WEEK 43 - STAGECOACH (1939)

7th July '22 when I watched this classic, and I thought BRAPA blogs were behind!

This was however, my final 'Wine, Western, Wotsits Staying In' night of 2022 but all that might change in 2023.

Yes, for those of you who mainly know me for pub ticking and BRAPA (which is surely everyone since that Los Angeles movie director stopped following me), it pains me to say weekly #ThirstyThursdays are currently unsustainable.

Financial reasons are the main constraint (NOT that these ongoing train strikes even give me the option). The fact that I'm currently attempting to tick more adventurous (expensive) counties such as Notts & Lincs takes its toll. So I'm cutting down to fortnightly for now, and reviving #WWWSI on the alternate weeks, seeing as I enjoyed it so much during 2020/21 Lockdown.

I was hoping work would let me swap my Thursday's off to Friday's so I could maximise my BRAPA trips with fortnightly long weekend overnighters, but the new lad on our team from Burton on Trent doesn't work Fridays, so that has put the kibosh on my plan for now. My boss said "we'll revisit your plan in the spring". Being the model employee, I replied "fine, I don't want to put the team under pressure". Maybe, being a Burton man, he's a beer & pub lover, and he'll change his routine to accommodate BRAPA? I'll get to know him first, tell him how nice his hair and Staffs accent are, flash my Bass t-shirt on Zoom calls etc.

Obviously, this makes a repeat of the 593 GBG ticks I did in 2022 look unlikely at present, BUT my strategy for the coming year is to visit more 'new' counties, do less 'chasing of the tail' in well trodden places like Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, London and Durham, and hope that in covering uncharted BRAPA ground, I'll hit a lot of GBG regular entries, rather than the fly-by-nighters. The result? My 'churn' will be kinder come September's 2024 GBG release. That is the theory anyway.

Sorry, this is hardcore BRAPA strategy chat when you're actually here for hardcore #WWWSI scenes like this:

Yes, my favourite part of #WWWSI nights is the kitchen pre-amble.

I pour myself a bowl of giant prawn cocktail Wotsits (no dice roll allowed on Keto, unless you have a die with 1's on all 6 sides). I balance these out with a few olives.

I roll the 20 sided D. and hey presto, I managed to land on the highest ranked film left on the list, #4 Stagecoach. 100% approval rating too. I was expecting big things, although I wondered if 1939 was just a bit too old?

I popped a Sainsbury's four cheese pizza in the oven because I'd just come back from a crazy week in Cornwall and I was too tired to make any effort.

I did myself a nice 'carafe' of lemon & apple cider vinegar water to keep me hydrated and my metabolism moving (hopefully not too much in a southerly direction!) because drinking a whole bottle of red wine is a bit like 3.5 pints of ESB or something mad.

"Looks like wee!" said Maidstone's favourite Pauline Sharp on Twitter. Thanks for that.

I refer to my 'Red Wine' encyclopaedia and next on the list was the 'Saperavi' grape from Georgia, which back in July, I'd have probably tried to compare to Shota Arveladze in a positive and not at all tongue-in-cheek way. Whereas now, I'll only drink red wine sourced from Derby's Pride Park that insists in playing out from the back (of the palette).

It was a brilliant wine, very full bodied, thick and dark, top tannins, quite acid. Like pouring an Old Tom into a Plum Porter Grand Reserve. Pow, you knew you were 'in a wine' with this one. 13% so not a killer either. (Can't wait for Port week!)

I popped on a few Uncle Matt tunes on my tape deck, this week's highlight was this .....

Time for a bit of posing before the oven went beep.

My Keto diet was working, I could finally do up that button on my jacket, although by the end of pizza and half way down the Wotsits, I MIGHT have loosened it.

It was time to go through and watch the film.

My 1939 fears were soon allayed, which probably isn't what most Brits said in 1939. Stagecoach was a corker. Once I'd got over the fresh-faced John Wayne (I didn't know he was ever young), I grew into it.

A prostitute, an alcoholic, a whisky salesman and a pregnant lady all sharing the same coach? What's not to love? Like a BRAPA day out to Gillingham.

A banker and a gambler soon hop on, and then John Wayne joins them even though he's on the run and gets arrested the second he boards. Bit like Newark Northgate.

The drunk man sobers up just long enough to deliver the baby, then they free John Wayne so he can help them all get away from these Apaches but it didn't say why the Apaches were after them, just for giggles presumably. As a sort of goodwill gesture at the end, even though John Wayne has handed himself in, they let him ride off into the sunset with the prostitute. How romantic.

And the pub was an EXACT replica of the East Cliff Tavern in Folkestone for an added bonus point.

So there we have it, unless anything changes, I'll see y'all in a week's time where I'll be watching a long film called New Land and drinking wine from Uruguay.

Thanks for reading, Si