A Bar In Amsterdam…
This week's musical prompt for the excellent Stories From The Jukebox newsletter is ‘A Bar In Amsterdam’ by Katzenjammer (link to the prompt below).
Thanks to Steve McKennon for the song suggestion.
This is based on a true story.
At least I think it is, I had been in an Amsterdam bar for quite some time when it happened.
To be honest, as I’ve started writing this, doubts have crept in as to whether this bar was in Amsterdam at all.
It could well have been Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, or Vienna.
Those really were the days.
Anyway, I was possibly in a bar in Amsterdam somewhere back towards the beginning of this century.
My friend James was with me. I'll check all this with him next time I see him, but I don't expect our recollections to be aligned.
They rarely are.
Until very recently, I’d been convinced he'd been with me the night a crazy man pulled a gun on me for talking to a girl he liked. I swore I could still see him running off in a zig-zag line, to avoid gunfire, before diving into a hedge.
Turns out it wasn't James, it was Julian. James says he wouldn't have run off and left me.
He would.
But this isn't a story about the wild west that used to be Saturday night in Wakefield. It's about a bar in Amsterdam, or somewhere like that.
We were minding our own business, taking it relatively steady after two full days and nights doing what wastrels do in Amsterdam.
No, not that. But yes, everything else.
Out of nowhere, a chap came over and asked us if we’d mind his horse for a while.
He was clearly confident that we’d say yes because he immediately placed a wooden horse on our table. The horse was about the size of a small dog. It did have a name, but I’ve forgotten it.
We were informed that he would pick up the horse at 7pm that evening, some four hours later.
James asked if we could take the horse out of the bar at all. The man agreed that we could as long as we didn't try to ride it. He then bid us a pleasant afternoon, said he would see us later, and left.
We watched him out of the window running away at speed, but neither of us commented on why the man was in such a hurry.
There was no time for that. We had something to look after. It was decided that another drink would be required while we made a horse sitting plan.
The horse didn't indicate that it wanted anything, although I did offer it a bit of my Heineken, which it declined, using my voice.
It's amazing how many animals use my voice to communicate with me. I'll have to give that some more thought one of these days.
We’d not been in charge of our equine companion for very long when it became clear that we had suddenly become much more interesting to other people than we’d been back when we weren't looking after a wooden horse.
“Why have you got a horse with you?” became a common question.
At first, we answered with the truth, but soon moved on to a slightly more creative anecdote in which we had stolen it from a museum and were now on the run from the authorities.
That we’d only ‘run’ as far as a bar, and we were confessing our crime to all unsundry, didn't seem to matter.
Eventually, some girls from Birmingham invited us to join them in another bar for additional frivolities.
These brunmies were out of our league. We were under no illusions that our charm and good looks had attracted them. It was the wooden horse that had got us the invite.
No matter, there were three of them. We were two, but our wooden horse made up the numbers, ensuring none of us would end up playing gooseberry.
Although, perhaps unsurprisingly, James and I did end up as spare parts as the wooden horse monopolised all three of the girls.
Eventually, our Birmingham friends decided they'd had enough of us and left.
The horse seemed a bit upset, but we were well used to getting the brush-off from girls all over the world, so we were able to use this experience to cheer it up fairly quickly.
On our way to wherever we went next, we were approached by one of Amsterdam's very helpful street drug dealers and asked if we wanted to buy what they were selling.
James asked whether they'd consider a payment in the form of a wooden horse.
The drug dealer didn't laugh, so we got the fuck out of his face before he killed us, as can happen in these situations where a hardened criminal doesn't have a sense of humour.
A little later, a policeman on a moped pulled over and asked us what we were doing with a wooden horse.
No messing about here, whilst not ‘too pretty for prison’, the British aren't always popular abroad, particularly when they've been drinking, for reasons unknown 😬.
We told the truth. This was accepted without further questions.
As of course it would be.
This was Amsterdam after all.
I think.
We did, very briefly, consider just taking the wooden horse home with us. A deal was a deal, though, so we headed back to the bar for the agreed time.
The same seats were available, so we were able to watch the man sprinting up the street and into the bar.
He saw us, smiled, walked over, asked if we’d had a good time (we had), thanked us and left.
That was it.
It all started in a bar in Amsterdam.
I think.
I’m pretty sure that was also the night when we mistakenly got in a car we’d thought was a taxi and were well on our way out of Amsterdam before we realised our kindly gentleman might not be all he appeared to be.
That, though, is a whole other story ☺️.
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It’s a good thing the bar was not in Troy, and no Greeks were involved. I’ve heard stories that wooden horses can cause unexpected trouble when Greeks are around. Rumours, I know.
Sounds like a delightful bit of horsing around.
Love the wooden horse!