Yo Ho Ho Ho!

By Darren Bane

Christmas! Cut-throats! Cribbage??!!??

Christmas is coming, but the season of goodwill has bypassed pub landlord Ted Edwards. A critical review in a best-selling travel book adds insult to infamy and threatens to be the final nail in the coffin for Ted's troubled alehouse, where the regular cribbage league contest is the social highlight of every week.

A prophetic premonition leaves Ted with a stark choice: call 'last orders' for the very final time or mend his miserly ways, embrace his hostelry's history, make peace with his family's pirate past, re-capture his Christmas spirt and save his beloved bar, prompting a pub 'treasure hunt' like no other.

This is the final part of 'The Jolly Roger' trilogy, three stand-alone but loosely connected stories about a fictional pub and some of its clientele. The first book in the trilogy is The Big One and the second book is Uncle Prawn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781446720134

Book preview

Chapter One

If Cairo is the jewel of the Nile and Dubrovnik is the pearl of the Adriatic, that must surely make Weston-super-Mare the pallid pebble of the Severn Estuary.

The alleged allure of this rather wretched resort is such that even the tidal waters try to get as far away as they possibly can be-fore the malevolent moon exerts its powerful lunar forces and drags them back towards the shore, kicking and screaming in pitiful protest, providing Weston with the second highest tidal range in the world.

Those waters retaliate by trying to appear as unattractive as possible, presumably in the hope of convincing the moon that it’s simply not worth the considerable effort it takes to bring the waters all the way back in again, as the sight of them would only put people off.

They adopted a muddy, murky, brown colour, like the inside of a dunny which hasn’t been flushed for a week, during which some-one has been on a constant diet of gassy Indian beer and bush tucker curry.

When the waters do go walkabout, they flee as far as they possibly can, for as long as they can, leaving behind a dirty tidal mark against the sea wall, like the one found in a kitchen sink in which the greasiest of greasy pots and pans have been wallowing, untouched, for weeks.

Beneath this unpleasant rim mark, the escaping waters leave behind not a sweeping, golden, sandscape but a quagmire of syrupy gloop, hence this sorry seaside settlement being colloquially saddled with the nickname ‘Weston-super-Mud’.

And you know what they say; throw enough mud at a wall, and some of it is sure to stick, as has Weston’s unfortunate nickname.

It is said that Weston’s wandering waters flee so far that the local police regularly receive calls of concern for its whereabouts.

To be fair, Weston does have a few things going for it. I hesitate to use the word ‘attractions’ in its purest sense, as I think that would be pushing journalistic and artistic boundaries a step too far, and my professional integrity will not permit such scandalous exaggeration.

Weston’s ‘highlights’ are not so much jewels in the crown as pieces of garish, gem-shaped plastic crudely glued to the sides of the kind of thin, flimsy, tissue-paper coronets found in mass-produced, bargain-brand, discount store Christmas crackers.

Weston’s apparent appeal is as thin as those tissue paper crowns and, like the ‘jokes’ contained within those ‘novelty’ Christmas crackers, is no laughing matter.

The truth is that, apparently, I have ancestral roots in these parts, which piqued my curiosity and compelled me to make a flying visit.

Thankfully, my forefathers - if they did come from this part of the world - had managed to do what the tidal waters have failed to, and escaped for good, getting as far away as possible, and staying there. I expect they’ll be cursing me for coming back, but I’m afraid my curiosity, and misplaced sense of family duty, got the better of me.

Having not been enamoured upon first-impression, I nevertheless found myself duty-bound to give Weston a burl and continue my mission to find the hidden treasures of this nation’s seaside. Thus, I meandered from the mainstream and strayed into the side streets.

What I found was not a hidden, heavenly, humble hostelry but what can best be described as a hellish, horrible, hostile-ry.

The foreboding omens were there. Aside from the menacing skull leering at me from the pub’s sign, which squeaked like a choking mouse as it swung in the wind on its rusting hinges, a vandal – or, perhaps, a well-intentioned good Samaritan – had transformed the traditional carpet feature at the entrance into an ‘un-welcome’ mat.

Despite these warning signs, I found myself inexplicably drawn towards it, as if I was in the irresistible, magnetic-like, grip of an ancient, perhaps ancestral, force. It was as if I was (ill) fated to find this bar.

I was soon swiftly reminded that there was usually sound reason as to why the beaten track was the beaten track. If you choose not to follow in the footsteps of the masses, then whatever woeful experience awaits you is something you have only brought upon yourself.

For every ‘best-kept secret’ you might stumble upon, if very lucky, should you wander from the well-worn wayside, there’s usually a hundred and one good reasons for sticking to the more popular path.

But my throat was now dryer than a dead dingo’s donger, so my misgivings were outweighed by my desperate desire for amber nectar.

From a distance, this bar looked like a bonzer boozer and fair dinkum, or ‘drinkum’, hopefully. Ever the optimist, in the hope of finding a diamond among the considerable rough, I thought this particular pub might just prove to be that elusive, long-lost, gem of joy in a forgotten corner of this wasteland that was Weston.

I was hooked by its name. ‘The Jolly Roger’ suggested some salvation, a hint of joviality, a welcome oasis in this dark desert on a wet and windswept wintery Wednesday. ‘Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum, and all that.’ Perhaps it teased an atmospheric pirate theme, drawing on a rich history steeped in swashbuckling and romanticised stories of smuggling, looting and pillaging.

Alas, any such hint of joviality had not only been ignored but quite proactively avoided like the plague, hence my blissfully brief (although it felt like an eternity at the time) visit to the establishment was something of a rum do, or perhaps, more accurately, a rum don’t.

I consider this pub’s name to be a blatant breach of advertising legislation, if not a complete contravention of the Trade Descriptions Act. A better name for this pub would be ‘The Glum Chum’.

The dour décor of this bodgy bar provided a backdrop as sombre as the mood. There were a dozen or so dusty denizens scattered around the room, from which any semblance of ambience and atmosphere was noticeable only by its absolute absence.

A ragtag rabble of miscreants and misfits eyed me suspiciously as I dared to cross the threshold into their sacred sanctuary. They feared that what little air was circulating – much in the way that famished vultures circulate – was going to have to be divided even more thinly between them now that there was an additional pair of lungs to draw on the scarce supply, although the locals looked too crapulent and crambazzled to offer any kind of fight for it, if push came to shove.

It was then that I considered again the sign that had drawn me along this desolate street in the first place. On reflection, I thought it was not so much a pub sign or advertisement, but more of a grim warning, or even a headstone, given the skull and crossbones that adorned it; a warning to keep clear, stay away, or enter only at your peril. It was, after all, a universally-recognised symbol of something toxic and poisonous.

While many British bars offered ‘happy hours’, this daggy dungeon could only muster ‘misery moments’, if not ‘morose months.’

While the possibly-promised pirate theme was lamentably absent, those gathered in the gloom did remind me of pirates in that there were no discernable conversations of any quality to eavesdrop on. Instead, the locals occasionally acknowledged each other with a nod and the uttering of a simple Aarrr, a staple part of a pirates’ dialect, although these were lacklustre, weary, Aarrr’s rather than the more boisterous, thigh-slapping, pantomime-pirate Ah-haarrr’s that I had hoped for; less a case of my hearties and more an example of my heartless, methinks. I’ve seen more personality in a pirate ship’s plank.

Many bars have function rooms. I took a brief peek at The Jolly Roger’s facility. Let’s just say that the lounge appeared to be where all the action was. The dysfunction room was as lively as an over-weight elderly snail which had eaten a tranquiliser before trying to wade through treacle while towing a 15lb bowling ball up a mountain.

When I approached the bar to buy a drink, I started to truly believe I had really come a gutser. Disservice with a scowl seemed to be the order of the day, rather than the traditional service with a smile, as the grim-faced barman desperately snatched my money from my hand before I had the slightest chance of trying to take my custom elsewhere.

He had a crazy look in his narrow eyes. I’m sure he had some kangaroo’s loose in the paddock. How ironically fitting that this muddy backwater of Weston was home to a stick in the mud like this man.

He then seemed to have a lightbulb moment – which is more than can be said for the bar itself – and spent the best part of an hour (which I would most definitely not describe as happy) trying to charm me into believing that this was a happy hostelry which offered everything the discerning drinker and diner could possibly desire. Truth is, all this drinker desired was the fastest route to the exit.

This barman was less the stereotype silver-tongued charmer and more a bad-breathed breather. I’ve met monks in solitude who have taken lifelong vows of silence and celibacy, and they’re the overwhelmingly loud and flirtatious life and soul of the party com-pared to this phlegmatic killjoy who was totally lacking the zip-a-dee part of his doo-dah day.

He was a genuine little beaming ray of pitch-black.

I’m convinced that, in a previous incarnation, he was the life model for the extant monumental statues, called moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people on Easter Island. Not only did they capture his likeness, but his essence, too; blank, expressionless face, granite jaw, heart of stone, chilling demeanor; stolid as a rock. I had the very clear impression that this particular ‘captain’ ran a very tight shipwreck.

Not so very far from Weston is a city with a rich, seafaring his-tory, which inspired the phrase ‘ship-shape and Bristol fashion.’

I don’t know about ‘ship-shape’, but something that sounds very similar to ‘ship’ describes the shape of the sorry vessel that is The Jolly Roger, down to a ‘T’, if you get my drift.

Still, I confess that, ironically, The Jolly Roger did live up to its name ultimately, as I felt an overwhelming, euphoric swell of joy when I fled back to the real world which, even on a rainy grey day, seemed much brighter and better, and much more warming and welcoming than what I had left behind.

I beat a hasty retreat in the same brisk manner in which the tide makes its daily break for freedom, turning back just once to gaze up-on that menacing skull and crossbones sign for a final farewell. Was it a prophetic vision of what the future held for this particular pub?

I neither know, nor, quite frankly, care.

Perhaps that sign illustrated what the pub’s clientele truly look like. Should they dare to leave the dusty darkness, their flesh would bubble and melt down to the bare bone if natural daylight ever fell upon their parchment-like skin. Thankfully for them, the windows are so dirty that not even the slightest sliver of natural light is able to penetrate into the collective coffin for the very nearly dead, or very barely alive.

And so, in the map at the centre of this book, I place another cross. But this is not a case of ‘X marking the spot’ of a hidden treasure for my readership to discover and enjoy for themselves, a diamond in the rough, if you will, but rather to act as a stop sign, a dire ‘do not enter’ warning; ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’, and all that.

Perhaps I’d be better off using a skull and crossbones motif to mark this pitiful place on my map, to differentiate this ‘fool’s gold’ from the many genuine golden nuggets I’ve discovered elsewhere.

I was stoked to return to the mainstream, having at least satisfied myself that I had discovered the inspiration behind the origin of the phrase ‘the last resort’. Wish you were here? That’s what the British seaside holiday postcards ask. Strewth, mate, not on your nelly, says I!

Still, perhaps The Jolly Roger could serve a useful function by cheering people up, rather than cheering them down, as seems to be its forté, through featuring on its own brand of postcards, which visitors could send home to make those jealous of the fact that they were away feel some considerable comfort at being left behind.

These postcards would show Weston in all its gory - not so much picturesquely perched on the coastline of the South West of England as furtively fly-tipped there - and instead of goading the recipients, and rubbing salt into their wounds, by teasing, ‘Wish you were here?’, the Jolly Roger postcards could say, ‘Glad you’re not here?’

There’s no greener grass in Weston-super-Mud, just The Joyless Roger, a blot on the landscape of this tuckered-out town, a pub which was more of a rip-off than a ripper.

Tradition dictates, as my regular readers will know, that I award each establishment I visit a score.

So, how many didgeridoo’s do I give The Jolly Roger, out of five? Well, it pains me to say that, for the first time in over thirty years of travel writing, I’m awarding my first-ever didgeridon’t, and announcing my intention to make like a broken boomerang, and never come back.

Phil Bison, Postcards From The British Seaside.

Published by Boomerang Books.*

*An Australian publishing house which, ironically, accepts no returns.At the usual time, just after four-thirty, of the usual day, Wednesday, Tom Grey walked into his usual bar for a pint of his usual.

Chapter Two

I’ll sue him! spat Ted Edwards, the ‘grim-faced barman’ referred to in Bison’s book, who also happened to be the long-standing – mainly because, if he sat down for more than ten minutes, his knee joints would seize up and he would not be able to stand again unaided – and long-suffering landlord of The Jolly Roger.

He slammed the book shut and dropped it defiantly onto the faded mahogany bar, forcing a billow of choking dust into the faces of his small, but attentive, audience, aka the, now literally, ‘dusty denizens’.

I will, he confirmed assertively, I’ll bloody sue him!

For what? asked Tom Grey, one of the ‘ragtag rabble’ the author had alluded to. Confirmation of character?

Don’t mock, Greybeard, scowled Ted. I swear, I’ll make Phil Bison sorry he ever set foot in here.

It sounds like he’s already sorry, added Des Measures, another who had frequented the bar so, er, frequently over the years that he could be considered a resident rather than a regular.

Thank you, Drastic, Ted snapped sarcastically, as his notoriously unnaturally narrow eyes narrowed just a little more, until they resembled slits like paper cuts on his gaunt face, which had cheeks so sunken it was as if he had been given an enema with a vacuum cleaner on which the turbo button had become stuck in the ‘on’ position.

Ted’s skinny frame seemed to exaggerate his height, and he had a thin, pointed face, narrow, sneering, mouth and those paper-cut eyes that twinkled like eye-shaped slivers of the blackest coal that was ever seen, in the bottom of a thick black bag buried in a deep, abandoned, mine which had collapsed and in which the artificial lighting had stopped working many years ago. In short, that’s not a lot of twinkle.

When the mood was right, Ted’s customers would often tease him that he could be an extra in a low-budget zombie movie without the need for any make-up or visual effects. He had a way about him that was unintentionally – most of the time – intimidating.

He wore the permanent, sour-faced expression of a man who had been raised on a daily diet of extra-sharp sherbet lemons. And, judging by those aforementioned sunken cheeks and squinting eyes, he might well be sucking on an especially sharp one right now.

His seemingly unflappable, frosty façade was such that those who knew him well enough to get away with it often teased that if anyone asked for some ice in their drinks, all Ted had to do was fix their glass with one of his chilling glances for a few seconds and the liquid within would be suitably cooled. If customers preferred their drink a little warmer, then liquid nitrogen would be used instead. Ted exuded the kind of radiant warmth that could bring a tear to a glass eye.

It had been a couple of years since the allegedly acclaimed Australian author Phil ‘the Bull’ Bison had found himself evidently enduring a lonely pint in The Jolly Roger.

Bison’s books had a large, loyal and lucrative readership, due to his renowned, no-nonsense, no-holds-barred, reviews.

The lockdowns imposed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic prompted publishers to withhold any titles which could be seen to encourage people to breach restrictions by going out on their own intrepid explorations, although some ‘covidiots’ had insisted on ignoring the rules, clearly suffering from a dose of moronovirus.

The hospitality sector was hit particularly hard by the pandemic but, eventually, restrictions were lifted, and the world returned to what was widely dubbed the ‘new normal’.

And finally, a few years later than intended (ironically, rather like this book, in a life imitates art kind of way – Editor), Phil Bison’s travelogue was set to be unleashed. And for The Jolly Roger, which like many pubs had struggled to survive the lockdown years, it added insult to infamy.

The pub sat in a side street a short distance from Weston-super-Mare’s town centre, and a stone’s throw from the beach, which is why at least one pane of glass within the large, ornate, bay window at the front of the two-storey building was, more often than not, boarded up.

Weston’s halcyon days were back in Victorian times, and some would suggest that the sleepy seaside town had not woken up since, but that it had continued to exist in a blurry-eyed state of slumber.

Bison was right about the resort’s extreme tidal range, though, only bested by Canada’s Bay of Fundy, although some would argue that Ungava Bay in Quebec pushes the Bristol Channel into third place.

And, whether Ted liked it or not, the Australian author was also correct in stating that Weston had been saddled with the nickname ‘Weston-super-Mud’. The term had been used by, among others, Phil Bison’s brother in literature, Roald Dahl, although the definitive origins of the less-than-flattering nickname remain unclear.

Dahl, the creator of many much-loved classic tales, such as Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, moved from Wales to a boarding school in Weston when he was nine-years-old.

While his stay was short-lived, the experience certainly left its mark on the man. In his autobiography, Dahl said his school looked like ‘a private lunatic asylum’ and he described Weston itself as a ‘slightly-seedy seaside resort’.

Comedy legend John Cleese is arguably one of Weston-super-Mare’s most famous natives, and it has been reported (in The Independent newspaper on 17 February 2018, among others), that when John and his parents left their house, the next occupants were a family which included the future politician, prolific author and peer of the realm, Jeffrey Archer, alias Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare, no less.

Today, Weston is perhaps best-known for its Grand Pier and, some would say, the prevalence of bedraggled donkeys on the beach, in addition to the four-legged beasts of burden who provide pleasure rides for children across the expansive mud flats.

It is a popular destination for residents from The Midlands, is renowned for housing a large elderly population and reportedly has a disproportionately high percentage of the drug rehabilitation hostels.

Such is its renown for being a popular haunt for a somewhat more senior age bracket (perhaps because they’ll be doing some haunting of their own in the not-too-distant future), there’s a rumour – that admittedly I am starting here – that most of the display windows of the High Street stores are bifocal.

Despite its proximity to both the beach and town centre, the bar remained largely undiscovered (or, perhaps, deliberately avoided) by casual passers-by and tourists. It relied very much on its hardcore of regulars to keep the business afloat.

Ted lived in a spacious flat on the upper floor with his wife, who everyone knew quite simply as Mrs Ted (no one seemed to know her actual name), and son. He had not yet lived there all his life, although he had been born in the lounge, some nine months after being conceived a little further along the corridor.

Ted’s son was also called Ted. In order for everyone to be able to tell father and son apart, they were known as Big Ted and Little Ted.

Following his recital from Bison’s book, Big Ted addressed two of his most loyal customers by their nicknames. In fact, most of the pub’s ‘miscreants and misfits’ had nicknames bestowed upon them, as a sign of the fact that this is where they belonged.

Insurance broker Tom Grey’s mirthsome moniker, Greybeard, was an ironic homage to his stubborn refusal to grow up mentally while being unable to deny the clear physical signs of his chronological advancement, as evidenced by a smattering of mould-like growth on his chin. He insisted on calling it a beard, others begged to differ and argued that it actually was mould; to coin a cliché, when Tom was born, they threw away the mould, but in the many decades that had followed, some of it had evidently grown back.

Shortly after Phil Bison’s visit to The Jolly Roger a few years ago, Tom decided to commiserate his 50th birthday by attempting to recapture his long-lost youth at the top of one of Europe’s tallest rollercoasters, The Big One in Blackpool, in the company of three other Jolly Roger regulars, or ‘inmates’, as some authorities would have it. The fearless foursome drove 225 miles from Weston to Blackpool for a four-minute ride, and then 282 miles back (due to a navigational mishap) in a single very long day. (Editor’s note: the many misadventures they experienced on their ridiculous road trip are documented in The Big One, the first book in The Jolly Roger Trilogy).

Des Measures, a painter and decorator of fine repute, was known as Drastic, having been regarded for some time as the pub’s resident ‘drama queen’. He had regularly regaled his fellow lounge lizards - or should that be lounge lepers? - with woeful tales relating to his elderly uncle, whose demands prevented Des from being part of Tom’s aforementioned birthday misadventures. (Editor’s note: the trials and tribulations Des endured courtesy of his avuncular agitator are documented in Uncle Prawn, the second book in The Jolly Roger Trilogy).

Des finally had a change of fortune, quite literally, upon the death of his tiresome tormentor, which also happened shortly after, but was completely unrelated to, Phil Bison’s visit to The Jolly Roger.

However, nicknames tend to stick long after whatever had inspired them, and thus Des remained ‘Drastic’ in name, if no longer in nature.

The Jolly Roger was very much a ‘locals’ tavern, frequented by a small but fiercely loyal band of outcasts, misfits, waifs and strays.

It was a no-frills, traditional ale house, an ‘old man’s pub’, some would say; one of the few remaining ‘spit and sawdust’ proper pubs, Ted would argue. Not for him was a family-friendly ‘fun pub’ and gastro eatery where they served French fries in flowerpots and meat-free burgers on bathroom tiles or roof slates.

Some viewed The Jolly Roger as a glorified daycare centre, or den of iniquity, for drop-outs and drunken delinquents, who habitually whiled away their lives there because they had no place else to go.

Others viewed it as a haven for hen-pecked husbands, which was ironic because half the reason they were hen-pecked in the first place was because they spent so much time in this sad old pub.

The Jolly Roger was a refuge from reality for its regulars, a ‘safe house’ in which they sought solace and solitude, becoming comfort-ably numb and intentionally blank, finding that elusive lucid interval from everyday life.

If a non-regular did absent-mindedly or accidentally drop in - for it was often said that no one in their right mind would venture there on purpose - they could be forgiven for thinking it was a dark, dingy, depressing place in which sorrowful citizens sat mostly in silence, contemplating their own woes and worthless lives like the hopeless creatures of habit they clearly were. In truth, the barflies shared a kind of collective consciousness, which rendered words an unnecessary use of the mouth, which could be much more gainfully employed in the consumption of alcohol.

It was as if the regulars shared a single, symbiotic, hive mind. They spend so much time