Paul started the proceedings. “I was born and grew up in Dumfries but my stepdad had to move with his company to the midlands when I was thirteen I think. When this tale happened I was still at home with Mum and my stepfather. We lived in a little town called Malvern in Worcestershire, where the three counties shews are held. I’d have been no more than fifteen when I went down to London for a meeting with my bio dad. God alone knows why I’d agreed to it. All I could remember of him was the shouting, the hitting and the insults, and my step father whom I’d always called dad, and I still do, had been a proper and decent father to all of us. I think I’d caught a tube from Euston station to Green Park, but I could be wrong, for it was a long time ago. London and its folk perplexed me. They were all so busy and bad mannered.

“Anyway I was sitting down when a woman got on. She looked like she was at least eight months. I got up to offer her my seat when some fucking shit with a bowler hat, an umbrella, a briefcase and a paper under his arm sat down in my seat before I’d had time to say anything. To be honest I saw red and was prepared to pulp the bastard. But I got control of myself and merely grabbed him by the throat, lifted him out of the seat, threw him to the floor and said, ‘I apologise for the behaviour of this piece of selfish manure because I stood up to offer you my seat. Please have a seat, Mistress.’

“All the clones of the bloke in the carriage drew away from me. I was angry and shouted at them, ‘Where I come from we treat all women with respect and even more so when they are with child. I know you southerners consider anyone from north of Watford to be barbarians, but you talcum knackered southern jessies are nothing but uncivilised, selfish offal, and if you want to make something of it I’ll be happy to take the lot of you on. Go on. I may not be able to take you all out, but I’ll give you odds if you have a go a good couple of dozen of you will be eating hospital food for at least a week.’ The lass was blushing bright red, so I said to her, ‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, Mistress, but I won’t be taken advantage of, nor will I allow you to be either. I’m only here for the day, and to be honest I’ll never willingly go south of Lancaster again, for I’ve seen nothing but unkindness, insult and inconsideration here and I’ve only been here an hour.’ ”

“What happened when you met your dad, Paul?”

“I’ve no idea, Dave. I can’t remember anything about the meeting and I never saw him again. The incident on the tube is all that’s remained with me for decades.”

~o~O~o~

Harry said he’d got a couple of tales from when he lived in Monton near Eccles Greater Manchester. “I was still getting educated and had been driving the cab for an outfit called Dial-a-Cab that operated near Eccles, but the owner’s boyfriend was not a nice man, so after a couple of years of putting up with him I left to go and drive for a Salford firm. Well, that was bloody eye opener. On my first shift someone left a gun on my back seat. I took it down to the Salford main police station on the Crescent and they kept me for three hours, almost but not quite accusing me of being a frigging armed bank robber. When I left I telt them, ‘If any thing like this ever happens again I’ll just threw the damned thing in the river Irwell because helping you with you enquiries has cost me half a day’s income. Never again.’

“Back at the office we figured out an explanation. The lass I’d picked up from Salford shopping precinct lived with a really dangerous nutter who was out on bail. The lads reckoned he’d been planning a hold up and in an attempt to keep him out of trouble she’d got rid of his gun in my cab. They told me the cops had been on to them, but they’d given them a load of bullshit because they just didn’t want to be involved. They also told me never to go to the law about anything in future. If I’d got a problem just go back to the office and they’d deal with it. Eventually I realised that most of them knew all the bad guys and one had a brother who was a copper that used to come into the office to smoke weed after his shift on weekend nights with the rest.

“Two days later I was driving down a street called Guy Fawkes Street, the entire area had originally been Guy Fawkes’ estate and Ordsall Hall then a museum had originally been his manor house. Yes, Alf, I do mean the bloke who was hanged, drawn and quartered for trying to blow up parliament. Now going down Guy Fawkes street you went past Sunnyside Court which was an eighteen storey high rise block of flats. They were demolished years ago. I’m not sure when. Clear as day I saw a sofa coming out of a window about three-quarters of the way up. In the rear view mirror I saw it land in the middle of the street and turn into matchsticks. I was seriously wondering what the hell I’d done moving to a firm round there at that point. However, I was there for six years and never missed a shift working twelve, often eighteen, hours a day for seven days a week. We were struggling for cash and wanted to get out and buy a decent place, but we needed money to do it.

“A couple of months later I was asked if I would go in early at three in the afternoon because they were short of day drivers. I didn’t usually start till seven when the rush hour traffic was essentially over. I hated driving days because of one the traffic and two the day drivers. Day drivers are all nutters. I think that’s due to the stress of driving in heavy traffic. I said I’d do it. I’d been working for maybe three-quarters of an hour when I was telt to pick up someone called Janet from the Tip Top on Langworthy Road. I’d been up and down Langworthy road a couple of times and hadn’t spotted any shop called Tip Top. The radio operator had changed by this time and it was the usual night operator, ‘Seventeen,’ he called. ‘Where are you? Janet says she’s seen you twice and you were looking at the other side of the road.’ ‘I can’t see any Tip Top’ I said. All I could hear was laughing in the office. Turned out the lass that did the desk before him had a hearing issue and I should have been looking for the Chip Shop.

“In those days I drove a Cortina mark four. You’ve heard of Friday afternoon cars. Well that car was just the opposite. It was the fasted Cortina I’ve ever heard of, and at a ton fifteen it purred. I’d started early at four in the afternoon on Saturday. I’d worked all the way through till eight on Sunday morning and had made a hell of a lot of money. It would have going on for ten past eight and I was parked up at the top of the hill on Langworthy Road. I’d agreed to hang on till some day drivers arrived and was dozing. ‘Seventeen.’ ‘Read on,’ I replied. ‘Still no day drivers. You up for one more job? Pick up at Higher Broughton.’ I didn’t want it because I was exhausted, but if a desk man asks you to you cooperate because if you don’t all you’ll get is shit thereafter. ‘Go on,’ I replied. I went to the address and I thought the guy was taking the piss when he said, ‘London.’ He gave me two hundred and fifty quid off a roll and said, ‘ If it’s more than that, tell me and I’ll pay you. Just be quick about it. I went to a club last night and I’ve been shagging all night. I’m knackered, so I’ll crash out on the back seat. I’m a film director. I came up here for a meeting at Granada studios and I’ve a meeting at twelve that I can’t afford to miss.’

“Well that meant he wasn’t available to talk to me to keep me awake. My eyes were twitching all the way down. I woke him up as we got to where the M25 is now and when I dropped him off after looking at his watch he gave me another hundred and fifty. I went to a greasy spoon for some breakfast and headed back home. There were no cameras in those days and bugger all cops out on a Sunday and I flew it in both directions, eyes seriously twitching all the way. I was home at just gone half past twelve. One of the day drivers’ had a girlfriend who lived a few houses away from my house and he asked me where I’d been. He told the boys at work when he’d seen me parking up on my drive and they didn’t believe I’d been to London. Taking the time out for my breakfast I’d done over four hundred miles at an average of just over a hundred miles an hour. Thirty miles an hour above the speed limit.

“Apparently three day drivers turned up just after I’d been given the job and they’d tried to contact me to take the job off me, but I’d agreed to do one more and thinking it was a local run and not wanting to any more, even if there were no day drivers in, I’d turned my radio off. The day men were furious, but the desk man had simply said ‘Well you know what to do. Turn up for work on time. Seventeen is covering your arses. The customer said he wanted a cab immediately, or he’d ring somewhere else, so if Seventeen hadn’t stayed on you wouldn’t have had the job whatever.’ They asked what the job had been quoted at and were telt there was no quote. The customer had said, ‘I want a cab now with a fast driver. I’ve got cash on me and I’ll make it worth his while. The faster he gets me there the more worthwhile I’ll make it.’ I got some kip and was back at work for six that evening. There were some seriously sick day drivers when I telt them the job had been worth four hundred quid.”

~o~O~o~

“You look irritated, Alf. What’s up? Who’s been rattling your cage?”

“Bout ten this morning the ericaceous compost I’d ordered arrived at my sister Edith’s, Pete. Can you believe it? Seven hundred and fifty bloody kilos on a pallet [1650 pounds] was delivered by a wagon with nothing other than a pallet barrow to off load with. The wagon had a tail lift and dropped the pallet in the middle of the lonning (1) and the driver got back in his cab and drove off. Eighty bloody bags of the stuff and I had to start moving them off the tarmac before any came along because the lonning was blocked. I’d shifted maybe three-quarters of them and who came along but that misery guts Tom Waymouth. We’ve never got on for the same reasons none else gets on with him. His missus was driving, I don’t think he’s driven since his stroke, and I half expected him to get out and start a slanging match. I waved his missus to drive past on Edith’s verge and she did with the old bastard himself glaring at me all the while. I just smiled because I knew that was what would irritate him most. Another quarter of an hour and I had the stuff all shifted, but I’ve put a complaint into the folk who I bought it off. I know it’s not their fault because it came from down country and was probably trans shipped twice. I know the wagon that delivered it picked it up from a depot in Carlisle, but you never know they may just use another carrier or insist on a suitably equipped wagon on each delivery leg.”

“So what you going to do with it at Edith’s?”

“Nothing. I had it delivered there in case the road to here was flooded. I was going to go for it with Peabody’s tractor. He said I could use his John Deere, the one with the pallet forks. It was in my workshop at the time for some work on the hydraulics. But his lad Alan picked it up at lunchtime and said he’d bring the stuff back later in the afternoon for me, so it’s down at the allotments now, but I’m still annoyed about it.”

“Ne’er mind lad. A few scoops(2) will set you to rights.”

~o~O~o~

Charlie said, “I don’t know why but I was thinking about a relative of mine recently, and I’ll tell you about her if you like?”

Charlie didn’t say much as a rule and his only tale to date had been a good one which had been an extensive description of his childhood. Sasha said, “Go on then, Charlie, just hang on till we can all open a fresh bottle.” The men sorted their beer out and Charlie started.

“My mother’s cousin Marsha had been blinded as a child. She’d run up behind someone wearing bedroom slippers and hadn’t been heard. The someone, I was never telt who, but I know it was a relative, had been using a scythe and it took both her eyes out. Unlike most blind folk who are usually born blind and often have a degree of cognitive impairment Marsha was exceedingly bright and eventually obtained a first in librarianship specialising in Braille books from Oxford. She ended up working at the Bodleian library at Oxford university. She was a fair bit older than me, but we got on because she had a wicked sense of humour. I remember her telling my mum once from the front room that the chips [US fries] were done, she explained she could tell by the sound they made. I was always fascinated that she only had to hear a stranger’s footsteps once and no matter what they were wearing on their feet next time she came across them she’d know who it was.

“She telt me a story from when she was thirteen or maybe fourteen. There was only one grammar school for the blind in England in those days. It was way down south and they reckoned just to keep up with a sighted person a blind person had to be thirty IQ points brighter. Marsha was returning home from the grammar school at the end of term with a few friends who all lived in the north. She’d broken her leg and it was in a cast. She never telt me how she’d broken her leg. The train was full and so she and her friends were all in the corridor of the carriage sitting on their suitcases. Her leg was sticking out because in the cast there was nothing else she could do. Some bloke rushing down the corridor tripped over her leg and measured his length falling over on his face. ‘What’s the matter with you,’ he demanded clearly enraged. ‘It was obvious I was coming past. Are you blind?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Marsha. ‘All of us.’

“When I was younger, I read loads of books aloud into a tape recorder for Marsha. I was happy to do it. Marsha asked me if I minded her passing the tapes on to the Royal National Institute for the Blind, so they could copy them and distribute them. I said, ‘No problem.’ I’d read all of Dickens, all that Tolkien had published at that date and a load more. Eventually the RNIB started to treat me like I owed it to them and became very demanding. I telt them to piss off, and Marsha agreed after that that she’d not pass on anything I recorded for her. Tell you, you do something for free and folk always start to consider it to be worth nothing and treat you like shit. Marsha died years ago, but I still remember her with affection and was happy for her when at turned fifty after a series of operations she had a limited degree of sight restored to one eye.

“The only other thing I remember of those days vaguely to do with Marsha was my gran collecting silver paper for the organisation that bred and trained guide dogs. A lot of women collected it in those days. The organisation weighed it in as aluminium. I remember my gran separating the silver foil from the tissue it was with from my grandpa’s cigarette packets and washing milk bottle tops. Marsha never had a guide dog because she didn’t like dogs or any other animals come to that.”

Charlie added, “I’ve got a couple more if you like?”

“Go on, Lad.”

“My grandpa as lived at Risley had a static caravan [US trailer] we used to holiday in at Penmaenmawr in north Wales. I mind one year when my youngest sister was maybe a year old, still in nappies [US diapers] so I’d have been five and a half we went there in July. There’d been a really violent storm a few days before. We were on the beach when she started howling. Mum raced over and she’d got a really nasty rash on one of her legs. The local hospital said the beaches were covered with a nasty jelly fish called Portuguese Man of War that had been blown north in huge numbers by the storm. They added she was lucky because her nappy had protected her from even worse. Seems a baby could have been killed by one of the things.

“A few years later Grandpa sold his static caravan and joined the caravan club. He bought a big caravan he could tow so he and Gran could go to caravan club rallies at weekends. Not long after he bought his first touring caravan Mum and Dad and the five of us kids were going to have a fortnight’s holiday near Grange over Sands in his caravan. Grandpa was going to take the caravan to the caravan site and we were going to meet him there. One of my sisters was staying at Gran’s and she would be coming with them. Grandpa was supposed to meet us at two at the site which was at Flookburgh, but he didn’t arrive till gone four. He drove a Ford Zodiac and been travelling north on the M6 towing the Swift Sprite which was a large and light caravan. Later it was discovered that two large sheep transporters had been reported as racing each other and driving dangerously to the police. They passed Grandpa, who was driving at sixty miles per hour which was the speed limit for a car and caravan, one on each side of him. The turbulence turned the caravan onto its side still attached to his car and he ended up facing the wrong way on the motorway. My sister who was sitting in the middle of the bench seat between him and Grandma was trapped between them and none of them were hurt.

“Some lorries stopped, and one of the drivers stopped the motorway traffic whilst the others man handled the caravan back onto its wheels. Grandpa did a U turn on the motorway and continued on his way. As far as any was aware the police were completely unaware of the incident though both of the sheep transporter drivers were later arrested for dangerous driving. When grandpa arrived he told my parents what had happened and they looked inside the caravan for the first time since the incident. The inside was a mess with the contents all over the place. The lead acid battery that powered the lighting had leaked acid and the carpet had holes in it. You wouldn’t believe how much mess a dozen eggs and half a pound of loose tea can make, but eventually order was restored and Gran went to the site shop for some more eggs and tea. Grandpa couldn’t survive without regular fixes of tea and he didn’t hold with tea bags. I don’t remember much of the holiday other than that the site swimming pool was over warm and that the races on the nearby go cart racing track which had been laid out on the old world war two aerodrome that the site was a part of were exciting. Grandpa got a new caravan on his insurance, but his next one though as big was nearly twice as heavy as the Sprite.

“I suppose the most exciting thing that happened on that holiday was meeting Isla Gregory, she was from Whitley Bay, and she was nice. They weren’t my first kisses with a girl, but they were the first that got my hands inside a lass’s underclothes. I got a lot of teasing from Grandpa about her, but I’d have been horse whipped by her dad if he’d discovered what we’d got up to.

“My grandparents were a bit odd to some folk. I remember my grandpa sitting down to his evening meal and just staring at it. Eventually my gran said, ‘What’s the matter, Jock?’ ‘You’ve not stirred my tea,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry, Love,’ said Gran immediately stirring his tea. Now before any says any thing Gran was as bad. She’d have frozen to death before bringing in a scuttle of coal from just outside the back door because that was men’s work.”

There were a number of sympathetic comments and Dave said, “My grandparents were the same. There was women’s work and there was men’s work and no overlap.”

“I used to go to work with Grandpa from time to time when I was kid. I mind one time we were building a new set of gate pillars at the entrance to Winwick Hospital which was once one of those huge Victorian mental hospitals. It’s a housing estate now I think. Anyway there was a gang of council brickies repairing the wall which ran all the way round the place. There were miles of it. One of the brickies came over to grandpa and asked if they could have a shovel of compo.(3) Grandpa said, ‘I’ll put a batch of sand and cement on for you. You can pay me back when you stuff arrives.’ ‘No,’ the bloke said. ‘A shovelful will keep us going all day.’ We were two days building those pillars, in Accrington stock brick, they were huge, I'd guess fifteen foot tall and three foot square and the cast iron gates that swung off them must have been well over a ton apiece. Going on for a thousand bricks in each pillar, and in that time the entire gang of five men hadn’t laid twenty bricks. I remember grandpa saying, ‘I’d rather you don’t end up in the building trade, Son, but if you do never employ anyone who has ever worked for the council, if they were any good they’d have worked elsewhere for twice the money.’

“Another funny thing I remember was when grandpa was building a house for someone. They’d specified it was to be built with black mortar. In those days that was not achieved using dye but by mixing soot into the batch. The house was halfway up when the customer changed his mind and said he wanted white mortar. He soon rechanged his mind when Grandpa telt him all the work above the damp proof course would have to be demolished and what it would all cost.

“Three years after that holiday at Flookburgh gran died at the age of fifty-one. Grandpa met Joan at a caravan club rally. She was thirty years younger than him and the head mistress of her own primary school near Chorley. They eventually married and I liked her.”

~o~O~o~

Dave said, “On a different note I’ve got one for you.” Dave was well known for telling shaggy dog stories so there was considerable interest in what he’d got to say. “A well dressed rabbit walked into an all day breakfast joint and ordered a cheese toastie. The waitress thought that a bit odd, a rabbit eating cheese, but after he’d finished and before he left he gave her a generous tip, so she shrugged it off. The following day the rabbit came in and ordered an egg and bacon toastie. ‘That’s queer,’ the same waitress thought, but again the rabbit left a generous tip. Every day for six weeks the rabbit ordered a toastie with his coffee, and every time he left a generous tip. The waitress had chatted a bit with her generous customer and had grown to like him. She’d even considered him to be handsome and rather fancied him, even if he was only five foot two, for he was always well dressed and groomed, he was well spoken and clearly wasn’t short of money. One day he came in and ordered a ham toastie and after he’d finished it he called her over and said, “I’ve been working hard today and I’m still hungry would you get me another toastie please? I fancy one with Danish blue cheese.”

“Certainly, Sir,” she replied. “Would you like me to refill your coffee too?”

“Please,” the rabbit replied.

She topped his coffee cup up and a few minutes later brought the Danish blue toastie. The rabbit took one bite and fell out of his chair gasping for breath. She asked him what was wrong and should she call an ambulance. “Too late,” the rabbit replied in his last few seconds. “I forgot the first rule of rabbitdom. I’m dying from mixing my toasties.” The roars of laughter took a while to quieten.

“Is that it?” asked Alf. “I don’t get it. Why are you all laughing?”

Sasha replied, “Mixing my toasties, is similar to myxomatosis, Alf. You get it now?”

Alf smiled and said, “Yeah. I get it now, but I still don’t get why you clever buggers bother with me.”

“Because you’re a bloody genius with our cars and other stuff that we can’t fix when they go wrong, Alf. None of us can be good at every thing,” Pete replied. Sasha smiled and nodded approval at Pete’s easing of Alf insecurities.

~o~O~o~

Pete said, “Things may just be looking up lads. When Gladys was cleaning out one of the rooms in the cellars which she wanted for wine storage she found the old world war two black out curtains. The curtains were more or less completely rotted away, but I thought the idea was a good one and I’ve ordered a complete set of heavy black lined curtains for the entire pub. Fuck the social distancing. There’s never loud music coming out of the place and only locals who are in our small contained bubble anyway will get in. If every one goes round the back and texts us we’ll let them in. As it is all deliveries to the village are almost by remote, stuff is dropped on the road and we take it in, so what the hell. I’d appreciate some help hanging the curtains. If you’d bring your tool box, Alf, and supervise the rest of us can labour for you.”

~o~O~o~

That was the beginning of the Bearthwaite covid rebellion. The village was extremely isolated and even under normal conditions had little contact with the outside world. All the local men with an allotment plot were supplying the village shop run by Dave and Lucy Wannup and the arrangement was so satisfactory for the allotmenteers, the Wannups and the locals that the decision to continue the arrangement even when and if the virus went away had been taken. The grocers had taken no deliveries of fresh food, vegetables and meat, eggs, milk, butter and cheese since the initial lock down, all had been produced locally and supplied to locals via the Wannups. That the meat inspectorate had not been informed was considered to be a matter of no relevance as ‘Vince the Mince’(4) the local butcher who had a licenced slaughterhouse behind the shop had forgotten more about meat hygiene and safety than any of the local meat inspectors, whom he describe as bits of kids with less hair on their chins than he had on his arse, would ever be likely to learn. Vince was enabled to focus on butchery because several of the local women had agreed to make his sausage, bacon and hams as well as baking his pork pies and the like in exchange for meat rather than money.

~o~O~o~

The blackout curtains were hung under Alf’s supervision. It took nearly a week because Alf was a fussy perfectionist and wanted no damage doing to the building, so he’d had to make a number of custom fittings in brass and there were a lot of windows in the Dragon, but eventually the job was finished and the Zoom meetings had only lasted for a month.

Sasha had said that he’d things in train to make the Green Dragon a free house for ever, but he’d not telt any more of the matter, which though irritating was considered to be entirely in keeping with the way he was, and was regarded as a fortunate truth of what was to happen.

1 Lonning, lane.
2 Scoops, scoops of beer, vernacular for beers.
3 Compo, vernacular for sand and cement or lime mortar used for laying bricks.
4 Mince or minced meat is the UK term for ground meat,