It was a normal Saturday evening in Ron's. I was sitting with Jimmy the Bollix and Stinkin' Pete who had both been at Croke Park to see Tyrone knock the ever-living shite out of Dublin in the football. They'd arrived back from the game at around 7.30 and we'd been at the bar since.
Ron was in rare old form. Sometimes when he gets in the mood he's a story-teller to beat all others. Forget Kenneth Williams, forget Peter Ustinov. Mere amateurs compared to Ron and at around 10 o'clock he was in the middle of a fantastic tale about a time when he was working as a barman in Paris and he made Jim Morrisson a Caiparinha mixed with industrial bleach when in walked Dirty Dave.
"Howyiz, lads?" he said.
He got the usual grunted responses as we were all enjoying Ron's story and he was at the part where he was getting ready to flee Paris when Dave piped up again.
"Lads, dis here is me cousin, Archie."
I looked and there was nobody at all with Dave.
"What the fuck are you on now?" I asked him. "Seeing things again, I bet, you cunt. Didn't the hospital tell you not to stop taking those pills? You'll have another episode and I don't know if me and Jimmy can sort things out with Colin Farrell's ma like we did the last time."
"No, Twenty. I'm not taking the piss. Me cousin Archie is here", he said and took a step to the left.
"ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!", I said as the hideous sight of dwarf smacked me right between the eyes. Dirty Dave's cousin was about 3'8" high and had an enormous head on a teeny tiny body.
Now, I'm not sure if this is something I've mentioned before but I don't like dwarves. I know they say Ireland is the home of the little people but at least leprechauns stay out of your way until you find them and their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They certainly don't come in to the pub on Saturday and make me want to vomit out of my nose.
Anyway, it couldn't get up on one of the stools so Dave gave it a boost up and it ordered a pint of Giunness.
'Good choice of drink' I thought to myself, 'Maybe this gnome isn't as bad as I think it is.'
So it waited for its pint to settle and licking its lips it picked it up - WITH TWO HANDS BECAUSE THE GLASS WAS TOO BIG - and proceeded to glug down that delicious beer. I think the thing I hate most about ooompa-looompas is their hands. Their stubby little hands. Seeing two of them wrapped around a pint of Guinness, in my local, at the same bar I was sitting at having a good time not 5 minutes before, was just too much for me.
"Dave, c'mere!" I said. Dave come over.
"What's up?" he asked.
"Look, here's the story, man. I'm allergic to dwarves. Do you not have somewhere else you can go with that thing?"
"Here now, Twenty", he said. "That's family, I wouldn't talk about your family like that."
"My family aren't fucking circus freaks, Dave."
He got in a bit of a strop then and wandered off. He and the midget finished their pints and left. He had a right puss on him when he lifted it down off the stool.
I'm not sorry though. I just hate those little fuckers and one of the best stories of rock'n'roll excess I ever heard was the one where Freddie Mercury had a party and he hired a load of dwarves, strapped trays to their heads and put bowls of cocaine on the trays. The little people wandered round the party all night and whenever anyone wanted another line they just stopped a dwarf and snorted away. That's what we should use them for. For serving drinks/drugs at an easy to reach height, for unblocking chimneys and for rescuing children that fall down wells.
We don't even need lots of them for films anymore. The new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory just used one real life pygmy and made all the Ooopma-Looopmas in the film by regenerating him with computers. We could also paint them with make-up, dress them with funny costumes, give them a fishing rod and a stool shaped like a mushroom and we could have a whole new line of living garden gnomes but you wouldn't catch me touching one of them in case I caught the small.
Despite my terrifying encounter with the abominable Lilliputian I lived not only to tell the tale but to skull another 6 or 7 pints before picking up a
large single of chips and a battered, not cocktail, sausage on the way home.
Down with dwarves.