Nurse Mildred Ratched (One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest)

All Bar One (Sutton)

Like the near-sighted leading the blind. Or more specifically, like the mad leading the insane. I decided to take em down Sutton High Street.

What possessed me to lead this motley crew of vacuous perverts to this place in particular? OK, so the atmosphere is as threatening as that joker Randle P MacMurphy at half mast. Yes, the array of mood lighting should induce non-violent reactions. And of course, it’s the only place in town with its own pseudo brewery. But the other patrons in here seem to have more in common with my wards than I’d anticipated.   

And if Martini doesn’t stop trying to put his cocktail-sausage fingers up my skirt I’m gonna book him a session with a chair and 10,000 less-than-friendly volts. The creepy dwarf beams his inane grin as I slap his podgy mitts away for the hundredth time, so I move closer to the bar and pop a bar-nut that tastes like crap.

My temper rises further as Fredrickson’s exaggerated face is laughing at Martini’s amorous advances towards me. His sad, bulbous eyes seem to protrude even further than usual and I find it hard to shake the impulse to poke one of them onto a cocktail stick and add an eyeball and olive kebab to my margarita. I mentally cross myself:

“Careful Mildred, you’re here to help them…”

All I was doing was trying to be nice – I figured an away day would be perfect to reset their damaged brain cells - and erase the memories of poor MacMurphy’s passing. A decent place in Sutton, well, no. And certainly not with us in here. Why didn’t it occur to me that these deranged lunatics can barely take their miniscule minds off self-abuse?

Martini seems to have accepted defeat (or perhaps I’m out of his zone of interest), but he moves onto trying to squash invisible creatures trying to klingon on to Taber’s mad professor mop of hair. I swear the two of them would be perfect as taxi drivers.

The room has darkened perceptibly, which can only mean the Chief’s back from ‘dropping the Indians off at the pool’ and holding court – again. For a ‘mute’, he never shuts up. Honestly, since he got away with the ‘mercy killing’ of MacMurphy he’s gone from Silent Bob to Kevin Smith – after early promise he’ll soon be chucking out below par movie scripts starring Ben Affleck and J-Lo.

Ten more minutes then we’re off for a curry, the institution can’t possibly afford what this place charges for cuisine that looks like it belongs on display in a gallery – and probably tastes of canvas. All Bar One has a "classy" feel apparently! Classy my arsey,..just lucky I'm with The Dream Team I guess.

I allow, neigh, i need, my mind to wander for a while, and I cannot help but imagine how it might have been, if a - shall we say ‘re-educated’ - MacMurphy had remained in my care. I would have considered his lobotomy as foreplay and dreamed I was being ravaged like Jessica Lange in that movie The Postman Always Rings Twice. Damn, what was the name of the male lead in that picture again?

Ah well, time to get these cuckoos off for an onion bhaji, and brave the High Street; but I think I may come back here – if I don’t get lucky I could at least recruit for the funny farm…

Nurse Ratched's rating for All Bar One - 2 / 10 

Rimmersmeg