Saturday evening had rolled round yet again and the Grumpy Old men’s Society were ready for another round of tales. There was always something new to talk about, and if there were a shortage of tales there was always the beer and dominoes to finish the night off with.

The men were settling down and not expecting any real surprises when Stan exclaimed, “Vincent! What are you doing here? I thought you only ever went out on the arm with Rosie of a Sunday drinking in the best side.” Vincent known to all as ‘Vince the Mince’(1) was the local slaughterman and butcher. He’d suffered from polio as a child and had difficulty walking. He couldn’t go any distance without his walking sticks. He’d entered the taproom from the corridor at the rear of the pub obviously having come in via the best side.

“Usually that’s how it is, Stan. I prefer a dram at home because I don’t have to walk back in the cold, but Rosie wanted some company, so here we are. Doubtless she’ll be worse for wear after she’s had a few brandies, so Francis is taking us home. He’s in the best side with Adelle keeping an eye on both of them. I thought I’d come in here for the craic. It’s said to be ninety(2) in here of a Saturday night.” Francis was Rosie’s elder brother and he and his wife Adelle lived at Bearthwaite. “We were both getting a little tired and had been working too hard, too late into the evenings. Rosie and the girls who’d been helping out at the back decided a few weeks ago that they were going to turn the clock back to their grandmothers’ day and use everything they could to feed the village, so there was less need to import stuff from outside. The first thing they did was get more help. There must be at least a hundred women involved and often forty of them are working together at the back. This damned lock down hasn’t been all bad you know.”

“Well, pull up a chair, Lad, and sit you down. I’ll get you a pint. Guinness?”

“Aye, please. The lasses decided to use all my bones for a substantial broth. Instead of sending them to the fertilizer makers who pay next to nothing for them, all the bones I had were boiled up. Every thing, beef, pork, lamb, even the venison that’s brought in as road kill from time to time. I’d been stockpiling them in a walk in freezer during the lock down, so there were a goodly few tons on them. The entire lot went to produce broth. When Phil heard what they were doing he gave them a few sacks of polished barley from the mill and the veg was free from the allotment lads who are going to burn the bones when the lasses have done with em and then crush em to use on their plots. There’re five Bearthwaite lasses with big families whose men used the lock down as an excuse to leave them. Spineless bastards not deserving being called men, but at least we’re not shamed by any of them being from here. Rosie thinks the lasses are better off losing them now whilst they’re young enough to find a decent bloke easily. Emily is already being courted by one of Alf’s grandsons. She’s four, and Bertram has two kids, and at least he’s a decent bloke who lives here. It’s two years since Eloise died, and Rosie said after grieving it was time for him to move on.”

Alf nodded and said, “Bertie is chuffed to bits to find a local lass to mother the twins and Ellen is doing her best to put em in the same bed. She telt me, ‘They need each other, and can worry about getting wed some time in the future.’ She didn’t say but I reckon she’s hoping he gets her full of arms and legs as soon as possible. Bertie’s a clever lad, but he’s decided he’d rather work with me here rather than earn more money elsewhere but have to spend hours a day travelling. No doubt Emily being here has a lot to do with that, but with my practical experience and his degree in mechanical engineering things are definitely looking up for not just the pair of us but the entire family.”

There were a lot of smiling and approving faces at that before Vince continued. “As a result of trying to help those five struggling young families the lasses decided to give the broth away to any and all starting with those with a lot of kids who have been struggling. I got six thousand two and a half litre plastic containers with wide necks as a job lot gey cheap, but I had to have them picked up from Kendal. Harry picked em up for me with his waggon on his way back from Birmingham, and the girls are using those for the broth. All the poultry bones were boiled up, goose, duck, chicken and wildfowl too, for chicken soup, there were even a few guinea fowl. I get the guinea fowl from Alan Peabody. Telling you, the girls had bone stripper’s wrist before they were done. I helped by cutting the big bones up on the bandsaw before they were boiled and then chopping vegetables all evening. We’ve my backlog of bones dealt with and we’ve got a system worked out now, so it’s not so much work any more. When Rosie said she wanted a night out with the lasses I agreed it was a good idea, and I’ve telt Gladys that all of the lasses who’ve helped Rosie are to be given whatever they want and to chalk it up to my slate.”

“I’ll deal with the reckoning, Vince, and I’ll knock a decent amount off as our contribution. That’s a good tale, Lad, so you get free beer and supper.” The rest of the regulars nodded in agreement with Pete.

Sasha went to throw some more logs on the fires and on his return said, “You mind I telt you about when Elle tripped in front of the fire and fell awkwardly on the fender which dislocated her elbow. I never did get round to telling you the whole tale. When I took her to A&E(3) at Carlisle she was on a bloody trolley in a corridor for thirty hours after having been seen by three teams of folk who all asked the same damned questions. They’d cut her blouse off to get at it and then xrayed her arm and knew what the problem was, but we were no nearer to getting her elbow sorted. I’d been up for over forty-eight hours. I was tired hadn’t eaten or taken my drugs for my diabetes and I was losing it because though they’d initially given her an injection of morphine it was wearing off and they wouldn’t give her more in case it interfered with the operating theatre drugs. I kept my temper, but rang Keith to see if there were anything he could do to help. After ringing Keith I went home to get some sleep. Keith finally managed to get her seen to in a couple of hours. It turned out the delay was because they wanted to sort her out in an operating theatre with all the equipment that would be there because of her heart condition. Only trouble is the rules say they can’t do that unless there’s a bed for her to go to on coming out of the operating theatre because the job was to be done under a general anaesthetic.

“That was what Keith had managed to do, make them find her a bed. Don’t ask me why, but apparently when they say they have no beds it’s never totally true, for they always have some few in reserve, for what purpose I don’t know. Maybe I’m being cynical, but it’s possibly done just so they can oblige visiting high profile consultants like Keith, who knows. Anyway Elle was there a few days. Another bloody NHS(4) shambles.

“On day one, they rang me at home to ask me to come in with her drugs, for God’s sake there’s a bloody pharmacy there, yet they ask a bloke who’s turned eighty to drive a round trip of nigh on eighty miles. There was no getting round it. I took the drugs in to be telt I’d have to go as it wasn’t visiting time. I said, ‘I’d like to speak to the ward sister please.” I telt her, “ I’m eighty-two and you’ve just requested I drive eighty miles to deliver a handful of pills when there’s a pharmacy down stairs. My wife is a retired nurse. She was a matron and knows exactly what drugs she takes and how much of each. Now I’m being telt to go because it’s not visiting time. Tell me do you expect me to do another eighty miles when it is visiting time? Because if you do I am going to create as much of a row over the matter as I can. I’ve already noted the names of the nurse who telt me to bring the pills in, the one who telt me to go and yours as well. Before you answer consider this. Is it really worth digging your heels in when in half an hour I’ll have left and the matter will be over.’ She said there were rules she had to follow. ‘Fine. Now I want to speak to the matron.’ She didn’t like that, but eventually the matron arrived and I telt her the same as I’d telt the ward sister adding, ‘I’ve been here arguing about the matter for more than half an hour already. If the ward sister had had any brains I’d have been gone ten minutes ago.’

“ ‘Your request is eminently reasonable, Professor Vetrov. There are things that have to done that would not be appropriate to do on a women’s ward with a male visitor here, but they can certainly wait half an hour. I’m sorry you have been troubled.’

“ ‘And that,’ I telt the ward sister, ‘is why she is a matron and you aren’t.’ I wondered how the matron had known I was a professor, but it turned out she’d been chatting with Elle about changes in practice since she’d retired, one matron to another, and Elle had mentioned it.

“Eventually I went to pick Elle up to take her home. I’d rung the ward to find out when it would be best and had been telt after lunch some time. Two was suggested so that the consultants’ rounds would have been done and any medications prescribed would have been dealt with. I turned up at two to find Elle dressed sitting on her bed with her bag packed. ‘We can’t go yet,’ she telt me. ‘I’ve seen the osteo consultant and he’s fine about everything, but the heart man has been delayed and I need a prescription from him. Then we need to go downstairs to the pharmacy for what ever it is and then we can go home.’ We were there till ten past four and someone needed that bed, but till the heart man signed Elle off the rules said it was hers just in case he wanted her back in it.

“Eventually a much harassed looking bloke in his mid thirties arrived apologising for being so late, but he pled he’d had a couple of emergencies to deal with. We got the prescription, he signed Elle off and as we were leaving I heard the ward sister saying on the phone that they finally had a bed free. Now Elle has a strange sense of humour and she said to me, ‘Emergencies are certainly good for that heart man. Did you see the scrotok he was packing.’ Naturally I was completely unaware of the issue. Now before you ask scrotok is a portmanteau word coined by Elle decades ago. It is a blend of scrotum and kapok, the former needing no explanation and the latter being the trade name of a kind of foam used to stuff cushions, pillows and toys. She coined the word the first time I took her to the ballet, Swan Lake in Moscow as I recall, and she said it was what the premier danseur had obviously packed the front of his tights with because in her opinion what was there couldn’t possibly be natural. She said it was the male equivalent of breast forms. She caused a riot with the folk I knew there mostly because she admitted that his scrotok was easy on the eye, but if she were wrong and it were real she’d really like to meet him. She doesn’t speak a word of Russian but she loses little in the translation. My friends were sorry to see her go.

“However back to the tale. Mind Elle’s arm was in a cast that held her elbow rigid, and we headed to the pharmacy where they weren’t happy with the prescription and insisted on getting hold of the heart man, because they thought the dosage was too high and there had been a mistake. After twenty-five minutes we left with the tablets. There had not been a mistake. By this time it was nearly five and Elle said, ‘I need a wee.’ So we went to the ground floor where the ladies’ is and I waited outside. After a couple of minutes Elle came out. I thought, ‘That was bloody quick.’ You all know what it’s like. Waiting for a woman in the ladies’ is usually a ten minute if not a twenty minute affair. I was not prepared for what came next. ‘You’ll have to come in with me. I can’t pull my knickers down with only one hand and I certainly won’t be able to pull them up again.’ I said, ‘You’ll have me arrested for sure one of these day, Elle’ ‘Well it’s either that or I wee on your truck seat,’ she replied. ‘There’s no one in there and the disabled loo has enough space for two of us.’ Christ, I never thought I’d see the day when I was hiding in a ladies lavatory in a hospital. So we went in and I pulled her knickers down. Elle had her wee and I pulled her knickers back up again. In the mean while we heard three or four women come in and after we thought they’d all gone Elle went out to check the coast was clear and beckoned me out just in time for a woman to exit one of the stalls and another to enter from the main access aisle of the hospital. Without a blush Elle telt them, ‘Sorry about this, but with my arm in a cast I needed my husband to pull my knickers down and then back up again.’ The woman who’d entered said, ‘Really! That’s disgusting. I’m going put a complaint in to someone.” As she left she spat, ‘Pervert,’ at me. The other woman who was washing her hands said, ‘Silly woman, but you’d better go, Dear.’ She smiled and added, ‘Sometimes the right thing to do goes against the usual expectations of behaviour.’ I smiled and said, ‘I wish she’d been right, but unfortunately I’m far to old to be a pervert any more.’ We all laught and left. As we got in my truck Elle said, ‘Well that wasn’t too bad was it?’ Like I said she’ll have me locked up one of these days.”

“Hold it there for a minute, Lads, whilst I get em in. Harriet, Love, any chance of a round?”

“Half a mo, Uncle Phil. I’ll just finish this order and be right with you.”

After all had been dealt with, Eric said, “Your tale in the ladies, Sasha, reminds me of something that happened years ago. We’d probably only been wed a year or two. It was hot summer’s day and we’d taken Shauna’s parents out for lunch at a big garden center that had a decent restaurante. When we got back to her mum’s place there was an ice cream van out side the house, so we all had a cornet. Like I said it was scorcher of a day and some of Shauna’s ice cream dripped onto her tee shirt, so she lifted it up to lick it off. She’s a bonnie lass and due to the heat hadn’t been wearing a bra, so her charms were displayed to perfection. Next thing I know is I’m hearing her mum say in a shocked voice, ‘Shauna!’ I could see Shauna blushing and I said, ‘Lovely view.’ On a slightly different note Shauna took her mum shopping one time and someone cut across her from a different traffic lane necessitating her to slam the brakes on. Now Shauna can swear like a trooper, but had never done so in front of either of her parents and when she said, ‘Fucking cunt,’ her mother was so taken aback she didn’t say a word. Shauna said, ‘Sorry about that, Mum. I’ve been picking up some really bad habits from Eric.’ I get blamed for everything, but apparently her mum didn’t reply to that either, but she did tell Shauna’s dad. Shaun said she felt like she was six again. What puzzled me was how her mum had become familiar enough with either word to be shocked by them. When I telt Shauna of my puzzlement I said, ‘All is not what it seems, least of all your mum.’ ”

Dave returned from the bar with a jug of water for the dogs’ bowls and said, “I’ve a short tale that may make you laugh or perhaps not.” Dave was well known for telling outrageous and unlikely shaggy dog tales and was as little affected by political correctness as Sasha. The old men settled as he took a pull on his pint before he started. “It was a bright, sunny, Spring day and God and Moses were sitting on a particularly comfortable cloud drinking ambrosia honey tea and nibbling angel cakes when God asked, “What’s the matter, Mo? You look kind of washed out, tired. Are you ailing for something? Got a cold coming on? Anything I can help with?”

“Nah. I’ve just been working for too long, too hard without a break. As soon as I think I’ve got the Israelis and the Palestinians talking to one another and it’s looking good, some Rabbi or Imam gets unhinged and flies off the handle and I’m back to square one. I need a holiday. I’m just going to have to let them get on with it while I recover because I’m no good to them as I am. I fancy a fortnight out in the Pleiades. It’s not expensive, the food’s not too heavy and the wine is very tolerable. No wars, nice climate, friendly folk and attractive, attentive waitresses. You did a first class job when you created the place. When did you last have a holiday, Gee?”

God shuddered and replied, “Don’t remind me. I was a lot younger then and still subject to whims and silly behaviour from time to time. It’d be a couple of thousand years ago. I went to Earth and took up with a pretty young thing going by the name of Mary. One thing led to another, you know how it goes, aural sex and she’s expecting. You think you’ve got it bad? The fuss that’s caused, billions slaughtered over the millennia. It’s still going on, and they’re all claiming to be doing it in my name. Your Arab Israeli conflict is just a tiny part of it. And as for that book they say I wrote, as if I’d come up with something so puerile, so illiterate and worst of all so inconsistent. Even now at my age my memory is better than that on a bad day. I’ve had to give up on the place. The way it’s going it’s not going to end till they’ve killed every last one of each other. At least when I have to start again it’ll just be the people I’ll have to create. I’ll need to do a bit of environment damage repair so I think I’ll imbue the next set of people with more respect for the planet.

“Telling you, no more holidays for me, Mo, just not worth the bother. I’ll stick to working. Like you I’m getting nowhere. They’ll have to sort it all out themselves on Earth. Till then I’m starting with a new project. I’m looking for a nice planet suitable for a six day creation, then again I may just take a few more days to make sure I do a better job than I did with Earth. You know, somewhere where I can create a decent climate, make food readily available, not that dissimilar from Earth, but this time there will be no, definitely no, snakes.”

When the laughter finished, Alf said, “I don’t get it, Dave. How did she get pregnant from oral sex? And what was going on?”

“It was aural sex not oral sex, Alf. Listen to the difference in the pronunciation. Aural is to do with the ear. According to the bible, which is the book that God was complaining about in my tale, Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel and told she was with child. There have always been stories around, probably started by folk having a dig at Catholics who maintain Mary was always a virgin, that the angel got her pregnant via her ear. That’s possibly because she was listening to him, but I don’t know. There’s another tale in the Gospel of James that says Mary was conceived similarly on Anne her mother too. Ne’er mind, Lad, it’s only funny if you know a bit about religion which as you know is a hobby of mine. There’re load of scriptures that never got included in the bible proper, some are in a bit usually found at the back of bibles called The Apocrypha which isn’t accepted by all. Some of them paint a somewhat different story from the official bible version of events or at least they add to it. The gospel of James and the rest of the chapters of the book of Esther were two of them. I don’t believe any of it, but I do find it interesting. Okay now?”

“Yeah, I guess it’s kind of funny, Dave, if you’re clever enough, but I preferred the tales about chess, the rabbit, and the Strings.”

Denis said, “I’ll tell you a short tale of when Belinda and I were looking for somewhere to move to. At the time we were considering somewhere in the Pendle forest area of Lancashire. The area was famous for the witch trials of sixteen twelve when twenty accused of witchcraft who came from Pendle village were tried. The area has had a dodgy reputation ever since. We’d looked at a few properties and decided to have lunch at The Pendle Inn in the heart of the area. Now I don’t frighten easily, but the bloke who appeared behind the bar was at least seven foot four, built like a brick built outhouse and he was seriously intimidating. He reminded me of Lurch from the Addams family, only bigger, much bigger. We were too late for lunch and so Belinda asked him what snacks were available. In a completely deadpan, expressionless voice that sounded hollow enough to have come from a sepulchre he replied, ‘Snacks are off.’ We left laughing, but our laughter had a tomb like quality to it too. We’ve been saying ‘Snacks are off’ for a laugh ever since.”

Denis turned to look at the dogs and said, “Geoff, from the looks of things that bitch of yours is coming into season. Best leave her at home for three weeks unless you want a litter of Springer cross god alone knows what pups.”

The men all looked at Geoff’s spaniel and the way the dogs were interested in her even though as yet she was certainly not interested in them. “Aye. Looks right you’re right, Denis. I’ve been planning on taking her to a bloke out Threlkeld way who’s got a quality Springer dog at stud that he does rough shooting with. I’ve heard the dog’s a good un with the gun, so I’d better ring him up to arrange a visit for Sprite in a fortnight, because I want a decent pup for working hedges.(5) Who ever’s up next, had better make it a short one then we can get another pint after without having to interrupt any one.

After Frank’s round had been distributed John said, “I’ve a moderate length tale that may take us to the next pint. For a while my life wasn’t much different from what Geoff went through. At the time I wasn’t in the best of states having been dumped by a duplicitous lass who’d taken me for every thing I’d got. I don’t know how I ended up here, but Margaret took me on even knowing I was living on the streets. She always did have a soft spot for waifs and strays. I can’t remember the number of dogs and cats over the years she’s rescued off the streets, fed back to health and rehomed. I guess I got lucky because I wasn’t rehomed. I wasn’t working, Hellfire at the time I was unemployable because my head was in bits. She helped me to become a human being again, God alone knows why she thought I was worth the effort. I think I eventually sorted myself out because I realised she’d had it worse than me. She’d been raised in a hard line Catholic family. Clever, she’d gone to a convent Grammar school and had had no sex education. At primary school first thing Monday mornings it had been, ‘Stand on your desk all those who didn’t go to Mass yesterday and not gone to confession.’ The class teacher listened to the reasons and decided whether they were valid or not. Margaret reckoned your whole family could have been wiped out and it wouldn’t have been an adequate reason for not going to Mass and you’d still have been punished. The other one they were telt was, ‘The children who go to the other schools are the spawn of Satan, have nothing to do with them or you will be punished.’

“She’d seriously believed she couldn’t get pregnant the first time, and had been traumatised to find out that that was not how it worked. She’d been treated badly by her parents and had had to accept it because she’d needed their help. She’d lived at her parents’ house till Becca was about three, then she got a two bedroom end of terrace council house maybe half a mile away from her folks’ place. Then I appeared and with her help I became a man again and once I was working with my financial input she’d become sufficiently independent of them to be able to demand her parents treated her with a degree of respect or she and her daughter would never bother with them again. In turn I telt all who belittled her to fuck off because I wasn’t having any disparage my woman. There was a local library van that used to stop near her house. I used the van and in there I remember some stupid old bitch telling me what a good man I was for taking on a fallen women. I fucked her off in good style as a hypocritical, sanctimonious first stone threwer that Jesus would have condemned to hell for a lack of humanity.

“The next bit of the tale is how I came to adopt Rebecca. The tale is pretty funny now the way Margaret tells it. Margaret had started her nurse training at a hospital twenty miles away from home and had had to live in for the first eighteen months. After that she shared a flat with four other lasses. That night was disco night at the Red Lion, the girls’ local pub. Three of the girls were on nights and Helen and Margaret who enjoyed dancing went out to enjoy themselves. The two girls were approached by two lads and they paired off, Margaret with Peter and Helen with his mate. Margaret only met Peter twice the first of which was when they went back to the flat and she freely admits she was overcome with lust for the first time. The second time they met was a couple of days later at his local pub the Cart and Horses in Dingow, and she described that as a date. Margaret says she’s no idea why she never met him again and speculated that he possibly never contacted her again because he thought she was an easy lay. She said years after, that at the time she was certain that she was pregnant which was why she had the pregnancy test so early.

“The first thing her mother said to her when she telt her she was pregnant was, ‘I knew it. I knew this would happen when you moved into that flat.’ When her old man found out she was pregnant he insisted they track down the lad. When asked what the lad’s surname was she admitted she didn’t know and her mum was horrified when she said, ‘Mum, you don’t bother about that sort of thing these days.’ So her cousin Graham was called upon he being the family member with the most brains. Margaret knew the lad was called Peter, came from Dingow and worked at a local soda pop factory. She’d been able to describe Peter and he being a ginger cut out most folk, so Graham suggested they went to the Cart and Horses in Dingow to see if he was in there. If not they could ask a few discreet questions. He got lucky, Peter wasn’t in the pub, but a couple of blokes knew the lad, Peter Alecost, and provided an address. Margarets’s parents made her write a letter to Peter and in it there was mention of maintenance for the baby.

“This is where it all went pear shaped. The address was incorrect. Margaret had put her flat as her address not her parents’ house and it was early evening when there was a knock on the house front door. The house was divided into two flats and the girls lived in the upstairs one. Helen one of the other girls went to answer it and came back nearly on her hands and knees going up the stairs she was laughing so hard. Struggling to get the words out she telt the others, ‘You’re not going to believe this. It could only happen to you.’ She was looking at Margaret. ‘There’s an old geezer downstairs saying you sent him a letter accusing him of being your baby’s dad. He must be seventy if he’s a day and his son is with him. His son must be fifty and is built like the Hulk.’ Eventually it was all sorted out and Margaret couldn’t apologise enough. She explained all that had happened and how they got his address. The good thing was the old man did know Peter Alecost and provided a correct address. He said he initially couldn’t make any sense of the letter which he’d opened at breakfast and when he saw the word maintenance he’d asked his wife if she’d fallen behind on the television payments.

“Margaret’s parents went round to see Peter, and fair play to the lad when the matter of maintenance was raised he said he was prepared to try living together and see how it went. Margaret couldn’t see any future in that and asked what his house was like. Her mum replied somewhat dryly, ‘It has seen better days.’

“Margaret had to pack in nursing though she went back to it years later and qualified. She applied to Social Security for single mothers allowance. The Social took Peter to court to try to force a maintenance payment out of him. Margaret claimed it had been her first sexual encounter, but he counter claimed he didn’t believe that because, ‘She didn’t bleed.’ Margaret was mortified by him saying that in open court, but said, ‘Tampons have been available for decades now.’ She must have been more convincing than he because the magistrates ordered a maintenance payment. Which he did pay irregularly and stopped paying altogether after a while, but that was of no concern to Margaret because she received her benefit as a book like a family allowance book. Each week she’d take the book to the post office and they’d remove the perforated page with that week’s date on it and pay her the money. The Social had the problem of getting the money out of Peter. Margaret didn’t know, but I suspect they had it taken directly from his employer who’d have had to deduct it from his wages before paying him.

“I’d been living with Margaret a couple of years and Rebecca would have been eight by then. She’d been calling me Daddy for a long time. Margaret and I decided to get married in order to facilitate my adoption of Becca. We had a quiet registry office wedding with no guests. Becca’s adoption was a tedious affair. They had to check with Peter that he was okay about it and that Becca would not be disadvantaged by it. If he’d had any money, he could reasonably cut her out of his will if I adopted her. He had no money, no resources and was I suspect glad to be rid of the whole matter as it would put an end to any deduction from earnings order imposed by Social Security and any attachment of earnings order imposed by the court on his wages.

“By that time Margaret was back nursing and no longer in receipt of single mothers benefit allowance, but she was being taxed on maintenance that she was not receiving. I suggested that being the case we applied to the court for the maintenance to be paid directly into a trustee account opened in Rebecca’s name that money couldn’t be taken out of till she was eighteen when the trust would be wound up and the money hers. That way Margaret wouldn’t be paying the tax and Rebecca wouldn’t be paying any either as it wouldn’t take her over the income tax threshold even if Peter paid it all in full every week. Social Services had no objection since they were no longer chasing Peter for the money and when Margaret asked would Peter be there at court they said there was no reason for him to be and they would have someone there to recommend the payment was changed to pay Rebecca. Sod’s law, I was working and Margaret went to court on her own. Peter was already in court when Margaret entered and she was gutted. It was the first time she’d seen him in years. He said nowt, but when she got home one of her neighbours came round and she scriked(6) for hours. When she was no longer upset by his being in court she laught and said, ‘Time hasn’t been very kind to him. He’s going bald and is wearing glasses that look the lenses came off bottle bottoms, and he’s not yet thirty.’ I later recovered all the excess tax Margaret had paid on the money she’d not received, but not a penny was ever paid into Becca’s account. I was happy about that because I considered the less involvement Becca had with the bloke Margaret had always referred to as the sperm donor the better.

“I said to the Social I wasn’t looking for any payments from anywhere regarding Rebecca whom I’d long considered to be my child and I certainly didn’t want any one else able to think they had any kind of parental rights or responsibilities in connection with her. Peter had never laid eye on her and as far as she was concerned I was Daddy. Rebecca was sitting on my lap when she asked the Social worker dealing with the case, ‘When will I be my Daddy’s little girl properly?’The answer to that one was three months later in a magistrates’ court, there were no family courts in those days. We were all stressed to hell once we received notice of the adoption hearing date which was a fortnight away. The hearing was in front of a bench of three magistrates. It was a joke really, the magistrates had the paper work in front of them which they’d clearly read in advance. The Social worker recommended they agreed to the adoption. The senior magistrate in the middle of the three, a woman who looked to be in her early fifties, said, ‘We all hope you will be very happy.’ She stamped the adoption order and handed it to the clerk to give to us and that was that. We weren’t in there three minutes. The truly crazy thing was not that I adopted Becca, but that in order for me to do so Margaret had to adopt her too. Legally we both adopted her, so Margaret had to adopt a child she’d given birth to. Now that I reckon is bizarre. I can’t say I’m surprised that Margaret got pregnant her first time because she can truly knock em out. By the time the adoption came through we’d another child and had another one on the way. We’d managed eight kids in seven years, and that’s not including Becca.”

Charlie said, “I can squeeze a short one in before the next round. I was still living at Mum’s house in Glazebury and I was going to Warrington. I was maybe eighteen and I’ve no idea why I was going to Warrington and even less why I got on the number forty-seven bus which took forty-five minutes longer than the forty-six bus to get there. The forty-seven went through Winwick and a dozen outlying villages and hamlets. In the middle of nowhere a young woman three seats away from me went into labour. She was going to Warrington Infirmary which unlike the forty-six the forty-seven went past and stopped at. No one was willing to help her, not even any of the women on the bus. Despite having delivered any number of lambs, calves, piglets and foals I was scared witless, but I couldn’t ignore her cries for help. I delivered her little girl on the back seat of the bus fifteen minutes before it reached the hospital. In those days there were no mobile phones and when the bus pulled in at A&E the driver raced into the hospital for help. I’m still in touch with Abigail and her daughter Charlotte whom I delivered, and I gave Charlotte away at her wedding twenty-odd years ago. Abigail never married and Charlotte and I consider each other to be daughter and father. Susanna considers Abigail to be a sister and Charlotte to be our eldest and was thrilled to be a grandma when Charlotte had a family. The only bad thing about it all is this damned lock down because Susanna won’t risk passing anything on to her grandchildren and so only has contact via Zoom which seriously upsets her.”

“I’ll get this round, Lads. I’ll even pull em too, Pete, if some of you line the empties up on the bar for me to put in the machine.”

“No bother. Thanks, Tommy. You just pull the pints and I’ll load the washer.” Pete was already on his feet reaching for empty glasses. “Better have just the one more tale before supper.”

When the beer was organised and the dogs sorted out with kibble and water, Alf said, “I don’t know if it’s very interesting but I’ve a short tale to tell.” With encouragement from the others he continued. “I arrived home from work one day and I couldn’t find Ellen. She was working nights so I expected her to be in bed. There was a note on the kitchen table saying, ‘I’ve gone to bed in the spare bedroom. There’s a weasel in our bedroom somewhere and the cats are going crazy in there. Sort it out, or I’m sleeping in the front spare bedroom till further notice.’ I went into our bedroom to see four cats surrounding the bedside cabinet on my side of the bed. I took the cats out and shut them in the front room. I tried to get the creature to leave the bedroom via the door, but all I managed to achieve was chase it round the bedroom. It stuck close to the walls behind the furniture and wouldn’t cross the open space to the door and was back under the bedside cabinet again. Having figured out how it was behaving I put barriers in place to force the weasel out of the bedroom into Ellen’s sitting room and out of the French windows.

“This time as soon as I lifted the cabinet it raced alongside the barriers out of the bedroom, across the sitting room and left the house via the French windows. It streaked across the flags outside the French windows and into the grass. I was amazed. The lawn grass was short, but as soon as it reached the grass it disappeared like I said into it not over it. God alone knows where it went, but it went. Ellen said one of the cats brought it into the house and was really upset when playing with it it escaped. A few days later we found a dead weasel in one of my shoes. It couldn’t have been the same one because it was darker and had more white on it. I said it was Ellen’s fault. She’d spoilt the cats’ fun and this time they’d made sure she couldn’t spoil it again. You know my mate Arthur the wildlife and ecology nutter?” There were a lot of mild agreements, most weren’t particularly fond of Arthur who was a bit too extreme for most of the brutal realists of Bearthwaite who referred to him as a squirrel pickler.(7) “I bagged the weasel and put it in the freezer, along with all the other beasties that I kept for him. He takes them and gives them to university types for their studies. God alone knows why because they don’t seem to think any better of him as a result, but that’s his problem not mine.”

“Supper is ready, Dad. Mum and I will be bringing it in as soon as she’s served the best side. I’ll go and help, but could you clear away the empties please?”

“What’s on the menu tonight, Harriet Love,” asked Stan.

“Steak and ale pie with flaky pastry top, carrots, chips [US fries] and gravy, Uncle Stan. The carrots and the potatoes came from Uncle Alf.” Harriet added nervously, “I made the pie with Auntie Veronica supervising.”

The old men and all the visitors too said supper was excellent especially the pie which made Harriet blush yet at the same time feel mightily relieved. Vince joked, “If you ever get fed up working for your dad I’ve got a job waiting for you making pies at my spot, Lass.”

Paul volunteered to buy the next round and Pete went to start pulling pints saying, “If anyone fancies a drop of something stronger to go with the beer, Lads, someone needs to fetch it up from the cellar because there’s next to nowt behind the bar.”

Sasha said, “I’ll fetch some of the Turkish raki and a bottle of what? Cactus juice, John?”

John who owned the tequila nodded and said, “Good idea, Sasha.”

“Aye and bring a bottle of Mountain Dew too,” said Pat referring to the poteen he acquired from relatives in Ireland.

When all had been dealt with Sasha asked, “I know this may seem a silly question, but what exactly is money? I know that most of you will think that to be a stupid question, but just listen to what I’ve got to say and then think about it. Economists use five definitions of money that I know about. For all I know there may be many more. Different countries use slightly different definitions of those five, but they are all broadly similar. The definitions all begin with an M for money and are numbered.

“M0 is the coins and notes in circulation and anything you can take into a bank and be paid on demand cash for. It also includes all money on deposit in banks that the banks have to hold cash for ready to pay out the entire amount on demand.

“M1 includes all of M0. It also includes, traveller’s checks, other check account deposits and some other types of not so instantly available deposits.
“M2 includes M1 and is different in different places, but essentially it also includes all savings and various other accounts up to the value of about a hundred thousand pounds each I think. It includes all money in circulation and money most likely to come into circulation in the near future. Two years seems to be a typical definition of the near future.
“M3 includes M2 as well as deposits not available for longer time periods, institutional money market funds, I think that’s stuff like pension funds but I could be wrong, short-term repurchase agreements, and larger liquid assets. That is effectively money that is less available, liquid is the term they use, money you have to give notice to get at is how I understand that.”
“What is a short-term repurchase agreement, Sasha?”
“I had to look that up, Stan. I’ll tell you what I found on a website called Investopedia. A repurchase agreement (repo) is a form of short-term borrowing for dealers in government securities. In the case of a repo, a dealer sells government securities to investors, usually on an overnight basis, and buys them back the following day at a slightly higher price. That small difference in price is the implicit overnight interest rate. Repos are typically used to raise short-term capital. There was a load more on the site, but most of it meant nothing to me.”
“How do you remember stuff like that, Sasha?”
“Same way you remember half of the contents of Machinery’s Handbook, Alf. I just do. And finally,
“M4 is M0 plus all bank accounts.
“Now I probably haven’t got all those definitions absolutely correct, but you get the idea. Even the folks who actually do know what they are talking about use lots of different definitions, and there are a few significant differences between M2 in the US and M2 in the EU. My point is all those definitions are neither useful nor meaningful to ordinary folks like us. But back to my original question just what is money? Alf, what do you reckon money is? What do you use it for?”

“I get the bit about cash, and what I’ve got in the bank. I suppose the premium bonds(8) count too. Before I retired I had pension funds that were worth money. As for what I use it for, obvious isn’t it? Spending, buying stuff.”

“That, Lads, is probably about as good a definition as any of us could have provided, but what about the money folk owe you, Alf. For work you’ve done, but not been paid for yet. What about the stuff you’ve bought, but you didn’t have to pay for with readies.(9) You do work for some folk in exchange for stuff they’ve got and you want, or even in exchange for them doing some work for you, right? We all do. Isn’t that money too?”

“You got me there, Sasha, because yeah I reckon that’s money too. Or at least it’s worth money.”

“You got that the wrong way round, Alf. What you want is not worth money. Money is worth the stuff you want. What about buying stuff on credit with money you haven’t got. In Alf’s words you’re buying stuff but with no money, but you can still buy the stuff. We’ve all done that at least once, it’s called the mortgage. Sure they’ll run a credit check on you and only lend you the money if you’re a good risk. Now take it one step further. I mind a time when I bought a truck off you, Alf, I’d had it for a month and not yet paid for it because you hadn’t worked out the total including all the extras you’d done on it for me. I must have owed you at least twelve grand. Then before I paid you I took some things to your workshop for repair and you did the work, some welding and a flat tyre as I recall. Why did you do the work for someone who owed you that much and took the stuff away after you’d fixed it without paying for that either? You didn’t even run a credit check on me.”

“Don’t be daft, Sasha. There was no need. Even if I’d known how to do a credit check on you I wouldn’t have bothered. I knew you were good for it, and I wasn’t bothered. I knew as soon as I’d worked out what it came to you’d pay me. The reason I hadn’t worked it out was because I was too busy. I only do the paperwork when I’ve nowt else to do.”

“So what you’re saying is my reputation was good?”

“Aye. That’s exactly what I’m saying. When I ring the builders merchants, the steel yard or any of the engineering factors for parts and place an order the stuff arrives the day after or maybe the day after that. I pay them at the end of the month via my account. They know I’m good for it.”

Sasha resumed, “There’re hundreds of folk round here and many more elsewhere I can do business over the phone with. I don’t have an account with them, but the deal is done over the phone, and ownership of whatever is transferred, or the service what ever it is will be provided. All done on a mutual understanding of our reputations and that is what in the end my understanding of money is. It’s your personal credit rating in other words your reputation. Reputation is a fragile thing and like money can’t be eaten or used for anything other than providing a medium of easy exchange and unlike twenty pound notes you can’t even wipe your backside with it. Though it has to be said these modern plastic banknotes would be pretty useless for even that.

“Aye,” added Denis, “and like money it’s powerful easy to get rid of and damned hard to acquire, and once lost it’s nigh on impossible to get back. If that’s it, Lads, get the dominoes out.”

1 Mince or minced meat is the English term for ground meat.
2 The craic, pronounced crack, refers to the laughter and banter that goes with having a good night out with friends. If the craic was ninety then it means it was exceptionally good and you were having the time of your life. Originally an Irish expression it has become commonplace in many parts of the UK, especially in the north. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAD1ikRD6V4. If the link doesn’t work youtube has Paddy Reilly and the Dubliners singing ‘The craic was ninety in the Isle of Mann’.
3 A&E, Accident and Emergency. ER in the US.
4 NHS, National Health Service.
5 Working hedges, Springer spaniels are excitable so not much used on a pheasant or grouse shoot. They are excellent for rough shooting working their way down field hedges to flush out game and retrieve it.
6 Scriked, cried, an old word still in use in northern England. To scrike, to cry.
7 Squirrel pickler, a term of derision for extreme conservationists. The term originates in the two senses of the word conserve. One the environmental sense, and two the making of jams, jellies, chutneys and pickles sense. Red squirrels, Sciurus vulgaris, are a protected, endangered species in the UK. The term is a play on the idea that such conservationists are so stupid that they would ‘conserve’ squirrels by pickling them.
8 UK premium bonds are bonds that you buy from the Government’s NS&I department (National Savings and Investment) and are really a sort of gamble. Every month, bond numbers are drawn at random by a machine called ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment) and various prizes (up to the value of £1 million) can be won. Your money is safe but when you cash your bonds in you only get the same value as when you bought them - i.e. you don’t get any interest.
9 Readies, refers to cash, notes and coins.