WEEK 33 - THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS

Just got in from #SavingYorkPubsInTheRain Luckily, I wrote the following yesterday.

Two weeks today, pubs reopen indoors. Prepare for BRAPA to go craaaaaazzzzzyyyy!

But before that, I thought I'd doff my Stetson to the 'challenge' I've got most enjoyment out of during 'the Lockdown years', #WWWSI (Wine, Western & Wotsits Staying In). For three final shakes of the dice, starting this Sunday night just gone.

In my mind (always a fun place to be), EVERY pub garden in the UK is fully booked or has every table occupied on this early May Bank Holiday Sunday, no room for the weary public transport traveller. "Be banished BRAPA, we don't want your custom!" they growl from being their tight pristine white shirts, balancing a tray of artisan gins on one arm, stonebaked pizza on the other. Two queues form around the carpark. One for the pre-bookings, one for ...... no-one knows. A labradoodle yaps incessantly. "Quiet, Martin!" (heh, cute name for a dog) barks the owner, a Ms Juliette Fortescue-Smyth. She's not been to a pub since her student days in Oxford when she failed a yard of ale challenge in the Lamb & Flag, she tells the rest of the queue who didn't ask. It is raining St Swithin's style. Loaves and fishes, damp socks and walking boots. The next bus is 46 minutes away, the next train 51 minutes after that. And that is IF the connection makes. The nearest GBG pub is 11 miles from here, but it might not be open as it is a converted lock-up on an industrial estate. "Opening hours? We're winging it based on the weather haha" wrote the owner on Facebook a month ago. Someone's spray painted the door with graffiti that looks uncannily Tiny Rebel, and brewed their first ever pineapple DIPA based on an old recipe discovered in the vaults of Watney's brewery.

You may as well stop reading now, it doesn't get any better.

(Narrator's edit - Si was right, it didn't).

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For you brave souls who remain, we will continue as I aimed to 'make the most' of the extra day off work in my own inimitable style (even though Matthew Lawrenson has imitated it in the past, or 'pastiched the buggery out of it' if that is a phrase).

A late, late start, as I firstly HAD to watch the much anticipated conclusion of Line of Duty.

Now I don't want to be "THAT GUY" but I'd like to tell you all I was one of the few watching it in the early days, 11pm on BBC2 when Keeley Hawes was getting pinned to a wall in a multi storey carpark ("ey up, I wouldn't mind pinning Keeley Hawes to a wall" says a long time commentator of Canadian extraction) when viewing figures resembled an end of season 'clash' between Bristol Rovers and Swindon Town.

Sorry Kate and Steve, but not even Dracula coffee and cake can't save you now

An hour later, I'm wondering why I bothered. It fell flat as a pancake. What a let down! Perhaps it was just me.

I glance at Twitter. 'Disappointment' and 'Anti-Climax' are trending in relation to 'Crime Drama'. Not just me. May as well have watched Mark Selby for an hour. The most charismatic man to come out of Leicester since Steve Lynex. And he was born in West Bromwich. LOLZ.

It is 10:25pm when I finally can be arsed to stand up again.

With my boiler broken (which I don't like to talk about) I had to find a novel way to warm the wine.

Halogen-tastic

We have another problem.

Having been 7 weeks since we last WWWSI'd, my giant Wotsits have just gone out of date.

Only a week out. I roll a '3', a nice steady reintroduction. That is 49.5g for those of you who like to deal in metrics or whatever.

I'm delighted to report they are still good and crunchy, though the surface of them seems to have broken up a bit. Normally smoother aren't they? Signs of decay?

I get the water and ice prepared, and open the wine, a Pinotage, oh I have missed red wine!

Despite being recommended by the three wise guys in my Red Wine bible (or at least Beyerskloof Reserve is), it was readily available in Sainsbury's, screw cap, nice n cheap, jobs a good 'un.

Having not had the merest smidgen of red wine pass my lips since 11th March, I thought I might struggle. But I managed the bottle rather too easily! It was fairly light in colour, fruity, smelt of boot leather, but didn't make a huge impact. I prefer my red wines thick n almost black, but probably with hindsight this one was a good re-introduction. (btw, I felt fine at 3am, but head was banging at 9am, and I didn't resurface til 2pm).

Some good food certainly helped ...... lamb & mint kebabs, posh veg ravioli and a bit of spinach (also out of date) for a bit of greenery. I only had half portions, but it was enough.

With Uncle Matt's 2nd Western Mix pumping out of the ole' Sony tape deck at 11pm, I hope my downstairs neighbour wasn't trying to get an early night as I jigged about the kitchen, the wooden lamb kebab skewers smouldering and nearly setting the room alight.

Time to go through for the film then. High up in the league table you'll note, but would #13 be unlucky for some?

I rolled the dice for this film ages ago, but couldn't work out how to buy/access it until this week, when I saw it was available on Netflix.

So even though these extra curricular challenges are coming to an end in a fortnight as BRAPA gets its mojo back, I am now signed up to Netflix. Why I didn't do this last summer I'll never know. Would've probably saved me a fortune.

Look at that happy scene.

It was GREAT to be back, and may I just say 'OH YES', this 2018 Western fully justifying its standing amongst much more well known, older classics.

Proof that this genre is far from dead is perhaps the most pleasing thing of all to me.

The film was split into six 'short stories'. We started with 'The Ballad of Buster Scruggs' itself, my favourite, for it was light, jolly, musical and had not one but TWO fabulous bar scenes. I've been trying hard to get into sci-fi but this first 20 minutes had more joy in it than the previous eight weeks of film watching. The fact it starts with Buster Scruggs sat on his horse playing and singing along to #WWWSI staple 'Cool Water' set the scene.

Here are some highlights I screen-napped:

Oh, indoor pub scenes like this. Don't you miss them? (Two weeks, we can do this!)

The 2nd story was probably the least memorable but still decent. A bungled bank robbery, hanging from a tree, gruesome Native American action, hero ultimately hangs. It was a bit like a condensed version of your classic Western where the hero doesn't win out.

The 3rd story was easily the most harrowing. Thingy Dursley from Harry Potter has no arms or legs, so this bloke ferries him around, where he does stern religious performances in a travelling freakshow kinda way. They aren't that popular. The other bloke realises he'll make more money from a chicken pecking random bells. So he replaces Dursley with a chicken, and plunges Dursley to his death. Awful!

I liked the 4th one, much more gentle (up to a point) as this old bloke prospects for gold on his own. There's a very handsome Eagle Owl in it. Good twist at the end.

The 5th story was most memorable and well-rounded, wonderful but ultimately harrowing. A yappy dog, this nice young lady trying to make a new life for herself when her brother dies of cholera, a marriage proposal, she kills herself due to a misunderstanding, oh what fun we had.

And finally, an Englishman, Irishman, Frenchman and this old lady find themselves travelling in a Stagecoach with two quite sinister but good humoured bounty hunters. They all have a good natter before they reach the town where they're all staying in the same hotel. Felt a bit like my minibus trip late night to Barrow-in-Furness but less traumatic.

I'd really recommend you watch this, superb!

NEXT UP

When I drunkenly staggered back to the kitchen and rolled the dice (A 'lower' 5) for our second of three #WWWSI nights (this coming Thursday so very soon as you read this) , I was absolutely delighted that it came out as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. This is the film I've most wanted to watch since #WWWSI began, having watched it at a Media Studies screening in the Forster Building on Chester Road, Sunderland in 1999 and really enjoyed it. Plus the song is on my tape.

The amount of Wotsits is so far an unknown, but still got some ole' motley ones to finish off but ordered some smaller bags too. The wine will be a Plavac Mali from Croatia, and I might do myself a little steak, peppercorn sauce and some chunky chips, maybe a grilled tomato for show.

Thanks for reading and see you then!

Si