PRAWN CRACKERS
Chapter 69
1980`s
( Photo 1 ) . A very similar Chinese restaurant, without the tacky wallpaper, not the actual one in the story.
One weekend there was nothing planed, no rallies or runs out into the country, but there was one possible party at the Nurses hostel on Quarella Road later on in the evening, we may or may not get there, it all depended on how much we would have to drink and who we would meet in the pubs.
At the time Big Roy was working as a bouncer at a so-called nightclub called Simmers on Market street Bridgend, it was the best Bridgend had to offer, except for Drones on Tremains Road and that's not saying much, the place was a dive.
Roy told us he was working until closing time and asked myself and Wobble if we wanted to get in for free, and have a couple of pints thrown in for good measure on the house, we did not hesitate and said yes, we were only going on a pub crawl in Bridgend anyway, night clubbing it is then.
Roy suggested we go for a Chinese meal before going to the club, Roy was always hungry.
We were told the only restriction for getting into the club would be how we dressed, we would have to wear normal clothes, so no cut-offs, no leather jackets, no jeans and defiantly no trainers.
It was a little bit of a problem for me as I only had my bike gear with me and I did not want to go back home to the valley to change, so I borrowed some of Wobbles clothes which were all to big for me, Wobble is 5`11, and I'm 5`6, the trousers were too long, but we sorted that out by using safety pins to pull the trouser legs up off the floor, his shirt fitted some shape, which was white in colour, the trousers were black, luckily I was wearing black boots and not trainers which would be OK for the club, you could not see them anyway as the bottom of the trousers covered them, I looked as if I had just been dressed by a blind tailor, and resembled a waiter or someone who had just come from a funeral and was wearing a his dead grand-dads clothes, Wobble wore a dirt brown two piece jacket and trousers with a burnt iron image in the shape of the bottom of the iron on one of the legs, Roy just looked like a giant penguin.
Firstly we went to the Old Castle pub in Nolton street and then went on to the kings head and then a short walk down Derwyn road to the Dunraven Hotel in Wyndham street, which is conveniently directly opposite the Chinese restaurant that Roy wanted to go into, it was going to be a late night, so we needed to eat something if we were going to be drinking all night, the night was still young it was only just after 20:30, that’s 8:30 pm, to you civilians, the plan was we would have a meal and then myself and Wobble would go to the York tavern while Roy went to work at the night club and then after 22:00 we would go to the club, where Roy would have been on the door and get us in without any hassle.
So we piled into the Chinese restaurant, which sadly I have totally forgotten the restaurants name.
A small thin Chinese guy meet us at the door of the restaurant, Roy said “Table for three, please”, the Chinese guy replied in broken English,” yes sirs, this way please” he looked so small, he could easily have been mistaken for a nine-year-old compared to the size of Roy, our Chinese host lead us into a small waiting area which comprised of a long low coffee table made from bamboo set between two benches facing each other and upholstered in a red synthetic leather, with a large bowl of Prawn Crackers filled right to the brim at the centre of the table, it was a very large round bowl, the little off-white snacks were nearly falling out of the bowl, imagine the size of a bowl that you could fit into your kitchen sink, or possibly even bigger, as soon as we sat down Roy and Wobble spotted the bowl, they started to tuck into the fishy smelling snacks, I did not eat any, they are not to my liking and I just watched the boys demolish the crackers in record time.
This small waiting area was separated from the rest of the restaurant by a thin wooden trestle, from our sitting position you could see the rest of the restaurant, the wooden trestle was a type you see on the outside walls of houses to encourage a vine plant to climb up it, this trestle had also had green vines leaf's, but they were made of plastic, it looked flimsy, cheap and nasty, I could see paper Chinese lanterns hanging down from the ceiling all over the eating area, the wallpaper was the raised embossed type showing scenes of oriental houses and arched bridges with small Chinese characters crossing the bridges, the paper was a deep red with black out lines, the whole restaurant had a very red décor throughout and looked cheaper than the wooden trestle.
In no time at all the large bowl was empty, they had both dived into the bowl like a couple of hungry seagulls after a bag of chips at Barry Island, Roy called over to the small Chinese guy who was still standing by the entrance.
Roy spoke to the guy and asked for the bowl to be topped up again, Roy handed him the empty bowl and said “ fill it back up again butt, I'm fucking starving”, the Chinese guy looked in the empty bowl and looked up at the three of us and said something in Chinese, I said Jokingly and pointing at Wobble and Roy “ don’t look at me, these two fat bastards eat them all", he mumbled something in Chinese again, and then nodded his head and then walked off to the back of the restaurant looking into the empty bowl as he trotted off to the back of the restaurant to get more prawn crackers.
While our small waiter was off on his prawn cracker mission another Chinese waiter replaced him at the door, this one was taller and younger, and looked as if he never learned to smile, he had a grim impression and never took his eyes off us, the small waiter turned up with another full bowl of crackers, he spoke briefly with the taller waiter and put the bowl down on the table, Roy said thank you in Welsh “DIOLCH”, and both wobble and Roy started tucking into the bowl once again, this time showing their hungry hippo game technique, admittedly a little slower this time, the feeding frenzy had slowed down a little, I looked up at the waiter who looked a little confused on what Roy had said to him so I said “ he said thanks to you in Welsh” and gave him a smile, he made a very brief eye content with me and gave me a slight nod and walked straight out to the back of the restaurant, the grim faced waiter just stood there with a permeant scowl on his face, looking similar to one of the devil masks that Japanese samurai wore sometimes.
The younger waiter did not take his eyes off us, then the short Chinese guy came over to our own personal voyeur and spoke to him in a very quiet tone, he nodded to him and then said to us in broken English “your table is ready” and pointed in the direction of the table, by this time Roy and Wobble had finished the bowl again.
Roy picked up the bowl and offered it to the young waiter, the waiter said “no,no, you leave on table”, Roy said “ I`m not taking it, you need to get a bigger bowl butt”, and handed the bowl to him, the waiter carried the bowl under his arm as we walked to the table, we were put in a corner away from everyone else in the room, it was a big room, with a large number of round tables spread out from each other that could sit up to eight people at a time, Roy had to avoid and duck around the paper lanterns as we made our way to the table, I didn't have a problem avoiding the lanterns, only two tables had customers who had begun to eat their meals a little earlier, on one table was a young couple in their early twenties, and the other table was occupied by two middle-aged couples.
We were placed as far away from the other guests in the restaurant, tucked away in a badly lite corner, at the time I didn't think anything about the reason why we were put in this corner, but now I understand why, they isolated us from everyone else in the room.
The young waiter stood nearby, he called a waiter over and gave him the bowl, they whispered in Chinese again, they didn't have to whisper, we could not understand them, the now bowl-less waiter just stood there around a two tables away from us with his back to the wall, just watching, eventually a waiter came to take our order.
We ordered two chicken curry's and a chow main, two pints of cider and one larger, while we waited, for some bizarre reason myself and Wobble started play fighting with the forks off the table which included stabbing each other, while we were doing this, wobble called over a passing waiter and asked him how long the meal would take to be ready, the waiter said without hesitation in broken English, it would take around twenty minutes, Wobble replied “well as we have to wait can we have a bowl of prawn crackers while we wait for the meal to come”, before the waiter could answer, our young voyeur standing by the wall said “I think you have had enough”, in a unfriendly tone, all three of us on the table looked at each other and made the same sound, Wahoooo, and laughed out loud.
Roy said “ we re growing boys, we need to eat”, and gave out a deep belly laugh, which made everyone in the restaurant turn their heads.
The young waiter's face had now lost its miserable look and changed it to an angry look, it was not just his face that gave his emotions away, his body language said it all, his legs were standing apart and his arms tightly folded over his chest, there was a short pause, he then said “three small bowls, and no more, you eat all profits”.
Somehow I think they were trying to keep us happy and quite, I think they may have considered refusing to serve us but thought better of it.
To be honest we were somewhat boisterous and loud, but that was normal for us, we behaved the same everywhere we went, if our behaviour didn't fit in with how other people saw the world that was their problem not ours, all kinds of people live in this world, we have to tolerate them, so they have to tolerate us.
Our meals arrived and so did our drinks which was usual, on a normal night the restaurants like this one would normally encourage you to have more drinks while you wait more profit for them, I think somehow they did not want us to drink too much.
We eat our meals in silence under the watchful eye of or personal waiter who was still standing by the wall, Wobble totally cleared his plate, so he picked it up and started licking the plate clean, the waiter on seeing wobble doing this, walked straight over and tried to grab the plate off him, Wobble hung on to it, so a short tug of war began, Wobble refused to left go, the waiter eventually took control of the now shiny white plate, he just looked at wobble and shake’d his head and mumbled something in Chinese, this made us laugh again, we could not understand him, but we knew what he was saying.
I bet that was the first time for the waiter to fight a customer to collect the finished dish's.
The young waiter handed wobbles plate to another waiter who was also standing nearby, he approached the table and said “no more drinks, you pay bill”, this made us laugh again, we paid the bill and three waiters followed us out of the restaurant, as we were near the door Roy walked over to the waiting area table with the now refilled bowl of crackers, he grabbed a handful and smiled at the waiter and said “ loving your crackers”, I said “thank you, it wasn’t that bad was it “ and smiled at him, he nodded at me still with a grim face and closed the door quickly behind us.
I think the waiters were happy to see the back of us.
Just for he record we did leave a tip.
OK maybe our behaviour is unacceptable in certain company, but there again we were not on this planet to fit into other peoples idea on how the world should work, who makes the rules anyway.
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Some people reading this may not think what happened in the restaurant as very funny, I think you needed to be there to appreciate the humour in the situation, I found it very funny and any snowflake's out there that feel offended by it, just remember just laugh during the good times, there will be plenty of times in the future for tears.
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From that point Roy made his way to the Shimmers night club, and we went to the York Tavern, which was littaery around a 100 or so feet from the club
When myself and Wobble were in the York pub, I can still remember one of the tunes that were being played in the pub, high up on the walls were wide wooden shelves, that had 21” coloured TVs sitting on them, they were the old type of TV, the type that had the glass CRT tubes, playing on the three TV's dotted around the bar was the track Land of Confusion by Phil Collins, the video showed all the spitting image puppets that were popular at the time, I have no idea why I would remember that particular song.
In the York I decided to have a soft drink, we still had a long night in front of us and I did not want to get to drunk to early so I ordered a Coke Cola, it was noisy in the bar and the the bar man must have misunderstood what I have said, I ended up having a pint of Colt45 larger, at the time I was not fussed on the larger, but nowa days I would enjoy the taste, funny how tastes change when you get older.
It was around 22:00/10:00, when we left the York pub for the club, Roy was on the door, with another oversized gorilla dressed like a penguin, the unknown bouncer put his hands out like he was stopping a run away horse, Roy said they are OK they are with me, Roy opened the door for us and said I'll catch up later, the place was full of mirrors, presumably to make the place look bigger, the club was not that big, if I remember correctly it was shaped like a long corridor the size of two rooms back to back and then opened up a little at the back with a small dance floor, and the bar conveniently placed, so everyone crowed in one place blocking everyone's path, we were not clubbing types it was very rare for us to visit a nightclub, we had been to a few times to various clubs over the years, Drones on tremains road in Bridgend, owned at one point by the Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, who had hits with (lost in France), (It’s a Heartache) and (Total eclipse of the heart) and then there was the stonely in Porthcawl, which mysteriously burnt down, there is a story there, but you will not get that story from me, I don’t want to end up face down in a ditch with a plastic bag over my head, well not just yet anyway, there were other clubs, crossways on the island farm road just past the W.W.11 German p.o.w. camp, and the Beer Keller in Barry, there were others in Swansea and Cardiff, like the Barons and the Mayflower, but we preferred party's and bike rallies, so going to the club was kind of a treat, and anyway most times we were refused entry.
We sat by a table that was fixed to the wall in the narrow part of the club, above our heads was a wooden shelf just like the ones at the York pub, this wooden platform had a coloured TV playing music videos that were linked to the clubs sound system, opposite us sitting by a similar table were two girls, and they kept looking over to us, I shouted to Wobble over the way to loud music “ Hey Wob, I think we maybe have a chance with these two girls, they keep looking over here “ Wobble shouted back “yeah I noticed then looking”, then I realised they were not looking at us, but up at the TV above our heads, I looked at Wobble and pointed up, and said the girls were looking at the TV, we both burst out laughing.
A little later in the evening and a couple of pints later, Roy walked very quickly passed us from the entrance door and headed for the back of the club, and then within 60 seconds he came barrelling back down towards the door like an out of control steam train with the heads of two clubbers one under in each arm dragging their bodies behind like rag dolls behind him and promptly threw them out on to the road outside.
We stayed until the last clubber was thrown out at 02:00, and then walked back the couple of miles to Wobbles house in Brackla, we did not get to the nurses party this night we were all clubbed out, but there were other times worth mentioning regarding the nurse party's at Quarella road.
It was a different type of night for us, but just another night out in Bridgend town.
Happy Days
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