
Well she's never up before midday, and it's a bit before that, but golly, no response. And so eventually I'm tapping louder, then I'm banging on the door, then I'm kicking it "Hey, Dirty!" And at last!- it opens!

aaarrggghhhhh! she says, It's you!
aaarrggghhhhh, I answer. You're not wrong.

And yes, it is her, Dirty Lyn, in all her skinny radiance: dishmop hairdo and she hasn't even put her teeth in yet. "Christ!" she hollers, "What a fucken time to go visiting people!" and flounces off down the passage.
I stand there, a little stunned, but then accepting this as an invitation, I follow, kicking rubbish aside all the way.
I sit in the kitchen, a Mecca of rubbish, with a huge mound under the table. "The Mormons were here yesterday," she says. "I invited them in but they went straight out again." She seems surprised.
Lynn lives alone now, since the absence of her fat mother, whose motorised wheelchair crashed into a table of latte drinkers along Brunswick Street -and who were indignant of course, at anyone arriving so dramatically and uninvited, until realising she'd had a heart attack and was dead. Unlike her mother, Lyn is not sentimental, and even a little insensitive, some would say, but she still has the chair. And takes a ride in it sometimes.

"They've been playing that Little Drummer Boy crap next door," she says. "And it's given me the fucken horrors!"
She fills the kettle, bangs it down on the stove, and I'm looking around for my cup, my exclusive cup, where is it?
"Where's my cup?" I open a cupboard door, seeing a lot of cobwebs.
She slams it shut, glares at me triumphantly. "There!" she hollers, "Where you left it!" And I find it on the floor, beside the couch, where I left it a month ago, partly full of tea. And it still is.
Oh. Mea culpa.
My fault entirely.

Come, they told me
Par rum a pum pum
A new born king to see
Par rum a pum pum
His name be Dan Murphy
Par rum a pum pum
Supplier to Miss Brownie
Par rum a pum pum
Rum a pum pum
Rum a pum! pum!

Always
-Robert.

Thursday, December 27, 2007 4:51:00 PM

RH Rides again

2008-10-26T13:47:00.000+11:00

R.H. said...
RH's Christmas Message!

Off to Footscray hospital today darlings, for a look at Big Lance's ugly mug: wooh!- what a horror! And so there I am in P1 (psychiatric) and there's the nurse in her little pew, typing her blog (naughty thing).

Yes, she says, he's here. He's got a bottle hidden too, and we can't find it.

Oh. I shake my head: how disappointing. So right, straight down the hall I go, into the common room and there he is: Mr Meathead himself, watching TV.

"Hoy!" he says, "You fucking bastard!- lendus a fiver." just like that.

Goodness, what a greeting, but never mind, right that instant, as if to save me, Sexy Beryl starts playing the piano: Good King Wenceslas.

And oh my golly, is he upset! Cut it out he yells, many times, but Sexy takes no notice.

Right he says (and I'm apprehensive, what will he do?) he drags his chair to the piano, that's what he does. He gets up on it, opens his fly, lifts the lid on the piano and starts pissing in it.

And Sexy Beryl, she just keeps on playing. How's that. What a trooper.

Well darlings, I'm not sure what one should say about this type of behaviour.

I condemn it of course, and left immediately, saving myself (just by the way) a fiver.

Brightly shone the moon that night Though the frost was cruel

When Miss Brownie came in sight With Dan Murphy few-oo-el.

"Hither, page, and stand by me If thou can be tellingYonder drunkard who is she

Where and what her dwelling?"

"Sire, he lives a good league hence Other people's houses

When their absence doth commence Within she carouses!

Loving you(in all circumstances)-Robert.
Monday, December 24, 2007 10:34:00 PM

Braghton swings.

2007-06-10T11:11:00.000+10:00

This blog references Victorian drinking.
'Curmudgeon' of Newport declines to actually Post,
but his Comments are more robust than anything I can Post,
so here's another really readable one:

I once had an experience with a Brighton lady.
A wine cask home duties lady.
I was living in the Sandringham Commission flats, and working for dirty wages in Godfreys dirty old vacuum cleaner workshop.
My daughter was in grade three at Sandringham primary.
She got friendly with a little girl there, and one day the mother picked them both up after school, taking them home to play at her house.
When I turned up at around five to get my kid, this woman (the mother) invited me into her Home Beautiful living room.
Before I knew it she'd sat me down and poured me a plonk from a wine cask.
A cask that seemed rather permanent on the cooktop bench.
Through the back window I could see the kids playing in the yard.
Meanwhile, my host was cooking 'dinner'.

I was in a hurry to beat it. But she wanted me to stick around, soon as I finished one glass she was pouring me another.
She looked melancholy.
Whether it was for me, or herself, I don't know.
And mind you, she was attractive; a mid-thirties brunette.
But meanwhile we were having a nice little chat, a sort of slow conversation.
I was being enormously pleasant, while wondering what the hell I was doing there. Especially with 'dinner' sizzling away on the cooktop.
And with her getting up to have a poke at it.
Finally, as she was trying to pour me a fourth, I managed to escape.

And here's the joke.
A few months earlier I'd been knocked back for a job, a shit wages job, at a large cigarette factory.
And it turns out her hubby was a big chief there.
Well lo and behold, just as I'm leaving her place, going out the front door, his Merc comes rolling up the circular drive.
And so I pause there to say hello to him - to say hello to this spiv who wouldn't give me a job but couldn't stop me grogging on with his missus.
And in his jolly old digs too!

It was a bit embarrassing, to tell the truth, I was afraid he might think I was on with her.
And he did have a funny look.
But then, maybe I did too.
He was polite though, awfully polite, as you can always expect from these people.
I didn't see this woman again, but my daughter saw her in the street about a year later.
We'd moved to Highett by then.
She asked how I was, and when I heard this, I could see her sad, sad face.
I've never forgotten that face.
You never do.******

Wattle ya have?

2006-01-01T17:55:00.000+11:00

. . . and the answer would be '12 pots for the school and a shandy for the missus out front in the car'.
Alcohol and Australia have been closely associated right from the start.
what a great country this is: The Rum Currency, invention of the ringpull, the Chateau Cardboard so revered by Brighton 'Home Duties'. Even refrigeration was developed in Ballarat (that is pretty funny in itself - it's bloody freezing here right now), admittedly by a Scotsman, but then nobody born here was old enough to invent anything in the year old Scotty McPissed gave us this wonderful thing.
At one time, the Brighton Chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous had the largest AA membership of all Australia, as well as a 12 year old member.

My name is Ms Ballroom and I am a recovering blogger. I was blog-free for 2 minutes before starting this one.

This blog will never make sense to anybody who was not alive in Victoria in 1965.
Cheers.

I'll Drink To That

2005-12-31T11:43:00.000+11:00

A toast to one and all
Happy Birthday Elvis

Enjoy a coldie in Ballarat. (Well you really have no choice at this time of the year.)

2005-11-15T11:11:00.000+11:00

The Duke a Windsor RIP 2005

2005-09-02T15:54:00.000+10:00

One by one they disappear, and eventually there will be nobody who even remembers what they were like.
The Duke a Windsor in Pran on Chapel and High Streets
was a Prahran Tech drinking hole.
Like we need another pizza place?

Mate! The Aussie Way.

2005-09-01T11:05:00.000+10:00

Ya gotta be proud of a nation built on convicts, with a Rum Currency, which invented the wine cask and the ring pull.

My earliest ancestor was a convict and the next arrival I can claim as an ancestor arrived in 1843 and built Lewis's Inn which is now the Digby Hotel. Then he imported a thoroughbred racehorse King Alfred, who was swum ashore at Portland. Later he raced Agronomist, and I have not found a record of his Wins, but he looks like a plough horse from the photo I saw.

Point is mate, this place is TAB and VB mate, whatever that wuss in Canberra claims.

Me mate Dave what many moons ago spent time behind the bar at "The Marquis of Lorne".

2005-07-17T11:36:00.000+10:00

... and he still hasn't lost his touch with a bottle of Gippsland bespoke quince bubbly. (He advises that one removes the blue touch paper and run like the clappers ... and no matter what, DO NOT IMBIBE!)

www.marquisoflorne.com.au