I was a teenage Rockstar!

Thinking about it - That title might be a smidge misleading. The story actually takes place in, I think, 1991 - So I was about 23.

But I was (and still am, to a greater or lesser extent) tremendously immature.

Long-time readers will have no problem picturing the scene:  Myself and the illustrious Scots Mick were sat in the garden at my house, drinking beer, watching the grass move around as the dog tried, unsuccessfully, to find her way back to the house and sniggering at the next door neigbour as she mowed her lawn.  Why were we sniggering? That's a good question, which could be answered by any of the young ladies who had the pleasure of becoming intimately aquainted with me during the nineties, up to and including the current Mrs Dandy.

You see, I enjoyed the party lifestyle that came with having more money than I had responsibility.  Occasionally, due to my hedonistic, playboy lifestyle. Minor things often fell by the wayside, things like general house and garden maintenance, removal of non-working/incomplete vehicles from the driveway and hoovering.

Long-Story-Short, I happily lived like a pig.  In fact, Mrs Dandy still tells the story of her first trip to Dandy Towers, where you couldn't see my dining table, because it was, and I quote, "covered in a mountain of random crap, with a crash-helmet balanced on the top."

Here's a picture of me, at about that time, that goes some way to explain why I was still beating Mimsy off with a stick, despite living in my own filth... I was just so gorram pretty!

That's me in the leather jeans - The slightly furrier one is 'Veggie Saff''

Anywho, back to the sniggering... We'd had an 'altercation' with the next door neighbours some days previously.  The 'Husband' had asked us if there was any way we could just tidy up a bit as weeds from my garden we taking root in his, and the front looked a bit untidy, what with all the rust and oil and spray-paint overspray and everything... Which I thought was perfectly reasonable.  I'd just engaged the neck muscles that you normally use for nodding when his wife came out, barged past him, all hairnets and raised rolling pin and added, "It's like living next door to bloody Gypsies!"

"Well," I thought to myself, "That's a bit racist!"

So, after assuring him that I'd do my best, and smiling sweetly at her, I retired to the house, got a large sheet of cardboard and my best finger paints and made a sign that I then stuck in the front window which read:

LUCKY WHITE HEATHER

AND PEGS FOR SALE!

PLEASE APPLY WITHIN

I found it significantly funnier than she did (And her husband thought it was fairly funny too... I think.)

So, back to the story, garden, sun, beer, giggling like idiots.  SMick turns to me and says, "You know what we need?"

Now, I panicked, because I thought he was going to say we were out of beer.  A quick check revealed a still half full crate, so I replied, "No, what do we need?'

He scanned the garden majestically, like Simba, off of the Lion King and said, in that voice that people use for going into dream sequences, "We need... A swimming pool."

Now this struck me as the bestest idea that anyone had ever had, ever.

Luckily, we knew people who had access to diggers, people who could plumb, and people who could tile.  We researched pools and their innermost workings, heating, planning permission and all sorts of things. even got a leaflet from our local builders' warehouse called something like 'So, you're building a pool?'

It explained in detail what a completely ridiculous undertaking it was, there are surveys that need doing, all sorts of rules about how far away it has to be from someone else's land and special insurance and subsidence issues to concider and everything.  But, every time we hit a snag, we just thought about young ladies in bikinis plunging in and out of our rear entertainment area.

One of the things it did suggest that you do before you got too excited about the whole thing was to contact your local services companies (Gas, Water, Electricity, Phone, etc.) and make sure that there weren't any buried cables / pipes where you wanted to dig a big hole.

SMick grabbed the Yellow Pages and I got a notepad and the phone - One by one, he would find the 'Customer Enquiries' number and I would call it.  The calls were all pretty much of a muchness:

• I'd explain that we were thinking of putting in a pool. 
• The person on the end of the phone would say that they wished thay could afford a pool.
• I'd say that they could come and have a go if we ever got it finished.
• There'd be some half-hearted laughter.
• I'd say that I needed to check that there wasn't anything of theirs that we might accidentally dig up.
• Then they'd either put me through to someone who had the records, or say that they were going to send someone out to check.
• Then SMick would call out the next number, he didn't bother saying who it was of course, but the person who picked up the phone usually said "Hello British Gas." or, "Good Morning, Severn-Trent Water."

So, imagine my confusion when a nice lady just answered the phone with "Hello?"

I looked at SMick, who had slammed the phone directory closed and just shrugged at me. I shook my head and launched into my spiel.

"Oh, Hi! Erm... I'm thinking of putting a swimming pool into my back garden and just thought I'd check that there's nothing of yours buried in my garden that I might accidentally dig up.  Would you be able to tell me over the phone, or would you have to send someone out?"

There was a pause from the other end of the phone, then she said, "You're asking me if there's anything of ours buried in your garden?"

"Yeah, wouldn't want to get a shock if I accidentally dug it up."

"No, I suppose not.  Who do you think you've called?'

"Erm..." I looked at SMick again, his face had gone a little red and he was trying not to laugh. He just shook his head and turned his back on me. I picked a name at random, assuming that he'd just given me the same number twice, 'British Telecom?'

"No, not exactly.  This is the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, is this a wrong number, or should I put you through to the mortuary just in case?'

I apologised and slammed the phone down, then picked it up again and threw it at SMick, which, on the whole would have been a lot more effective if it had been a cordless phone.

We never did dig that pool... And I can imagine that not many of you are in the least bit surprised.

New balls please.

Should you ever see me in the street, (and that sort of counts on you knowing who I am I suppose) what would the first thought be?

Would it be 'I say, he's reasonably tall.' or 'What a splendid beard that man has, I shall make it my life's work to become his faithful man/woman servant.' or 'What was that awful baconny smell?'

One thing it probably wouldn't be is 'That fine figure of a man there, is a natural sportsman, I should bow down before him in supplication and offer him the unfettered use of my clothing optional hot-tub.'

And that's because I'm not.  My frame is not what you'd describe as streamlined (apart from my head that is). My musculature, such as it was, has become flaccid through lack of use, and I sometimes get a bit out of breath thinking about chips.

But believe it or not, at one time, not only was I an avid sportsman who played thrice weekly, but I was captain of not one, but two top (ish) of the league sports teams at the same time.  I can virtually smell your surprise from here.

It all began around twenty-five years ago in a bar called The Old Silk Mill (As previously mentioned HERE).

I was sat there, one Saturday lunchtime, with my then girlfriend, when the landlord wandered over to the noticeboard and pinned an A4 piece of paper to it. It was the sign-up sheet for the new pool team.  Within a week or so, many names were added to this list and we went onto some limited success.  In fairness a number of the limitations we faced involved a few of the team being under the influence of certain substances that may be frowned upon in polite society.  It was a fairly regular occurrence that we would have to take nine players to a match that required seven in case someone started rocking backwards and forwards in the corner having 'shroom flashbacks and another person found themselves unable to play because the table was covered in tiny, multi-coloured horses with tusks, wearing snowshoes.

But we had some truly great players.  Our original Captain, Billy B, was a borderline psychotic, who looked like a dark haired cross between Professor Mick Aston from Timeteam and Rasputin, who would strut around the table with both his prehensile knees and eyes pointing in many different directions at once.  he mumbled to himself all the time whilst executing some truly physics defying shots and he would often turn around and laugh uncontrolably in the face of his opponent in the style of a pirate.

His sister, Louise, also played for us. It would be difficult to find two siblings that were more different in outlook (or any other email system for that matter).  Where Billy was manic, Louise was calculating.  She would look at all the balls on the table from all angles before every shot and was the closest thing to a Cyber(wo)man that I've ever seen. Fine pool player, especially where performing 'snookers' was concerned.  In fact, she only ever lost it when she made a mistake that lost her the match - Then... Well... Have you seen Bladerunner? With Harrison Ford? You know the bit where Daryl Hannah's character Pris was 'retired'? Well, that.

Louise had a female life partner (or whatever the politically correct term is this week) called Annie who was a natural pool player and a great mate who would wander around the table, taking great shot after great shot, taking multiple swigs from her pint, and bringing the generally masculinity of her opponent into question and then mercilessly barracking him until he cried.

We also had Sam, and her boyfriend Sam (Yes, it did sometimes get confusing) who we would usually try to put on in the last match, the spot usually saved for the Captains to play each other... Although it was more of a guideline than an actual rule really.  We would wait for the last player from their team to come to the table, if he was small, and seemed to be easily intimidated, Male Sam would play, and win without speaking a single word.  If he seemed to be confident, the sort of man who would have had his own cue cut from a single piece of antique wood, salvaged from the wreck of a viking longship, Female Sam would play - Not straight away of course, she would have a bit of a stretch, declare that her blouse was a bit restrictive and then look her opponent directly in the eyes whilst she slowly undid as many buttons as she needed to to let him know that she had 'forgotten' to wear a bra that day.  Then she'd win. Thinking about it, that might have technically been cheating I suppose.

Now, I'm going to stop there, because this is in danger of just turning into a list of people that I knew at the end of the 80's.  Suffice it to say that, obviously, the blindingly famous SMick was in the team, as was my other professionally Scottish friend Jock, who is, as I've mentioned before, sadly no longer with us.  Suffice it to say that it was like an outside broadcast featuring The Addams Family every time we went to a different pub to play one of our 'Away' matches.

Over a few seasons, things changed, as they so often do. old players left and new ones joined. In fact, Billy B himself left to concentrate his chemical experimentation and because I was the only one not to say 'no' when he tried to appoint a replacement Captain, I got the job.  A couple of other major things changed too.  One was that there had, for a long time, been complaints in 'The League' about sexism and misogyny, so a separate 'Ladies' league was started (Our team was Captained by my then girlfriend) and The Silk Mill changed hands, it's new owner instantly deciding that his first order of business would be to get rid of all the dirty bikers and turn the place into one of those awful, homogeneous city centre pubs with microwaved (but still described as homecooked) food.

So we moved, to The Station Inn, mentioned in the SMick story linked above, and presented them with at first two and then three ready made teams. We stayed there for many years, in fact, if you visit there to this day, you will see many of the trophies that we won still proudly displayed.

The teams continued to change, the supremely gullible Steve, joined the team that we now had to call the 'Mixed' team because:

a) It had both male and female members
b) You weren't allowed to call it the 'Men's' team, because that would be sexist.

But all this isn't exactly getting us to where I was Captain of two sports teams is it?  The emotional rollercoaster that was my love life took an excitingly depressing downturn in 1991, where my then girlfriend, and Captain of the ladies team, found solace in the arms (amongst other things) of another, as hinted at in this post HERE - So, I did what any self respecting man would do under those circumstances:

I became the Captain of the Ladies team too.

So, Thursdays and Sundays I would go to the pub, get drunk and play pool with my friends (both male and female) and on Tuesdays I would go to the pub, get drunk and watch ten girls, between eighteen and thirty, bend over a pool table for two hours.  It took my mind right off the heartbreak situation that I'd just been through I can tell you.

And for our less gentlemanly male readers, whose minds are racing with all sorts of interesting possibilities...

Yes, two, but not at the same time.