Iconic (Photo via Simon Haystack)
In olden times, in times of stones and sands, grey-bearded gods and nymph-like goddesses would send us gifts – the gift of music, for example, or the gift of clean clear water, or the gift of fire or bountiful fruit, or the gift of lush fertile lands in which to raise our sheep – and we would say: thank you, gods, thanks to you for these wonderful gifts. And yet: when did you last look to the heavens and mouth a silent prayer of thanks for Wetherspoons, the affordable Curry Club-centric chain of pubs slash restaurants? Was it fucking never? Was it fucking never, you ungrateful shits?
It was never. And that is why Wetherspoons – the only unerring chink of light in these dark and unenlightened times – that’s why Wetherspoons is turning against us. That’s why Wetherspoons is sending rats to steal our chips.
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I suppose the headline news here would be better served with assorted extracts from the Mail Online write-up that broke the news:
A Wetherspoons pub was evacuated after a rat run up a customer’s leg and took a chip out of his hand.
Mechanic Reece Combs, 22, was tucking into his meal with girlfriend Lucy Wrenn at Albany Palace in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, when the uninvited dinner guest struck.
Staff immediately cleared out the pub and pest controllers found two rats running around the premises.
I don’t want to say ‘plague from the Wetherspoons gods’ but: I’m not not saying it.
Mr Combs, who described the rat as ‘sewer-sized’, said: ‘I was out for a meal with the missus.
‘We were sat there having a conversation and a rat ran up and took my chip out of my hand. It ran up my knee with some speed – it felt like somebody had kicked me.
‘I thought: ‘that rat has some serious confidence’. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I told a member of staff and there was panic and we were all told to leave.
Now this is the first instance of an attempt to size the rat in question. Reece Combs says the rat is “sewer-sized”, which could either mean i. transcription error, and he was actually saying ‘super-sized’ because it was big, and sack the intern responsible for typing that up, or ii. the rat looked as if it was bred in a sewer, feasting on the plump and bountiful wastage within, growing to a strong, healthy, large size, smelling for all the world like bad shit. In which case: it has to be said that this isn’t just a rat, but an especially bad rat, which is quite something to say about a rat. The rat is also described as being confident to the point of arrogance. I feel like this rat and I would get along.
Miss Wrenn was less than impressed with the compensation the couple received – just a £25 full refund for their meal.
She said: ‘The rat was really quick and took Reece by surprise. I would say it was just short of a pint glass – it was really big.’
And here we have the second attempt to scale the rat in a way that we, the non-rat seers, can easily understand: a rat the size of a pint glass. Imagine a pint glass. Now imagine a rat, face down, large enough to fill it. Little rat tail slinking out of the glass and delicately touching the wooden table beneath. Now that rat wants your chip. What you doin’? What you sayin’, son? You’re giving that rat your chip. You’re asking the dude if he wants ketchup or mayo. You’re offering your chair out and seeing if he wants your shoes.
But the Wetherspoons Rat Plague, at its core, leads us to ask prickly, internal little questions like: can I trust Wetherspoons? A man having his chip stolen by a large cocky rat at a Wetherspoons in Trowbridge calls the whole chain to account. You will sit there, tonight, enjoying your Curry Club, your affordable poppadum/rice/curry/pickle/naan combo with a drink, and you will think: there may be rats here, lurking, lurking for my naan. You will go to the bar and get an change-from-a-fiver pint of Kopparberg and think: what if there is a rat in it. What Wetherspoons has done, here, with the pint glass-sized rat plague, is they have shaken our belief to the core. With the rats, so we doubt the church. With the plague, we scream against the gods.
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It’s long been my opinion that anyone who refuses to drink in a Wetherspoons is, in life’s order of people, right up there on the red side of the spectrum marked ‘bad shits’. If someone ever says to you: “Yuk, Wetherspoons? Can we not go to a £10-a-drink bar?”, get rid of them. If someone says: “Don’t eat the curry, it is just microwaved from chilled by a dull-eyed kitchen boy”: you do not need that person in your life. You need people who delight in getting a round for five people and a plate of chips to share for under £20. You need people who are fascinated by the intricate carpets. You need people who know the high-stress importance of knowing your table number.
But this rat thing plays into the Wetherspoons’ doubters hands. And that’s why I am making a stand: I am not letting one gigantic arrogant rat in Trowbridge stop me from doing what I love (what I love being: drinking exceptionally affordable pints of Frontier, eating fat consistently-textured chips off a blue ornate plate). I will not let this large cocky animal get inside my head. Wetherspoons forever. Wetherspoons fiveever. You will never take this beloved pocket-friendly pub chain away from me, plague of rat monsters! You hear me! YOU HEAR ME!
More from VICE:
What It’s Like to Eat Everything on the Wetherspoons Christmas Menu
Here Is the Weirdest Thing You’ll Ever See in a Wetherspoons
