Dolphins Were Monkeys: Karaoke Soul

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The Royal Bengal offered everything you could possibly want from an Indian restaurant: a selection of curry, a tiger cuddly toy by the entrance and speedy service with a smile. The smile was more like the fixed grin of a maniac about to be tipped over the edge and the speedy service meant, quite literally, throwing the cutlery at us in a bid to lay our table and move onto the next at an Olympic speed. Even so, the food was pretty decent and they said ‘please’ so often that to not leave a tip would have seemed rude. Oddly enough, the old man that must have been the owner came to collect our money having stood there all night doing little other than watch his Olympian waiters intently, although I’m sure he fairly allocated our rounded-up £3.50 between Mr Scary-smile and Mr Knife-thrower.

Being good, experienced tourists, we knew that you couldn’t visit a place without taking a look and getting involved with the local culture, so we spent the remainder of the evening in the pubs on the high street. Having already tested the beer garden of The Oddfellows before our fast food dinner, we moved on down the high street to The Golden Lion, which promised the highlight of Thursday night in Keswick in the form of a karaoke and live DJ. Sadly, there was hardly anyone in, none were singing karaoke and the DJ looked like an overweight Phil Collins who played the kind of music that old people who think they know what the kids like play. One drink and the worst end of the commercial hip-hop charts later and we decided to make a run for The Oddfellows once more.

It turned out that The Golden Lion were misleading us; the highlight of Thursday night in Keswick was The Oddfellows. Not only was there a man playing live music, there were people dancing to it. We had already seen the dancers earlier in the evening, looking like they had taken a wrong turn on the way to Glastonbury (maybe it was the confusion caused by Keswick also having a stone circle just outside the town) in the way they had the traditional festival combo of shorts, jeans and wellies, and looked like they probably would have danced to anything, with the possible exception of the Fat Phil Collins-fronted DJ set over the road. The music was good for a while, a mixture of new and old blended into a party mix that kept the dancers dancing. He was not quite going for an all-nighter, but he looked like he had already done a fair while when we arrived and was carrying on well into the early hours, and inevitably his set moved on from the party mix, first into country music then, perhaps fatally, into his own cringe-worthy comedy rock songs. Bad as they were though, John spent the rest of the weekend singing them, so he at least must have made some catchy numbers with memorable lyrics, even if those lyrics were a constant barrage of farmyard innuendo.

Not long after the cockerel song, John and Faith headed back to the Craglands. Faith looked exhausted, and with a big day planned in only a few short hours, sleep was a good option. I took Lyndsey back to The Golden Lion instead though, and suddenly the rough-looking people of Keswick had woken up from their afternoon naps, checked their benefits had hit the bank and headed out to party. The party was still firmly in the hands of Fat Phil Collins, but the song choice was at the mercy of a group of baseball capped track-suited Enrique Iglesias fans. It often seems mandatory at a karaoke for one girl to learn all of the songs off an album, appear shy at first and then belt out most of that album like she is pulling out all of the stops at an X-Factor audition. Or a talent show at Butlins. Same difference, really. These people are usually tone deaf but don’t realise it, and tonight was no exception as one girl was up time and again singing the hits of Alanis Morrissette, always with differing partners but usually with the same results. Even Fat Phil Collins looked embarrassed by it all, and carefully turned the microphone down at convenient intervals just in case the vocal power caused an invasion of cats demanding to know who was screeching on their patch.

Lively as The Golden Lion was, as we finished our drink and found ‘Jagged Little Pill’ had been replaced by Enrique and a group of be-capped teenage boys, we decided it was a good time to head for The Craglands. As we neared the hotel, a great lumbering monster barred our way. It was clearly just a dog with an elongated shadow from the streetlights and incline of the hill, but the vision was enough to create a dark legend that we shall call ‘The Beast of Keswick’. Sadly, as soon as the legend popped into our heads the dog turned around and did a runner, and we were free to head straight to bed in peace. Peace, that is, until we arrived at our room and discovered that the real beast of Keswick was in the room next door, snoring merrily. At first we thought it was John, but realised that John and Faith backed directly onto the beast’s room and were probably filling their ears with cotton wool buds at that moment in time. Being two rooms away, by the time I was in bed I couldn’t really hear it anymore, and though my sleep was restless that night, it was more to do with the early August heat than the sleeping beauty two doors away.

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