The group was not quite quorate, so the chatter was of a general nature till two more members of the Green Dragon Grumpy Old Men’s Society arrived.

Nodding to Geoff and Stan as they collected a pint and sat down, Sasha asked, “You know what you were saying about keeping memories on a camera so you don’t forget stuff, Eric? Well I can prove that doesn’t always work. We had a decent digital camera, don’t bother asking for the spec cos I haven’t a clue. It was a decent one by the standards of the time, and I’d bought a huge memory to go with it. I’ve no idea now what I paid for either the camera or the memory.

“It had pictures of the farm house in all stages of renovation, demolition, i.e. with and without walls, roof, floors. Not all at once of course, Alf. I had pictures of the cats from being tiny balls of fluff to the psychopathic killers they became. The calves, lambs, piglets were on it and I had a picture or two of the full freezer when they had needed to be accommodated there. There were even a couple of pictures of myself and Elle. No, Alf, I only ever took pictures of the house, Elle took the rest.

“So far so good. Then Elle was invited to go with a friend to a Buckingham Palace garden party bash and wanted the camera. It was nowhere to be found. We turned every cupboard and drawer in the house out and put everything back. Nothing. No camera. We turned the house upside down not once but several times.

“A week before Elle left Cumbria for her friend’s home near Bolton to spend a few days there before they left for London I bought a new camera, but alas the photos on the original were considered to be well and truly lost.

“Now here’s the thing, Eric. The camera did turn up five or six years later. It was in a place we’d checked several times. Funny thing is when we looked at what was on it we’d no idea what some of the photo’s were of. There were views of inside the house I couldn’t even figure out which room they were in never mind what I was looking at, and there were folk neither of us could recall ever having seen before. So like I said even photos aren’t fool proof against memory failure because you have to remember what they’re photos of. It’s like putting a knot in your handkerchief to remind you of something, it’s bugger all use if you can’t remember what you’re supposed to remember. Like I told you all technology contains the seeds of its own failure. Now, who’s getting them in? Good lad, Eric.”

After a while Sasha resumed, “You know those idiots on the news that were causing all the trouble in Carlisle after Saturday’s match? Well I was watching the footage carefully on my laptop and in consequence I’ve developed a revolutionary new theory about intelligence.”

Stan looked around the table before saying, “How long is this going to take, Sasha. I want to know whether to get them in now or after you’ve finished first?”

Gladys shouted over, “I’ll keep an eye on things, Stan, and fetch them over when you’re ready for them. You’d better let Sasha get it of his chest. or he’ll give us all a hard time. Go on, Sasha, let’s hear the latest theory from our resident boffin of B.S.”

“Well it’s not difficult to understand. They were all wearing baseball caps, right?”

Alf replied, “Yes. I noticed that too. They looked like right idiots.”

“Ah but I suspect the significant thing that escaped your notice, Alf, was the correlation between their levels of stupidity and the positions of the peak of their cap.”

“Eh? Say that in English, Sasha.”

“I noticed that the ones wearing the caps with the peak to the front were behaving stupidly, but the ones wearing them with the peaks to the side were acting moronically, even more stupidly, Alf. However the ones with the peaks at the back were acting like complete cretins, that’s completely brainless imbeciles, Alf. You with me so far, Alf?”

“Yes, but where’s the theory about intelligence?”

“It’s obvious that the caps are are functioning as variable, adjustable that is, brain retarders. You take a perfectly normal fool. You’d have to be a fool to want to wear a hat like that right?”

There were grunts of agreement from the old men. None of them had ever worn such a thing and had no intention of ever doing so, though most had grandchildren who wore them.”

“Like I said you take a fool, put the cap on and the fool becomes stupid as well. If you rotate the peak backwards the stupid fool gets progressively stupider until when it’s pointing backwards you have an epsilon semi moron like in the film Brave New World. An idiot barely able to be useful for anything. If you keep rotating the peak back to the front I’m not sure if the loss of brain power is recoverable or not. More research on that is required. But the effects of the initial rotation of the peak from the front to the back are obvious.

Amidst the roars of laughter Gladys arrived with a tray of fresh pints to exchange for empties. “Sasha, one of these days someone is going do you a serious mischief for your tales. Have you even heard of PC?”

“Course I have. I may not be British, but even I know PC Plod was in Enid Blyton’s Noddy books for young kids long before personal computers were invented.” Sasha took a long pull on his pint and said, “That reminds me—”

“Here we go! Lies, bloody lies and tales by Sasha Vetrov!”

“Quiet, Gladys. You’re revealing more of your carefully concealed first class tertiary education than you did of your equally first class bosom when you leant over the table to hand me this glass just now. I’ll explain later, Alf. This short tale is true. As I’m sitting here I swear it to be absolutely true.”

“Where did that dirty old man Sasha go?”

Gladys’ question caused more hilarity, but Sasha eventually recommenced.

“I need to set the scene. Elle and I had been feeling sorry for ourselves. Cold, sneezes, coughs and sore throat, that kind of stuff. We had been planning on going out for dinner, but decided to give it a miss. Brave New World the film was on the box that night. It was a bit old, but we decided to watch that with a bottle of Lagavulin and a bucket of popcorn. Am I hell as like telling you what we got up to on the settee, Gerry.”

“You get to sound more like Denis every week, Sasha. I swear downright the pair of you are getting more like each other.”

“Bugger off, Gerry! Anyway before I was so unkindly interrupted by my colleague to my left. There’s a scene in the film where a genetically manipulated set of identical, quads I think but it could have been more, epsilon semi morons are pushing hand carts loaded with packages. In the film everyone’s intelligence is programmed before they are born, and alphas are at the top going down to epsilons at the bottom. Nah, don’t be daft, Geoff. Alf’s nowhere near an epsilon, a gamma or an upper delta maybe, but no way is he an epsilon. Alf, Geoff owes you a pint for talk like that. Now the epsilons in the film were dressed in heavy, black coats with hooded cowls and you couldn’t see their faces. They were wearing high boots and mindlessly swaying from side to side as they shuffled along pushing their carts.

“All of which meant nothing at the time. It was just a scene in the film. The day after, mind, the very next day, Elle and I went shopping in a supermarket that is now not there and is part of a bus station that no one other than junkies, vandals and vagrants use. That’s called progress. Still I suppose if they’re trashing and spray painting graffiti in the bus station they’re not upsetting decent folk, and it does give the homeless somewhere out of the rain to doss down. Back to the supermarket as was. Elle and I took a trolley each and separated. I hadn’t been in the place ten minutes and I was completely pole axed. I couldn’t believe my eyes, there coming towards me shuffling along pushing a trolley, swaying mindlessly from side to side and muttering was an epsilon semi moron complete with its face cowled by a hooded, black duffel coat and wearing Wellington boots.

“It was surreal. After I did a double take, I rushed between the aisles looking for Elle, she just had to see this. One look at her face when I found her, and I knew she’d already seen it and had been looking for me with the same intent. We went and looked again and collapsed laughing. It still cracks us up, but I’m afraid it’s one of those things where it wasn’t just that you had to have been there. You had to have watched the film the night before too to derive the full benefit.” Sasha got up and mimicked the swaying and pushing with a shuffling gait and muttering under his breath to much laughter.

“Like I said, someone will do you a serious mischief one of these days, Sasha Vetrov.” Gladys disappeared with a tray of empty glasses in her hands before returning with a tray of mince and onion pies. “Pass the plates and forks round, Geoff and I’ll dish up.” The pies were duly consumed and the tables cleared before being refilled with full glasses.

Before Sasha said anything he nodded to Denis who in response to an earlier question asked, “How did I get into teaching? It was a bloody con, Geoff, that’s how. I’d not long since retired from lecturing mathematics at the university. That by the bye was how I met Sasha. I didn’t need a job but a friend asked me to help out. He was struggling for staff to teach mathematics at his secondary school in Beirut Greater Manchester, he was the head. That was a while before we moved to Shropshire. So I said, ok, Colin I’ll give it a go part time. That was the thin end of the wedge.

“I’d taught evening class physics part time at an adult education centre for a few years. I got into that just for something different to do and I knew a bloke who taught physics there. I’d liked it so I carried on doing it. The adult education centre has a huge hairdressing, beauty therapy and access to nursing student body. Granada studios are just down the road and we had a large make up department specialising in make up for in front of the cameras too.

“I taught skin physics, and chemistry too, to about three hundred girls on twelve different courses every week. Teaching an all girls class is different. Teaching sciences to an all girls class is definitely different. You have to have a sense of humour and remember not to take their flirting seriously. They’re just practising, it’s what girls do when they feel secure enough. It’s actually the mark of a decent man, because they’ll only do it with blokes they regard as fully adult and safe, like their dads ought to be. Sadly in many cases blokes like me are infinitely safer to practice with than their dad. It scared the shit out of the male lecturers who hadn’t reared at least one daughter and got grandkids. The girls want the banter, but they have to know it’s just banter.

“Many of my colleagues in the make up department, who were virtually all women, and I worked together on the science the girls needed. I’d been amazed when I first looked into it just how much science there is that’s skin related. Fluid loss, body temperature control and UV sensitivity are the least of it. The list of stuff to cover is huge. It had never been timetabled as a topic on its own before because they’d never found anyone willing to teach it. So the problem was to select bits for a curriculum. For the two and three year courses the job was relatively easy, but it was hard deciding what to leave out for the one year courses.

“One of the things that made the whole thing work with the girls was the associated practical sessions which took place in one of their other classes taught by their usual lecturer. Messing about with different factor sun screens, how effective were different lip balms at combatting sore lips in winter? and the like. The practicals weren’t intended to be academic, just a reminder that what they did with me had real life applications, and that anything they applied to their skin could have negative effects which was why hairdressers did sensitivity tests if a client hadn’t used that product before.

“At the end of the summer term at the school we had an activity fortnight. Exams were over, there were no lessons and teachers found something that the kids in their form would enjoy for them to do. Now as you all know, I hate sport so I did a deal with my parallel form tutor, David, who was an ex-county cricket player and a games teacher. He took my boys for cricket and other sports and I took his girls as well as my own. I’d done a deal with Gillian a colleague in adult educational to teach my girls how to use make up and to make the best of themselves instead of looking like a tramp on the knock, in return for doing her examination invigilation.

“Many of the make up team, like Gillian who was a neighbour of ours, had lucrative private practices, so were set up for working away from the college using a van as a mobile make up workshop. Gillian and two colleagues brought in all sorts of things including some of her adverts in the local press and pictures from Granada studios which gave them total attention immediately from the girls. All I had to do was be there. After that my credibility with the girls in the entire school went through the roof. I think they thought I was on first name terms with soap opera stars, who I’d actually never heard of. It was probably the most successful thing I ever did as a teacher and the lip stick smudges on my face from the girls when I left proved the point.

“What’s that Geoff? One from my childhood. Give me a minute.” As soon as Denis returned from the gents he started before he’d even sat down properly. “Oh my bloody back!” Dad screamed as he hit the ground. He had lifted a suitcase into the boot of PT 872, the old black ford Prefect we called Peter that had been his dad’s, but twisted as he did so and pulled all the muscles down the left hand side of his back. He had already loaded LED 200, Mum’s pea green mark 1 Zephyr that her dad had given her when he bought a new mark 2 Zodiac. We called Mum’s car Lady and Granddad’s new one Zoë. It was summer, July 1960, and I was eleven, twelve in less than a month. We were going to Wales camping, parents, myself and three older sisters. But for a while there it had looked like it was off.

“Fortunately Mum, an ex SRN, had dad on the ground on his stomach, just where he had fallen on the driveway in front of the house, and mercilessly she walked up and down on his back for ten minutes, I can recall his screams as she did so as if it were yesterday, and our holiday was back on again. I have no memory of the journey, but thankfully I travelled with Mum. We duly arrived at the soaked swamp with the floating turf called a camp site somewhere near Abersoch in north Wales. We pitched tents in the mud and listened to Dad’s constant plaint of “Oh my bloody back,” for the entire time we were there. He was the only thing that could compete with the seagulls.

“It never stopped raining and eventually we gave it up after four days having sprouted gills. The only thing good or bad about the entire four days that I can remember was fishing for brown trout with a wrinkled old Welshman called Yanto who was delighted to learn that my politics were liberal with a capital L, which seems strange now after all I was only eleven. It was years before I realised that Yanto was a use name for Evan.

“Yanto was brilliant, and he seemed to be completely inured to the rain. I’m still not sure that he actually was aware that it was raining. Under Yanto’s experienced eyes, we caught, gutted and fried the trout we’d caught in lard. They were delicious, charred on the edges and dangerously hot. I can taste them and feel my burnt lips still. I travelled back to Scotland with Dad ‘Oh my bloody backing’ for over three hundred miles. I still don’t know why we went to Wales of all places. That is the last memory I have of spending any time at all with Dad. Mum divorced him shortly after. He was born in 1922, so he may be still alive, but probably not.

“Yanto was fascinating to me. He was a Welshman whose native tongue was what he described as North Walean. I found out years later when I had learnt to speak South Walean, which I found to be vaguely similar enough to Gaelic to help me learn it, that the speakers of the two variants of Welsh, North and South Walean use English to deal with each other at the marts, or at least they did at Aberystwyth when I was there. My family were and are Gaelic speakers and there was an elusive familiarity to Yanto’s speech when he was speaking to other locals, some words I understood but the grammar seemed odd. This is completely different from listening to Belinda’s family who are Gaeltacht speakers from Donegal. With them I understand enough of the grammar and can fill in most of the vocabulary if I try hard enough, but North Walean, like its other modern Celtic language counterpart Breton, is sufficiently different to elude me now just as it did then.

“I’ll have another and then it’s home time for me. I’m on a promise.”

There was a great deal of laughter at that, and Gladys said, “Aye, a mug of cocoa and a couple of digestive biscuits. If he’s lucky.”

Denis winked broadly and said, “If you came home with me, Gladys, we could have a threesome.”

There were roars of laughter as a bright red Gladys screamed, “Get out, Denis, before I take a broom to your back. You’re filthier than that bloody Cossack.”

As Gladys disappeared into the best room and Denis made his way to the door he heard Pete Gladys’ husband say, “That’s one to Denis, boys, because Sasha’s never managed to make Gladys blush. I didn’t know she could.”