What’s in a name?

IF you walk round Weymouth then you are bound to come across pubs and bars with some famous historical or unusual claim to fame.

The Black Dog and the Boot pubs are two with long and distinguished histories, but more modern watering holes sometimes have an interesting tale to tell as well.

Take the relatively new bar Boho in St Thomas Street for instance.

I enjoyed a drink in there one day and asked why the bar had such an unusual name, expecting to be given some explanation about it being an obscure village in Romania or a tribute to some family member. The truth of the matter was much more entertaining.

It emerged that all was going really well as staff prepared for the launch of the new Bohemia bar.

However, with just a few hours to go, there was panic stations when someone noticed that there was no name sign over the bar.

The upshot of this was that a sign was hurriedly constructed but they only had enough plywood available to make four letters, so the bar’s name was shortened to Boho!

Imagine that circulating as an historical yarn in a couple of centuries time.

Absolutely barking!

WHEN two dogs square up to each other there is going to be trouble.

So it was in a mismatched contest which entertained shoppers in Weymouth. One large slightly puzzled dog was being loudly attacked by a much smaller psycho dog.

The only problem was that there happened to be a large shop window between the two of them. This didn’t seem to matter too much to the larger dog but it completely infuriated the smaller animal which became almost hysterical in its efforts to get at an enemy it could see but not reach.

Time after time the smaller dog hurled itself against the glass, yapping and snarling, and time after time the larger dog just wagged its tail and looked pityingly at his smaller opponent.

Eventually the little dog worked itself up into such a rage that its owner had to break off shopping, come over and pick it up. Even then the small dog still tried to splutter defiance at his opponent while being carried from view. Absolutely barking.

A night to remember he’d rather forget

A WEYMOUTH man enjoying a night out while on holiday in Mexico saw people near him sampling an unusual drink.

He wondered what it was and asked the barman who explained that it was a special cocktail that he himself had made.

The man decided that this might be the perfect way to end his evening so he asked the barman to make him one too which he did.

A few hours later the man was back in bed asleep with his wife when he suddenly woke her with a terrifying scream.

She was gradually able to coax from him that he had had a terrible dream in which he had slowly been eating his right hand.

A day or so later after various inquiries the man believed that his dream had been caused by his cocktail of that night which certainly contained mescal but which may also have contained mescaline which is hallucinogenic.

Whatever the explanation for his vision, the man said it was the worst nightmare he had ever had and one he just couldn’t forget.

Traffic problems

WOE, woe and thrice woe! The time has come, the end is nigh.

Legend has it that this was how soothsayers warned people of impending disaster thousands of years ago.

That role appears to have been shouldered in modern times by the flashing messages of illuminated signs warning of work which has just started for Weymouth’s transport package.

Dozens and dozens of people have talked to me about this and the universal theme seems to be that they are pretty depressed about the whole thing.

No one seems very confident of anything other than massive traffic disruption despite a number of exhibitions explaining that this is “a golden opportunity” to solve Weymouth’s chronic congestion problems.

It has even become something of a joke for people to come up with fresh ways of avoiding the worst of the excavations.

The best I’ve heard came from one woman who said her solution would be to send her husband out to do the shopping instead!

Beer is proof?

IT was my birthday recently and a friend gave me a card on which was written: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

Leaving aside certain obvious religious and philosophical talking points that this raises, I happened to mention the brewing card to another friend. He then told me this tragic tale.

Apparently a local man was working in a large brewery. He thoroughly enjoyed his job for which, quite clearly, there were certain obvious perks.

Unfortunately he had a bad day at the office one week and pressed a lever he shouldn’t have touched.

The sad consequence of his action was that 400,000 pints of lager were dumped down a drain!

So if beer is proof that God loves us, is this accident proof that lager Fosters mistakes?

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