The Steel Club

My cousin Paul belongs to a private pub. That means I belong too.

What a feeling!



It is a steel workers club. There are two bowling greens in the back, and a cricket pitch beyond that. It is a brick building that sells pints of Carlsberg for under 2 pounds. Paul has a trick: he gets handed his pint, and takes a big sip off the top when the bartender turns her back to retrieve change. After Paul is handed his change, he asks for the bartender to top him off. "Seems a bit shortchanged, innit?" He asks. He gets topped off. Works every time. I am scared to try this trick. I am gracious for anything that they give me.

Paul wasn't able to get the time off work, so it's up to me to entertain myself during the day. Today I went into the city and got my bearings; tomorrow, Salford. But everything revolves around what happens at the Steel Club in the evening. Tonight, Paul had a big lawn bowling match out back. Lawn bowling is big here. You are partnered with a player on an opposing team, and face off on a pitch about 27 yards squared. You roll a small ball, called a Jack, to the opposite end of the pitch; then, you try to roll two larger balls as close as possible to the Jack. It is a simple game, and great for the drinking spectators, as you can't even tell who's winning if you pay close attention, so it's just as well that you drink Carlsberg and joke around with your friends and occasionally yell encouragement to whoever happens to be playing. I suppose you could drink while you are actually playing, but I don't have access to the official rulebook.

Paul lost, but he soon recovered; England beat Croatia 4-1 tonight behind a Theo Walcott hat-trick. Completely unexpected! The locals are down on the Three Lions at the moment, and take every chance to take swipes at the team. Fabio Capello, England's Italian manager who can't string three English words together, has recently banned junk food and sweets. He possibly thinks this is the Key To Success. We laughed at him before the match; now he might be the man to lead England back to glory. Such a tactician!

"You know, I love America," says Paul, out of the blue, "but I cannot, for the life of me, understand how the richest, most mighty nation on Earth, cannot figure out how to insure it's own people." Aw, jeez. I don't want to get into this again. Europeans are smart, and they do not associate our fascist government with its people. They read newspapers, and they know about the low approval ratings of Bush and his murdering thug associates, but I quickly change the subject. Everybody knows - our government is corrupt. And I am sick of talking about how corrupt our government is. No need to pour salt into the open wound.

Still, I am somewhat of a celebrity, as not many Americans make their way to the Irlam Steel Workers Club. The last American here was... me, three years ago. To mark the occasion, everybody buys the American beer. Paul buys me beer, and Steve, Paul's friend, buys me beer, and then Steve's dad buys me beer, and then Paul's friend Paul (no relation) buys me beer, and then I have no idea what's going on. Steve asks me why I would waste a perfectly good holiday to come to Irlam; I tell him I'm a demented human being and I hate the sun, and he pretends to understand. Me and the original Paul buy takeout and go home.

A perfectly good holiday, indeed.

TJH