PUB LIFE & THE CHILDHOOD CHRISTMAS FOR ‘BOSH’ JOHN

as we enjoyed pints of swig i asked john the bosh how old he actually was.
‘how old do you think?’ he replied.
this was difficult. bosh john looks like a scarecrow assembled out of twiglets with a face made from a rather old new potato. his hair-do is rather crap too. so i plumped for 54 and john was pleased. ‘i’m 53′, he said ‘although most people think i’m about 65′.

we laughed at ‘throaty bob’. it was his birthday and he had a present waiting for him in the pub. it was all wrapped up in cardboard and gift paper. bob is a piss-taker and very quick when it comes to a barbed remark. but he couldn’t think of anything to say when he unwrapped his 3-wheeled zimmer frame (that had obviously been stolen).

a few of us discussed home-brew, how rubbish mothers’ day is and how much we dislike christmas. how the only things worth a bit of celebration are birthdays, we came to decide. well, not throaty bob, obviously.

bosh john, like myself and everyone else i know, is pitifully poor. but unlike me he came from a poor family. he told me about his childhood christmases. he got an orange in a sock.

now then, if that didn’t make you cry, consider this. bosh is a survivor of cancer. he grows his hair long to cover the radiation-burn style oldifying of his face. he had throat cancer but he sits in the pub and smokes roll-ups and drinks cider. as hard as i try i can’t think of anything wrong with that because bosh needs the pub and his fags and his daily mirror more than he needs life itself. it’s as simple as that.

and that, for me, is what going to the pub is all about. this, for me, is pub life; a window into knackered lives where there is no hope and everything depends on going home to a dodgy flat, alone, with a fairly full stomach of swig and maybe some chips.

on an upbeat note, there were actually three finders of my cache ‘weyside wander’ yesterday. one was a little late in posting. on the subject of caching i have to say that i spent today hiking to coxes lock to scout for a place to plant ‘weyside wander 2′. i think it will work. what a lovely canal it is. i took photos of the swans as we fed them.

oh, and we saw the blue flash of a jay’s wings as it came over the towpath.

the stat machine is broken.

goodnight, dear reader, and thank you for your time.