I remember my first Saturday night in Nottingham like it was yesterday. My wife and I had just gotten settled and were rewarding ourselves with a night out on the town for finishing our big move across the ocean. The plan was to have our own mini-pub crawl, hitting the more sedate bars. On the way to the Malt Cross early on, I suggested we stopped for a quick one in Wetherspoons. My wife replied, “No, that one isn’t very nice”.
The next pub we entered tricked me. It had leaded windows, great beer and even better music coming through the speakers. We were surrounded by groups of laughing friends, couples sharing a quiet drink and smiling and polite staff. And then last call hit, and it was as if someone had turned the “crazy” knob all the way up to 11. A quarter of an hour later, a waitress forcibly pulled my drink from my hands and barked “You should know how long it takes to drink an effing pint”. Outside, all the nice people had been taken away and replaced by cackling prostitutes, shouty fat blokes, and lots and lots of yellow-jacketed policemen. Had a bomb gone off somewhere? Had civilisation ended while we were in the pub? Is this the revolution? I was just about to retreat into the Sierra Maestra Mountains to plan my guerrilla uprising when we passed by Wetherspoons and saw a couple of its recent inhabitants projectile vomiting up the side of it.
I had just had my first encounter with the Townies.
The word 'Townie' is such a cutesy-pie term for something horrible. It’s one of those quaint Brit-isms like 'Buttie', 'Kagoul' or 'Twee' that makes life here so interesting. When I first heard the word 'Townie', I imagined a race of tiny people who hid in the little nooks and crannies in the town centre. Little munchkins who get up to all kinds of mischief like pulling people’s trousers down and shooting pigeons with tiny little lightning bolts out of their magic wands. If you catch one, and pull its tiny beard, it grants you a wish!
I hardly expected it to refer to greasy twats in shiny poly-blend shirts and slutty chicks stuffed like sausages into sparkly, way too small, way too revealing evening wear. A race of people who spend their time draining pints of cheap lager, diddling each other on the dance floor and puking, pissing and beating on each other. They do grant you three wishes if you grab them, though - if you count a black eye, a mouth full of used kebab and gonorrhea as 'wishes'.
In preparation for this column, I actually bit the bullet and went inside a Townie bar to report back from the front lines, Rageh Omar style. I got my disguise all ready: designer jeans, a pastel Ben Sherman and a gallon of hair wax. I even filled my mobile up with short clips of deep throat porn just in case a Townie lad called my bluff. For we were going into the granddaddy of Townie bars, the Orc Castle itself: Yates’.
We were immediately greeted by the perfect Townie bar trifecta: fruit machines on the wall, giant disco ball dangling from the roof, and a sweaty Townie dude hanging off the back of an equally drunken hen (complete with bunny ears). If that wasn't off-putting enough, there was a middle-aged Townie dude dad-dancing on stage with his eyes closed. Townies come in all shapes and sizes, but the old ones are especially frightening. There is nothing creepier than a late-forties Townie dude on the pull, leaning against the bar, eyeing up girls young enough to be his daughter (which, if he comes from certain estates, means 'any women under 35'), air-guitaring to Living on a Prayer and shouting about his numerous 'conquests' to his mates.
(I don’t know why Townie men have a head at all. They might as well just have two cocks; one mounted on their shoulders to do their thinking with and one in their pants to disappoint Townie women with. In fact, if their head-cock had a foreskin they had to pull back every time they had a drink, they might actually take breaths in between pints, thus giving the cock in their pants a chance of actually being capable of performing on the off chance it’s called upon.)
And the old Townie ladies? Man, where do I start? If your midriff is an 'outie', then it might not be a good idea to unleash that bad boy. Dark colours and layers are the ticket. We have middle-aged Townie women in Canada as well. We call them 'Cougars', for their ability to stalk and attack young prey. Unlike their English counterparts, however, Coogs put in an effort. They spend every cent of their alimony on laser treatments, silicone and Botox. Snogging a Canadian Coog is like blowing up a lilo (ahem, not like I’d know). I imagine snogging an English Townie equivalent would be like pressing your face up against a climbing wall. Manoeuvring your mush around the jagged teeth, tuppenny-sized moles and scar tissue would be quite a feat. The younger townie girls wear short skirts. I thought at first that it was to attract the two-cocked townie men, but I’ve since discovered that it’s only so they have less skirt to pee on when they’re squatting in the Broadmarsh entrance.
Even though I got enough to write about within the first 30 seconds of entering Yates’, I thought I’d be a good reporter and stay the course. Dodging punches and hens sprawled out across the dancefloor is not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it was nice to have a 'Get Out of Society Free' card for an evening. I took full advantage by necking four pints of Stella in quick succession and unleashing the C-word on a cabbie just for kicks. It felt good.
It wasn’t an easy task living amongst the townie-folk, but I survived it and can cross off another Nottingham experience off my list. Next time I'll go for something a bit more enjoyable, like being shot in the groin by arrows.
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