No life
Bar talk
Jeremy Clarke
as we'd hoped it would be. Twinned with Stockport, Lancashire, and dating back to the 1970s, Torremolinos today has some.- Iiiing of a quiet, historic feel to it and is iavoured by the elderly. There are trendy little boutiques there now too, and I noticed two places offering tattoo removal by laser. So we pushed on to Benalmaden a, a Sprawling new development about five miles along the coast, hoping for something brasher, more loutish, and more in keeping with our expectations. Three weeks ago there was a gangland shooting in one of Benalmadena's bars. A discussion became acrimonious, it was reported in the English dailies, and a man left the bar, returned a few minutes later with a gun, then calmly shot two of his Interlocutors. The lady with whom I was travelling suggested it might be fun to find the place, have a few shants, and play Spot the Criminal. Unfortunately, neither of us could remember the name of the bar, so we Parked in the Plaza Bonanza and asked around. Outside Barry's Place I interrupted the conversation an old cockney gent with long, nicotine-stained hair was having with a Small boy about a pool cue. Excuse me,' I said, 'we are looking for :rn ex-pats' bar where they have been nooting at each other recently.' 1. Oh, you mean the Grapes,' he said. a ithi,my's pub. I don't know anything about rat, though.' The Grapes was the old geezer's local, as it happened. He not only it91.(1,us how to get there, he told us the vic- illtels names (they were friends of his), plus d ,„ name and current whereabouts of the ,an i wanted in connection with the shoot- Lig (another friend of his). He also recom- mended the steak and kidney pie. to You had to be 'motored up', as he put it, ho get out to the Grapes, which was, to be honest, a bit of a disappointment. Apart lo in Tina, the landlady, no one in the bar Plenty remotely thuggish. There were entY of shaved heads and tattooed arms gathered around the bar, it is true, and everyone over 40 had bright, alcoholic eyes. But everyone was tremendously open and jolly, not threatening at all. The lady with whom I was travelling and I generally relish a hint of violence in the air. We've been in golf clubs with a more intimidating atmo- sphere than this place, however.
The bar of the Grapes was built of small glazed bricks and resembled a very large and elaborate fireplace. On a tiny stage off to one side, a fat skinhead with a kindly face was organising the karaoke. Cata- logues of the songs in the karaoke machine's repertoire and some betting shop pens to note down the numbers were scattered on the tables. Kids, mostly, were getting up to perform songs by Oasis or the Spice Girls. The fat skinhead tried to make them laugh in the middle of their songs by doing fruity, prolonged belches into his microphone.
Between songs he told jokes. 'Has any- body seen that new film about the life of Harold Shipman?' he said, pretending to look for a show of hands. 'It's called the Old Dear Hunter.' Also, we heard about a Buddhist hot-dog vendor who offered to make his customers one with everything. This went completely over everyone's heads, including mine, but the lady with whom I was travelling snorted so violently into her snakebite, several people looked over curiously at us. The first adult to get up and sing whom we saw was the owner of a hairdressing salon called Beau Locks. He had white shoes and a gold medallion and sang `Three Coins In A Fountain', beautifully, with his hand on his heart, while behind him the fat skinhead took down his trousers and pants, bent over, and parted his cheeks. Then, to much applause, and stamping of feet, the landlady went on stage and did 'Your Cheating Heart', which seemed some sort of a Grapes anthem, because everyone turned to face her and bellowed out every word.
It took about five pints before I got up to sing. I sang 'I'm Going To Be A Country Girl Again (with an old brown dog in a big front porch and rabbits in the pen)', which went down OK. Then the lady with whom I was travelling got up and sang 'My Boy Lollypop', with actions, which went down an absolute storm.
Our getting up to sing made us accepted as part of the gang, or so we thought. But around one in the morning, when car-loads of men with wide shoulders and highly impractical shoes started arriving, and things livened up considerably, we were more or less chucked out. The next time I went up for a refill the barman said, 'Sorry, pal, el shutto,' to me, before turning to the bloke beside me and saying, 'Same again, Sammy?'
We didn't argue.
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