Foals, Fools and Hunter S Thompson
“Cause I’ve been around two times and found that you’re the only thing I need”
So I thought I’d treat my old friend Hunter with a trip to see the “Grand Old Lady” of Ironbridge and to and from my spiritual home I listened to the Foals album “Holy Fire” so please allow me to introduce you to an already favoured song but which has soared in my affection on this very day, 25th June in the year of our Lord, 2024.
“The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes of peace in our time, in the US or any other country. Make no mistake about it: we are at war now — with somebody — and we will stay at war with that strange and mysterious enemy for the rest of our lives”
Hunter S Thompson, page 90 of “Hey Rube — Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the downward spiral of dumbness”
And so much for all that.
My first port of call today was the very best seat Ironbridge has to offer and why not? I was with the very best of the very best after all. I smoked a cigarette from the cramped confines of fishing peg number 13 with only the chatter from the toy town across the river and the words from the good doctor himself for company. For a little less than an hour my old friend took me from the “bad craziness” of his home and an ever depleting livestock count as “flaming chickens fell out of the sky and hissed as they died in the snow”, through to boxing, betting and whether or not the 3 Stooges could save the NBA before riffing on an old story from the Kentucky Derby but with an updated sense for the absurd. Before I departed for “Stephen’s Bench” (this is not to be confused with “Beth’s Bench” for that comes marginally later in our brief tale yet to be written), Hunter turned his attention to injustice and a murky legal case still on-going to this very day it seems, as well as the many and varied guests at his Colorado compound and telephone conversations with Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Warren Zevon and Jack Nicholson.
For Hunter, the truth was often way stranger than any fanciful notion of fiction.
Before taking up residence on my own bench in my very own spiritual home away from home I checked in with Jeremy at the “Old Fashioned Sweet Shop” and it was good to see my favourite Welsh Englishman back on his feet and back in his sugary kingdom after a recent health scare. Tall tales were told as ever but with the added twist of a true tale and the departure of Sam from the adjoining chip shop. I’m going to miss being teased and flirted with on my regular trips to that salt and vinegar palace of fried delights. Sam flirted with everyone with a “fuck the world” kind of spirit I can admire and only aspire to. I’m going to miss Sam.
From my bench and the incessant chatter of two elderly tourists who were clearly having the time of their lives in the Ironbridge sunshine it was to “Beth’s Bench” and memories of drinking wine under a full moon casting a magnificent light atop the river, and the night we both knew it was over even though we were still deeply in love. I could tell that tale and even embellish it with some whistles and bells but where’s the fun in that? Instead I marvelled at the dogs splashing in the river as two young children paddled to their heart’s delight, the resident ducks on the far side of the river happy sitting quietly in the shade. So it was back to the good doctor for more tales of basketball, the wisdom of Nashville and the “city of 10,000 whores” and what a stone cold suck NFL football is before he signed off in customary fashion by planning his next fleecing of the gambling “rubes” in his life.
That was September 10th 2001.
“It was just after dawn in Woody Creek when the first bomb hit New York City this morning, and as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant, compared to the scenes of destruction and utter devastation coming out of New York on TV”
Hunter S Thompson, page 89 of “Hey Rube — Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the downward spiral of dumbness”
Thanks for reading. Here are some future Pulitzer Prize winning books that would look rather marvellous on your bookshelf! All available from Amazon.
