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Out of context: Reply #57216
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- Horp0
I recently saw a photo of a sign in a pub window that said 'This bup is close'... I rather thought that would go viral for a day or so, but it appears it didn't manage after some promising initial multiple postings and articles on bloggy sorts of sites.
Anyway, it reminded me of a time many years ago when I lived round the corner from a pub that had closed and was being knocked down or renovated behind a wooden facade. The facade covered the entire building, and was essentially just flat panels of chipboard affixed to scaffolding, upon which someone had painted an impression of a pub, in order, I presume, to look a bit more cheerful than a blank facade.
The style of the illustration was quite good. Fairly accurate and nicely proportioned, but by no means at all was it a photographic representation of a pub. It was clearly a very large, very tidy, very well executed mural painting. Proportionally accurate, tidy, but simplistic and a little child-like in that respect. The painted-on windows featured painted-on silhouettes and impressions of people inside having a nice old time. They were all victorians. They all had top hats on, monocles, the ladies were in great big flowery hats etc.
For some reason that I cannot recall now, I had the good fortune to be stood outside that pub, and I watched a proper drunken old tramp... really the most archetypal comedy drunken old tramp you could imagine, and he came staggering down the road towards me in a very precarious fashion, but he seemed to be gesturing to me and shouting something incomprehensible.
As he got closer it became apparent he was shouting 'LET ME IN', and I watched in absolute disbelief as he got nose-close up to the painted impression of a door, and attempted to enter the painted pub. He was so drunk that he just couldn't grasp and turn the entriely painted on door knob no matter how hard he tried, and he pushed and pulled and kicked and raged, and attempted various other means of gaining the door's compliance.
After about five minutes of shouting and cursing and trying to wegde his fingernails into the gaps that were entirely painted on. he got fed up, went around to the painted-on window next door, and proceeded to bang on it, shouting to the painted-on Victorians inside that he needed come in, and that he had cash.
Not one of those entirely painted-on people came to his assistance though, and after a while he staggered off. Confused, a little angry, and feeling like society had once again kicked him in the teeth.
- i believe you can buy a mug with that slogan if you so wishhans_glib
- No thanks. I wasn't 'hoping' it would viral, merely 'expecting' that it would.Horp
- your talents are wasted herethreadkiller