Yet again it was Saturday evening and the Grumpy Old Men of Bearthwaite were meeting in the taproom of the Green Dragon with their regular drinking friends from elsewhere outside the village and a number of new faces for an evening of tales, dominoes and drink, especially drink. After all were settled and serious drinking had commenced, Sasha shouted for attention and announced, “Phil has a long tale, so hush it up, Lads. I’ve been led to believe it’ll take a few of us to tell the entire tale properly, so it sounds interesting.”

Phil started by saying “I tender my apologies to the regular Saturday night outsiders and those of you who are here with a view to becoming regulars. There is no insult intended to you, Lads, for you are more than welcome since, and I make no apology for saying it, you contribute both economically and socially to the lives of those of us who live here, especially those of you prepared to tell a tale as well as drink, so if any fancies having a go at telling a tale feel free, for we’ll appreciate the change whatever it is you wish to relate. Fact is when we run out of ideas Sasha fills in and we’ve heard more of his ‘new truths’ than is probably decent and in truth fair to him. When the weather is poor I’m sure most of you are aware that the flooding of the road cuts off access to Bearthwaite from time to time. For those who don’t already know, if you google ‘Green Dragon Bearthwaite’ our website will give you information concerning the state of the road and the likelihood that if you can make it to here you will not be able to leave and will have to book a room at the Dragon after spending the evening here. I’d suggest if that is at all likely you bring your missus with you for a night out with our girls in the best side and book a double room.

“However, back to the point, despite outsiders being welcome here, for all are from the county or just outside it, we all know that Bearthwaite folks are trying to cut down outsiders from the cities delivering anything and everything and that Lucy and Dave used to receive three deliveries of bread a week. We were particularly bothered about the risks associated with importing foodstuffs that would not be cooked and considered bread to be a high risk import. Alice and a couple of dozen women including Lucy have cleaned up and renovated the old mill bake house and are using it as a modern bakery. Alf has converted the ovens from solid fuel, they used to use the faggots supplied by the hedgers and ditchers, to kero(1) and sorted out an adjustable thickness loaf slicer for the lasses. The lasses’ intention is that folks as don’t want to bake their own bread, or don’t have the time, and some as used to have the time don’t any more because they’re doing something else to help the situation here, can buy Bearthwaite baked bread from Lucy and Dave’s shop, or if they prefer they can pick it up direct from the mill. Turns out, the bread they bake is considered tastier than commercial bread, and even at half the price everybody involved is making a decent living out of it.

“I’m paying some of the kids to deliver bread to the old folk using the old delivery boys’ bicycle carts that turned up in an old out building on Peabody’s place that hadn’t been used for sixty years. Vince found another at the back of his slaughter house. You know the sort of thing I mean, a bicycle frame with two wheels at the front below a big basket woven from willow to keep the weight down, The baskets had to be replaced as they were rotten. Gillian, Simon’s missus, as weaves stuff to sell on the local summer marts and her Ebay shop wove them from split willow out of the hedges. Alf and some of the lads have restored them to like new condition, and even put modern gears on them, so they are not as much hard work to ride when loaded. Stan has finished them off with a bit of sign writing saying Bearthwaite Deliveries. They looked like they came straight off one of those old Hovis bread adverts that were on the box in the sixties that nostalgically harped back to the twenties and thirties. Reminded me of the spoof sketch skit that the Two Ronnies did on their television shew way back they did. The kids are having fun picking stuff up from anywhere and when they aren’t delivering they’re using the bikes as recreational vehicles.

“The bake house roof is leaking a bit, so I asked Mark and Mason to have a look at it. Turns out there’s evidence that at one time the roof was thatched, but when the thatch was taken off it was then roofed with wooden shingles. Neither of the lads had come across a shingled roof before. Mark said he’d only ever come across them on Youtube in the States. Mason said he’d heard of them being used down country aways,(2) but he’d never seen them in use. Both agreed the simplest and by far the cheapest solution was to repair the roof, and since the construction was the same as is used on a slate roof there would be no problem doing it provided they could either get a holt on(3) some shingles or some other waterproof material of similar thickness they could cut to the same dimensions as the shingles. Both opined that wooden shingles of a weather resistant wood would be best. They said they’d look into it for me. That would be a month over at least. Mark, Mason, one of you want to take it from here?”

Mason said, “Aye, nay bother, Phil. We had a word with John to see if he had any suitable wood to make shingles from. Since he retired, John’s only worked when George needs a hand with a tree felling job and he said he had nowt.(4) He also said, if George didn’t have owt(5) he’d know someone who would. George reckoned it would be no problem to find straight grained oak that could be cross-cut, [US bucked] into fourteen inch lengths for riving(6) into shingles.”

Mark interrupted to say, “I asked him whether it would be best to cut the shingles out on a table saw or a band saw. I was thinking if a table saw were best it would have to be a hell of a piece of kit.”

Mason resumed, “The look on George’s face was a picture. You’d think we’d committed every one of the seven deadly sins all at the same time.”

The was a voice from the other side of the tap room that declared, “You had. Bit’s of kids these days know nowt. Cutting shingles! Bloody heresy, Lads, I’m telling you. Shingles have to be rived(7) so the split follows the grain of the wood and the end grain doesn’t break out of the surface like it would with a cut piece. Cut shingles wouldn’t last two minutes because the rain would soak into the surface where the end grain breaks out and then they’d rot. The only tools to make shingles with are a froe(8) and beetle.(9) These two didn’t even know what I was talking about. Everyone had a froe and beetle once to split kindling with. They disappeared when open fires were replaced by central heating. Froes were made by the village blacksmith, Thomson back in my day, his family had been smiths in Bearthwaite for many a generation, but everyone made their own handles for them and their own beetles too.”

There was a lot of laughter at that since whilst not elderly neither Mark nor Mason could reasonably be referred to as bits of kids. Both brothers were forty turned and well established family men. Mark, the elder of the brothers was a time served carpenter and Mason a similarly qualified plasterer though they worked together as jobbing builders prepared to do a variety of work. Emily their younger sister did their paper work and books(10) for them as she did for a number of other self employed folk in Bearthwaite.

Mason grinned and said, “After we’d calmed George down a bit, he suggested we have a word with Alf, as he might have a froe, and he said a beetle could be turned down from any bit of hardwood log. ‘Make a few,’ he suggested. “Get a six to eight inch thick piece of branch maybe fourteen inches long off someone’s fire wood pile and turn or drawknife the bark off for safety. If you leave the bark on a piece of greenwood the beetle can easily slip off the froe and slip sideways with however much force you applied to it which isn’t good if your leg is in its path. Turn or drawknife a convenient length for the head and ease the diameter down to a comfortable fit in your hand for the rest of its length. Alf will be able to turn you half a dozen in an hour.’ Alf said he hadn’t seen a froe for decades. He admitted he’d had one years ago that had been his dad’s, but said he’d no idea where it was now. ‘Probably in a museum somewhere,’ he said. He said he would have a word with Simon for us. Simon, you want to take it from here?” Alf could be seen nodding in agreement though he said nothing.

Simon, as was befitting a blacksmith and farrier, was a colossus of a man every bit as big as Alf, but, despite being nearer seventy than sixty, with even bigger biceps. He was left handed and the development of his left arm musculature was truly prodigious. He originated in Jamaica and his skin was as black as a moleskin waistcoat which was an incongruous contrast to his pale grey, almost white, wiry hair. He was a humorous man with a lively sense of the ridiculous with a large family. He was married to Gillian and had served his time as a smith with Thomson his father-in-law. He was a popular man, especially with children, and was locally known as Black Simon which was purely a descriptive term and in no way discriminatory. Even the children called him Black Simon as an honorific form of address to his face; most of them had thought it was in connection with his trade for decades, and for most, regardless of their age, it had become so. Twinning a name with an occupation was a commonplace sort of soubriquet, Vincent the village slaughterman and butcher was known as Vince the mince(11) and Phil who owned and operated the village flour mill was referred to as Phil the mill. Simon nodded, but passed his glass forward for a refill. “Good idea, Simon Lad, I’ll have one as well. Any more for any more? We’ll take a minute to fill glasses before Simon tells us his part of the tale.” By the time Pete had finished saying that, he and Freddy were already behind the bar pulling pints and Gustav was taking the money for them.

Simon, after taking a goodly pull on his pint, said, “This brown ale of yours is getting better with every batch, Gustav.” He wiped the froth off his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “It was a bit of a surprise when Alf telt me Mark and Mason needed a selection of froes from ten inch up to maybe a couple of foot. I used to make ’em by the dozen in all sizes as an apprentice. But that was in the days when Thomson was still in his prime and full of vigour. I still miss that bad tempered, old bugger, specially on cold, frosty Monday mornings. I swear he could light the forge fire with the heat off his curses alone.”

There was a lot of laughter at that, for Simon had succinctly described his late father-in-law in terms all who had known him recognised. They also knew the two men had been close. When they met, Thomson had been a still grieving widower with a family of six young daughters and Simon a homeless runaway from physical abuse. Simon’s family had left a life of poverty in Jamaica and started anew in London. Ten year old Simon, who’d been subject to extreme violence in Jamaica from his father and elder brothers, which hadn’t ceased in London, had finally escaped by hitching a ride on a lorry to anywhere. Anywhere as long as it took him away from his family. He’d ended up in Bearthwaite not knowing where he nor Bearthwaite was, nor caring. Thomson had found him one morning huddling behind the barely still warm forge keeping warm from a freezing cold night and had taken him into the house for a decent breakfast.

On seeing Simon’s bruises, Thomson had prised his tale out of him, and he’d gan radge,(12) which is to say become enraged. He’d said, “I’m no good Samaritan, but neither am I a man as can walk away from from a child who’s been treated the way you have, Son. As all know, I’ve had my issues with the law, Lad, but I know the difference between right and wrong, so fuck the authorities and the courts. We need to get clever because from now on you live safely here with me and the girls, Son, and we need to lie through our teeth to make that stick. I’ll ask the locals to keep their mouths shut about you, so nothing about you will ever leave the village, and that bunch of bastards down country who hurt you will never hear about you again. You’re more than three hundred miles north of London here, so you’re unlikely to meet anyone who knows who you are. Even if any of the authorities become interested in you there’re any number of farmers in the middle of nowhere who’d do me the favour of looking after you till officialdom buggered off and things cooled down. You’re a big lad for ten, and big enough to be a convincingly small one of sixteen. So if any ask you’re sixteen. Okay? That way even if the powers that be hear about you they’ll assume there’s bugger all they can do about it and leave you alone.” Simon had never had any dealings with his family again who had, had he but known it, not even bothered to report him as missing.

Not long after joining Thomson’s family, he’d started to grow dramatically and none had ever questioned the age he claimed to be. Masquerading as sixteen he’d ‘officially’ left school and he was educated by his new family and friends. Gillian, Thomson’s youngest daughter, who was his age made sure Simon kept up with what she was doing at school. Despite Thomson’s heavy hand from time to time, Simon had worshipped his mentor whom he’d apprenticed to without realising it from the day Thomson had taken him in. Simon had only bothered to sort all his official identity issues out at the age of twenty in order to marry Gillian by which time there was nothing anyone could do about the way he had spent his teens. As Thomson aged and gradually did less, Simon gradually took over the forge by doing more. The forge’s success as a business was assured when Gillian encouraged Simon to make small, easy to produce pieces she could sell on the internet along with her basketry work, which he did when in his own words, ‘I haven’t any real work to do.’

When Thomson died none questioned Simon’s right to the forge when his five sisters in law, all married to successful village tradesmen, had said that since Gillian and Simon were continuing a business that had owed its success to them both for years before their father had died it was only reasonable that Simon was the Bearthwaite blacksmith who owned the forge, for if he didn’t own it the business would be worth nothing and Bearthwaite would no longer have a blacksmith which would be an unthinkable calamity. That there were two of Simons sons and a couple of his grandsons too who regularly worked the forge and over a dozen of his descendants and nephews who competently worked the forge from time to time reassured the community considerably. The citizens of Bearthwaite were happy to know that the future of the forge facility, which was an essential one to their community, was assured for at least another half century.

“I’d not made a froe for years. When Alf asked me to make some I ratched(13) about in a corner and found a couple I’d made decades before. I knew they were made by me rather than by Thomson for they’d my maker mark(14) on them. One was ten inch the other eighteen. I made a couple of others, fourteen and twenty-four inch. None had handles, but Alf said he’d drawknife(15) some down from green ash on his shave horse.(16) Thomson always said to make froes from a high carbon steel in it’s normalised(17) state and that it made more sense to use leaf springs from light trucks and cars from the scrap yards than to waste money paying for something like new EN 45 spring steel. I’ve never closed the eye up on a froe because Thomson said that was the hallmark of an amateur because any weld, whether it be a forge weld, an electric weld or a gas weld, would always ultimately fail due to the sideways levering forces that the froe was subject to in normal usage and that rivets fared no better. Listening to the problems of others convinced me decades ago that he knew what he was talking about. He was truly a master of masters. He stuck to the old ways only when he had convinced himself it was the best way to do a job. When he found a better way that was how he proceeded thereafter. He always said, ‘Use the best techniques and materials, Son. Old or new, it makes no odds, just stick with the best, but don’t take anyone’s word for anything; try them all for yourself. Smithcraft is the same as every other craft, it’s full of charlatans. Make your own mind up.’

Alf was nodding in agreement when he interrupted saying, “Thomson, telt me those very same words many a time.”

Simon smiled as he said, “Nothing he ever taught me have I ever had reason to question. Sure, given modern technology and materials I’ve added to what he taught me, but none of the newer stuff has ever even challenged the principles he imparted to me, never mind refuted them. Dad may have had no formal education, but he was highly intelligent, read a lot about metallurgy and integrated everything he’d ever come across with a prodigious analysis of everything he’d ever done himself, and he was ever willing to experiment and try new ideas both his own and those derived from other folks. There are plenty of damned good blacksmiths with channels on Youtube shewing amateurs how to do all sorts of things, but few even approach Dad’s level of knowledge and skill.

“The best smiths I’ve come across, bar one who has a forge in Devon who I assume does it like Dad did, taper the eye of a froe so that the handle can’t come out, like a pick axe and its handle, but Dad forced a tapered drift in to the white hot open eye from both sides which created a waisted hourglass shape on the inside of the eye. A simple tapered eye is almost certain to free the handle on every blow from the beetle. His hourglass shaped eye retained the handle fast every blow. Some of my best memories of working with Dad are when we were trying something new. Most failed and that was okay, for then we knew the idea was no good, but when we discovered a winner we were both on a high for weeks.

“Dad hadn’t any time at all for the ‘sophisticated’ nonsense many spouted about froes; much of the rubbish I’ve seen on Youtube would have had him frothing at the mouth and in serious need of a drink. He insisted that a froe was a splitting tool not a cutting tool, so it didn’t need the steel to be heat treated because it didn’t need to be sharp. He preferred a forged bevel rather than a ground one, so I always did it that way too, though I know some folk used to make them using mild steel with a ground bevel with perfectly acceptable results. I suspect the bevel would have needed fettling more often than a forged one, but I don’t know that for sure because I’ve never done it that way because forging the bevel down is a damn sight quicker than grinding all that metal off, but Dad was a perfectionist. When they were in common use, every one knew you never hit a froe with anything other than wood. Hitting one with a steel hammer was a sure fire way of eventually snapping one in half.

“Dad selt froe blades by the tens of thousands, and they were exported to every corner of the globe, so I reckoned he must have known how to make ’em right because the repeat orders kept coming in, so I made ’em the same way he did. Nowadays, given the advances in materials technology, I suppose using a heavy polymer beetle would be okay. When Alf telt me what the boys wanted the froes for I telt him the waste left over from making the shingles, for me to use as forge kindling, would do the trick for payment. I’ll take a drop of the hard stuff now, Pete, please. The rough cane rum of mine will be just fine. If there’s none behind the bar, I’d be much obliged if you’d fetch a case, or even two, up for us to taste.”

“I’m on it, Simon. You’ve only three cases left, so you may want to be sorting out a further supply?”

“Jesus, Pete! you should have let me know a few months ago. Luckily for you I won’t hold it against you because my friend Adio, who lives on his boat which earns his living, is leaving Kingston for Silloth next month. I’ll have him bring us a decent cargo if some of you want to chip in. His family don’t know, but he’s coming this way to propose to Alerica his second cousin. She lives with family in Hawick, and I know there’s absolutely no possibility she’ll say no. They’ve been in love for years, but her parents don’t approve of Adio because he has a rather haphazard lifestyle. Now he’s worth a lot of money, and they are both old enough to tell her parents to mind their own business. Alerica will be leaving with Adio and a load of non existent malt whiskey, some of which I hasten to add will end up here. To pay Adio for a full load of hostage rum,(18) which is probably several thousand bottles, I need four or five grand, preferably ten to make sure he’ll do a return run some time.

“Put me down for a grand, Simon,” was shouted by any number of the men. The only difference being how much was being pledged.

“Okay. I’ll tell him to bring as much as he feels he can get away with, Lads. Do I tell him to bring a cargo of whatever spirits he can load for us whenever he can? You have to mind there is no guarantee where it’s coming from nor what it is, but I do guarantee it will all be rare stuff and appropriately priced because the authorities will have had nothing out of it. Adio has a contempt you can’t imagine for politicians who he believes parasitise folks like us by means of taxes to fund their lifestyles.”

Stan said with heat in his voice, “Adio sounds like the kind of a man we all would like to shake hands with. It would be an honour to meet him and pay for his board and lodging at the Dragon, Simon. See if you can persuade him to stop over a weekend when he delivers. He must have a tale or two to tell well worth listening to.”

“Nay need,” said Pete. “Board and lodging for such a man are free at the Dragon.”

Sasha replied, “Fuck it to hell, Simon. Regarding cargo, tell Adio just to get what ever the stuff is here, whenever it suits his life. We’ll pay for it. Hell, I’ll pay for it upfront if necessary. I can always sell it off later as and when whoever wants to buy some. We don’t suffer from the trust issues that affect most of the world. At two quid a shot, and a shot here is at least four of the poxy, parsimonious measures served elsewhere, we’ll be able to cover whatever the cost, and we have no need to do more than that do we? Talking of which, Gustav, you need to be looking into the situation regarding setting up a Bearthwaite distillery completely registered with Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise. I know the registration process is lengthy, complex and expensive, however, if all of us put our weight and money behind you it shall be doable. Possibly the best way to proceed is to still off some high octane super pure spirit and let it down and flavour it as required. There is no need to produce just one product, perhaps you could be more successful selling a variety of end products. Once the tax is paid we could sell your produce anywhere from high class vendors and the internet to street markets in tourist centres and car boot sales. [garage sales] Who the hell cares as long as it doesn’t lose money and is providing work for locals? Eventually, Bearthwaite Blonde Blitz and her relatives, or whatever the hell we call them, will sell as long as they are tasty, especially sweetened for female palates, and we can produce it at a price folk like us are prepared to pay. There is little point in trying to produce a product at an exorbitant price that only the wealthy few can afford and then trying to convince them they want to buy it. Make it up as you go along.”

After the lengthy diversion Mason took up the original tale, “George delivered some twenty inch [500mm] diameter oak logs ready cut to length for shingles, and Alf dropped a half dozen beetles off along with the four handled froes the day after. He’d done a a good job on both having turned the lot. After a bit of practice with a froe we both reckoned it was an easy tool to use and we were producing acceptable shingles at a decent rate in no time. We used all the oak blanks which made a load more shingles than the job required. After sorting out Alice’s bakehouse roof we stacked the spares on a pallet in one of the mill’s out buildings, so they are there for next time for whoever has to do the job. All telt, it was an interesting job though it took a few of us to sort it. Mark and I were talking about that when we were up on the roof. We reckon all of us need to be thinking about how we can help each other like that, so money doesn’t leave Bearthwaite. Most of the time bits of jobs don’t get charged for here, cos it all works out in the end. Regarding the price of the wood for the shingles and the beetles George said, ‘Forget it.’ Simon charged bugger all for his time and effort, just a few bags of waste wood. Alf wasn’t interested in being paid and seeing as we all eat bread and the bakery is part of the village’s food supply system we didn’t charge anything either. Phil has his roof fettled, and Alice is going to give everybody involved free bread for a bit. Result is all is well and no outside economy took money out of us, which we reckoned was more important than owt else.”

~o~O~o~

Tommy who had the Bearthwaite Post Office with Sarah his wife said, “ I’ve a kind of similar short one, Lads. It’s only ready for telling now thanks to several other folks. It all came about because last year I saw advertised in the Cumberland News a book binding course that was being held at a bookshop in Cockermouth. I’ve always wanted to be able to do a proper job on my guide book to the Bearthwaite pack pony trail. The ones I originally selt were just photocopies of my self produced manuscript. As most know they are hand written and Sarah has done the sketches from my photographs, both hand writing and sketches done in Alfred Wainwright’s(19) style whose influence I have always acknowledged. It’s a slim volume, but I always wanted to see it in hardback the same size as Wainwright’s volumes. Trouble is it there’s only the one walk, and it would be barely worth the trouble since it would be a gey thin book, so a while back I started working out other walks round here to add to it. Most started, ended or both at the Dragon. Pete’s going to put some information behind the bar to encourage folk as is staying here to do the walks or return and do them. Alice and Phil have agreed to do a conducted tour of the mill from time to time in the late morning. Aggie will provide a breakfast and a packed lunch if required, and we’re working on incorporating that into a gentle walk breaking at Peabody’s farm in the afternoon where Alex’s missus Winifred will serve a cream tea.

“The plan is the walkers pay here at the Dragon for the entire event and we sort the money out with Gladys, Alice and Winifred whenever it’s convenient. If we can come up with enough activities, Gladys suggested offering weekend packages and even three day packages over bank holiday weekends, we reckon we have something that will attract older visitors and those with young families, especially during the better weather of summer. I’m currently in contact with the reservoir authority about the fishing with a view to putting together a fishing and accommodation package including a Saturday night in here for the men, and an evening for any lasses fishing in the best room. However, Harriet pointed out, there are many lasses as enjoy fishing who may just enjoy the tales in the tap better than being in the best side with the girls. Since we’ve nay issues concerning that we may as well advertise our ready acceptance of women in here. Harriet reckons there’s a huge recreational market with trans lasses if they are just accepted as they are. None of us here have any issues with that, so I reckon we should go for it. Cis or trans, I don’t care and I know none else here do either, so I think we should focus on the business aspect of the matter, and deal with any issues as and when they arise. What I’m saying is just do it.

“I reckon if we agree to maintain the access footpaths to the reservoir’s various pumps and other engineering equipment they’ll grant us the fishing rights in exchange. The bloke I spoke to was favourably disposed to the idea. Sam and Gee Shaw have agreed to allow campers to pitch tents on their field next to the reservoir for a nominal charge if it’s paid for at the Dragon. We could do some sort of a camping fishing deal. I’ve heard of one reservoir somewhere in the north east that does a free fishing day in return for a couple of days’ of path maintenance and the like, and because it’s a private fishery they don’t limit the catch. They have their own hatchery which is may be something we could be thinking about for the future, but I reckon the free day’s fishing in return for maintenance is something worth considering.

“At the moment, there’re not a lot of fish in the water, but that’s something the environment agency have said they’d be willing to look into for us regarding what species we could seed the reservoir with. Then it’s just a question of ringing one of the hatcheries, there’re a few in south Cumbria, and paying for the fingerlings. If anyone has any ideas for walking routes I’d be obliged to be telt of it, but even more if anyone has a workshop where they could put on a twenty minute to a half hour exhibition of whatever they do, or, better yet, allow folk to have a go that would be brilliant to be able to include in a guided tour. Some of the farmers are prepared to have special days where kiddies can feed pet lambs, calves and the like. None of it is properly organised yet, but I think there’s a bit of money to be made out of the guided tours and a fair bit more for folk putting on meals or refreshments for walkers. The pack pony trail is only suitable for adults and older teenagers, but the gentler stuff that stays down here in the valley is highly appropriate for older folks and families with young kids. Sarah and I shall write the guides and they’ll all go in the Bearthwaite Walkers’ Guide that I want to produce, but we’d appreciate any help we can have putting it all together.

“Getting back to that course. I was never prepared to pay the ridiculous money that the vanity press demanded to produce a limited edition, so I rang up and booked the course with a view to learning what was involved. It was a two day course, but I’ve no idea now what it cost. Sarah went with me on both days and said there was plenty for her to do in the town. The only other thing I knew about Cockermouth was that years ago there was an ironmongers at the top end of the town next to the Cocker bridge that selt bee keeping stuff. I don’t think the ironmongers is there any more, but I could be wrong.

“I’ve no idea what Sarah did with herself, but I do remember meeting up with her for lunch. There was a small shop across the road from the book shop that selt sandwiches, coffees and the like. They selt some pretty exotic combinations of sandwiches and baguettes. First time I’d ever come across crispy bacon and avocado in combination, but it was damned tasty.

“I’ve been making practice hardbacks for a while now. It took me a couple of months to produce one good enough for sale and the few folk who’ve bought one seem to like that they’re completely produced in Bearthwaite. Any slight imperfections are made up for by the fact that every one is signed by both of us, writer and illustrator. I wanted a book press, but I wasn’t prepared to pay for even the cheapest of book presses off Ebay, so I asked Alf if he could make me one. He asked did it have to be screw operated or could he make me a hydraulic one one using a small bottle jack. I went on line, but I couldn’t find any references to hydraulic book presses, but I did find references to screw types capable of exerting two or three tons of force. Alf had said there were many hydraulic bottle jacks that would exert at most a ton, so I could have as little or as much force as I required. Now I have a really easy to use hydraulic book press that Alf said cost less than fifteen quid for the parts, and at twenty-five quid all in I reckon it’s a snip. That’s where we’re up to. Like I said we’d appreciate any ideas and help we can get.

~o~O~o~

Alf was looking seriously disgruntled before he said, “Sorting Tommy’s press out was just about the only thing that’s gone right for me in the last month, and I had a seriously bad week last week, Lads, but like I said things had been going bad on me for three or four weeks before that. Ellen’s microwave went down and the replacement finally arrived. Only trouble was it didn’t work. So I had to return it. In order to do that without having to pay for a fifteen quid return fee I had to print off a returns label provided by Ebay. Easy, well it would have been if my printer hadn’t refused to print because the black cartridge was out of ink. So I sent for some ink cartridges, but when they arrived they were for the wrong printer and didn’t fit. I contacted the supplier who immediately admitted fault and gave me a refund. Naturally he wanted the other cartridges back which were huge and expensive ones for a full blown Hewlett Packard office printer. Problem solved you’d think, not a bloody bit of it, more damned trouble. He’d already given me the refund so I couldn’t print his label off even had I had some cartridges because I couldn’t access the order on Ebay anymore. Ebay concierge team explained to me that since the seller had given me a refund the case was closed and even they couldn’t access the order, so I ordered some cartridges elsewhere to avoid confusion and contacted the original cartridge man. I explained the situation and he telt me what to write on the parcel to get it back to him at no cost to myself. Which I did and that solved that bit of the screw up that was that week.

“In the meanwhile I copied the microwave return label that I could see on the screen by hand and wrote the number of the bar code down where it was supposed to be, stuck it on the parcel and took it to the post office. I’d done that a couple of years ago with something following the instructions Tommy had given me, and it had been delivered okay. Three days later the microwave was returned to me by Tommy who telt me Parcel Force won’t play that game any more. Trouble was I still hadn’t got a working printer and I only had five of my twenty-eight days left in which to return the microwave for a refund. I already had its replacement, but Argos still had my money for them both.

“The printer cartridges arrived and I did manage to print the return label and return the microwave in time, but I’d only had a day to spare. And before any asks why I didn’t go round and use their computer setup to access my Ebay account and print the labels off. I tried it on Tommy’s, Sasha’s and Phil’s but it didn’t work. I managed to get logged on to my Ebay account but I couldn’t print the labels. In addition that week the eight inch bandsaw tyre I’d ordered for my Draper bandsaw came and it was far too big. I did manage to to return it and get a refund, but I still haven’t managed to source a replacement. What can you do? It’s the only way to buy stuff that’s coming from far away.”

Tommy smiled and said, “It won’t happen again, Alf. Sarah ratched about online and downloaded a bit of software that if you feed in the barcode in numbers it will print out the barcode itself for you that a reader can scan in. If we’d had that then we could have printed off your barcode glued it on your label and Parcel Force could have scanned it. We’ve tested it with a Parcel Force scanner and it works.” Alf said nothing as he shrugged and reached for a bottle with which to pour himself some liquid comfort from.

~o~O~o~

“I’ve had the electronic equivalent of Alf’s screw ups,” Sasha said wryly. “All my Ebay data including passwords died. I was on their helpline at least half a dozen times. PayPal wouldn’t let me pay for stuff, so I was on their helpline six times in fourteen days of which three times were in forty-eight hours. God alone knows what was wrong, but one of the PayPal persons telt me that they had just become a separate company and were no longer part of the Ebay group. He said the separation hadn’t been without its problems, whatever that means. Anyway the problem seems to be cured now, but who knows.

“That, however, was small beer compared with the problems we’ve had with Elle’s phone. It started when she telt me she couldn’t use it because she’d run out of data and asked me if I could put some more on it. You know I’ve never had a mobile, but knowing I’d be better at working out how to do that I said I’d have a look at it for her. It didn’t take me long and I bought four giga bytes of data. I can’t remember what it cost and I wasn’t sure how much to buy, but whatever, that’s what I did. In less than forty-eight hours Elle had no data. Elle has a contract with O2, so I rang the O2 helpline and spoke to a very helpful lady in Cape Town. She reckoned that Elle who watches all kinds of stuff on her phone must have picked up some apps that run in the background and suck data. I’m still not exactly sure what an app is. I know it stands for application, but that’s not helpful. This lady spent ages talking me through every app on Elle’s phone, telling us what it did and looking it up for us if she didn’t know. We deleted a couple of dozen of them leaving the phone with only the stuff that Elle actually used. The lasa credited the phone with two giga bytes of data as a goodwill gesture.

“She also made us aware of the little fan shaped icon that meant the phone was using the router connection that I access the my internet broadband through via a Solway Communications dish on the roof. I haven’t had a British Telecom land line for years; it all goes via the dish. She said when the two little arrows icon was moving it meant the phone was using mobile data. I thought I understood what she meant at the time, but, knowing what I do now, I clearly didn’t. The two giga bytes of data had gone in less than twenty four hours. I started exploring various menus on the phone. I found out that Elle had a contract that gave her an allowance of one giga byte of data a month, and any left over would roll over to the following month, but not on to the month after that. I also discovered her average monthly usage for over two years had been point six eight giga bytes and her maximum had been one point one eight giga bytes. But the data rolled over from the month before had covered her and she’d not noticed any difference because she hadn’t run out of data.

“An other phone call to the O2 helpline in Cape Town. This time I spoke to Frau Hitler of Cape Town, an arrogant condescending bitch if ever I heard one. I tried to have her explain how a phone and user that averaged so low a usage could suddenly use six giga bytes in less than three days, a nearly one hundred fold increase. I wasn’t questioning that it had done so I merely wanted to know how that could happen, but I reckon she was too thick to appreciate that. The bottom line from her point of view was that it was all our fault and she telt me nothing that I hadn’t telt her. I was patient, God knows I was patient. It takes a lot to get me going with helpline staff. They are underpaid and it’s never their fault, so it’s unreasonable to take it out on them even if they are the only folk you can talk to. I always make it clear to them that no matter how irritated I am with events I know it’s not their fault and I am not having a go at them. Ask Elle. She’ll tell that’s true.

“In the end Frau Hitler asked if there was anything else she could help me with. I was still being polite, but that was my opportunity to tell her that I objected to the way that had been phrased because it suggested that she had already helped me, and since she had provided me with no help at all so far it was patronising in the extreme. I admit I thought ‘Gotcha bitch’ as she finally lost it screaming at me on the phone as I disconnected the call. All was being recorded of course, and she would be in a whole load of shit for that. All childishly satisfying, but totally unproductive.

“What I haven’t mentioned yet is I have been having serious problems with my broadband connection. The broadband started dropping out and losing contact a couple of months ago. The problem has been intermittent but getting worse with time. It has affected my desk top upstairs which the router sits on the top of, and my laptop downstairs. After a lot of research and some serious thinking I realised it was also affecting Elle’s mobile phone. Now three different devices all affected sounds like a router problem.

“I rang Solway Communications who promised that they would contact me within one working day. They didn’t. I rang again and was promised contact that day as a matter of urgency. It didn’t happen. I rang yet again and was yet again promised contact that day as a matter of urgency. It didn’t happen. I rang again asking what was going on and that time I was put through to an engineer who said he had been trying to contact me and we must have missed each other. I said I’d been near the telephone all the time which was an answerphone. That was when things began to clear. A bit. He said he’d been emailing me. I told him he hadn’t got my email address. He quoted a long defunct BT(20) email address. I telt him it was because of the problems with BT that I had terminated my contract with them and switched to Solway Communications ten or twelve years ago. He said he’d be round the following day early on.

“He was, at ten to eight. He went up on the roof and checked the dish. It was fine. He came in and checked the router which he said was receiving the signal okay from the dish, but it was an old model and possibly its wifi capability was erratic. He installed a brand new up to date router. He speculated that one of my trees was possibly causing a problem because the branch concerned in a strong wind could possibly interfere with the line of sight required by the dish to the tower it took its signal from. As soon as I can I’ll lop the branch. Finally I reckoned I knew what was going on. Elle had not been using just point six eight giga bytes a month. That was just the amount of contract mobile data she’d used. Most of her usage occurs in the house where her phone has wifi access to my router which has an unlimited data allowance and she’d been using probably a hundred times as much in total as her contracted mobile data, but we weren’t aware of that, and her phone doesn’t record it. When the old router dropped out her phone switched to using her contracted mobile data which she used in no time at all. The nightmare is she wants a new phone and God alone knows what grief that is going to give me.

“However all that pales into insignificance along side my crusher refusing to start. Even after charging both of its batteries’, it’s a twenty-four volt system, it wouldn’t give a flicker. The hold down solenoid that allows fuel through has been playing up for a while. I’ve been manually holding it open with a piece of wire, but now not a flicker. I presume the box of electric tricks has given up, so on Alf’s advice I’ve sent for an auto-electrician to pay a visit.”

~o~O~o~

Liam said, “Buying a new new phone isn’t too bad, Sasha. It’s everything that goes with it. Because we hardly go anywhere these days when we have to go to Carlisle or any other big town Rhona and I try to pack every thing we need to do into one trip. We needed to visit the opticians for sight tests and new glasses, the solicitor to update our wills, and to buy a phone from the O2 shop and whilst we were at it we planned on a big supermarket shop and to sort out Rhona’s jewellery and ears. Since the opticians, the solicitors and the O2 phone shop are all in Whiteport we decided we’d shop at Asda there. We knew it would be a nightmare of a day, not least because parking there is so difficult. You all know what the roads are like between here and Whiteport. I drove forty miles down nightmare country roads averaging twenty-five miles an hour. I felt like I’d done a day’s work before I got there. We arrived early, so Rhona decided to see about jewellers to get a new chain for her pendant and get the little ring on it mended. It needed soldering. Jewellers call them jump rings.

“However, the first stop was Greggs for a steak bake(21) for me. Then we trailed round for an hour and a quarter to see about getting Rhona’s ears re-pierced because the holes had healed, made up they call it. Wouldn’t you know it, we tried eight or so jewellers and places that advertised ear piercing, two of them major high street chains and no luck. A tiny little place that selt all kinds of tat that was the first hit up the night before when I googled ‘ear piercing in Whiteport’ sorted her out with two pairs of suitable earrings and the lass who looked to be in her early twenties managed to fit one pair without having to re-pierce Rhona’s ears. She said they hadn’t made up it was just they were tight from lack of use. Problem solved for twenty-eight quid to keep Rhona happy. I reckon that to be cheap. Next a different Greggs for a steak bake apiece and a tea for me that Rhona had a sip of. She’s not too keen on drinking anything away from home because the ladies’ lavatory facilities are usually pretty grim.

“Then it was time to move the truck for the first time because you can only park for an hour if you want to park anywhere near Sterling Road, the main shopping street in Whiteport, and there is no easy long stay parking close enough for Rhona to walk from. Next the opticians for both of us. I wanted new lenses with a bit more power as reading small writing had become more difficult. The type of lenses I prefer have a bigger than usual field of view for close work and reading. They have to be specially ordered, and are expensive, round three hundred quid [$400] for a pair of lenses. The frames are on top of that. Rhona wanted a new pair of specs but with the same kind of lenses I use which she hadn’t had before. The lass downstairs said Rhona’s appointment was before mine. I telt her Rhona needed a sit down to rest from walking, so we’d switch appointments. She was fine about that, and telt us our appointments were in the examination rooms upstairs. As I went upstairs I was thinking that Rhona was going to need a rest halfway. Now as most of you know Rhona is poor on her pins,(22) and the stairs up to those examination rooms are steep and long. A standard house stair has fifteen risers. Those had thirty-two risers with a quarter landing a third of the way up.

“Stroppy Mare behind the upstairs reception desk started riving into(23) me about switching appointments demanding to know where Mrs McKenzie was. She obviously went to the same training camp as Sasha’s Frau Hitler. I telt her, ‘Having a sit down downstairs so she doesn’t collapse and blow her heart up. I hope when you’re half her age, which from the look of you won’t be for a good few years yet, you have a bit more consideration for older folk. We decided to swap appointments, and I’m not asking for your permission. If you don’t like it we’ll use a different optician. Last time I was in here I spent nearly a grand [£1000, $1350], this time it’ll probably be even more. Your call, Lady.’ To a background of sniggers from her colleagues she apologised and backed off.

“I had the initial check ups done by a technician, that included the air puff test for glaucoma,(24) and I waited for the optician to do the eye test. Whilst waiting, I went downstairs to help Rhona up the stairs. Once we were up, Stroppy Mare reared up again implying we were making problems for ourselves. She telt Rhona, ‘You should have rung for a downstairs examination room.’ Rhona replied, ‘I gather you are the Stroppy Mare my old man telt me about. The one intent on driving customers away. We came forty miles for this appointment. I don’t need to travel that far to be abused by a bit of a kid like you.’ I’d say the lass was early thirties, but Rhona with it on her(25) has to be seen to be believed. ‘Now we’re here we’ll see it through, but I’m thinking next time we’ll try somewhere else. Had anyone made me aware that a downstairs examination room was available I should have requested it, and just for your information I’m psychotic not psychic.’ Again to a background of sniggers Stroppy Mare apologised and backed off.

“While Rhona was having the initial check ups done I went to move the truck again, and returned to have my main eye test done by a wee Asian lass wearing a hood. I’m more than willing to admit I don’t like Muslims, nor indeed any other folk, bringing their culture to Britain, but as long as they don’t try to stuff it down my face and demand changes to my culture I’ll accept their options. She politely telt me I’ve now got the beings of a cataract on my left eye which is the good one, but with my new prescription I’ve got twenty-twenty vision. She reckoned it could be a long time before the cataract became a problem, but it may only be five years due to my diabetes.

“After some questions she became concerned that because I have diabetes treated with insulin I didn’t take enough care of myself in general and of my eyes in particular. She was amazed that I don’t see a diabetes consultant. That tells you she’s not been in Cumbria long because the area health authority hasn’t had a diabetes consultant of its own for over twenty-five years I know of, it has just borrowed them from all over the country and Scotland too whenever it could get one. That I also I forget to have the eye screening retinopathy tests as well as forgetting to have my annual general check up with my GP(26) completely perplexed her. She asked for permission to email my GP to get me enrolled on the retinopathy screening program and to have regular check ups. I telt that was fine, but because I am what I am it didn’t necessarily mean I would do anything about it, and that chances were in a couple of year’s time when she had moved on some other optician would be singing me the same song. I left a very puzzled young woman behind me.

“When I was talking to the technician who was taking the necessary details and going to order my new lenses and arrange for them to be fitted in my existing frames because it turned out that was cheaper than a new frame – if only I’d known – I realised that Rhona was back downstairs with me. I’d been intending to go up to help her down. She telt me it was much harder coming downstairs than going up, and some one had carried her stick down for her, so she could hold the bannister rail with both hands, which she reckoned was the best way to go about it.

“My technician was a trainee and he readily admitted he was sure the lenses I wanted were on the computer system somewhere, but never having had any dealings with them before he couldn’t find them. He apologised and said he’d fetch someone who would be able to do so. I telt him I’d prefer that he was up front about it than that he waste our time. The older woman whom he fetched found them straight away and telt him why he’d failed to find them before. I didn’t reckon it was his fault as the system was completely counter intuitive and my lenses weren’t with the others. In short he was using a poxy computer system. When he wanted to discuss paying I telt him that I’d pay for Rhona’s and mine together. He was okay about that, but said my glasses, because of the lenses, could possibly take four weeks to arrive, but Rhona’s would probably be only a fortnight. I telt him she wanted the same type of lenses as I had. He said it would best to assume it would take a month for both, but he’d text us when both were in for fitting and collection.

“By that time I had to leave to move the truck again. Fortunately this time I managed to park close to the opticians, easy enough for Rhona to walk to. I’d parked right outside Greggs and the smell coming from the shop was hard to ignore, but I resisted the lure of another steak bake. When I returned Rhona was still being seen, apparently she’d needed extra tests for peripheral vision which was done downstairs. When she came out she telt me she had the beginnings of cataracts on both eyes. Typical! She just had to go one better. Anyway after selecting a new pair of specs and making sure she had ordered the same type of varifocal lenses I had we left the opticians knackered. The opticians was cheaper than I expected, a mere snip at just less than eight hundred quid [£800, $1000] and that was just the specs. Both of us being over sixty the eye tests were free. God knows how much they are if you have to pay for them.

“Off we set for the appointment at the solicitors’ three-quarters of an hour late. Fortunately the solicitor we were discussing the change to our wills with knew about the opticians appointment and expected us to be late. The directions I’d been given took me to a chartered accountants, so I had to take the truck off their parking. I got lucky and managed to park two hundred metres [200 yards] down the road outside the solicitors’ office on double yellow lines(27) that were just about obliterated by time and vehicles wearing them away, probably by parking on them. Like I said parking in Whiteport is a nightmare, so folk break the rules all the time. The solicitors’ receptionist asked me who we were there to see, but I couldn’t remember. The third name she suggested sounded familiar, and for once I made a good guess. She was a pleasant and helpful wee thing in her middle thirties who made the appointment quick and relatively painless, but they haven’t presented their bill yet, so maybe it’s a little early to say painless and more appropriate just to settle for quick.

“Our next stop was back into the town centre for a visit to the O2 phone shop. I parked again on Stirling Road. As before I went into Greggs, but I lived dangerously this time and tried a chicken bake. I’d been considering trying one for a decade or so. The verdict was it was innocuous but tasteless, so maybe I’ll try a corned beef bake in ten or so years; if I’m still above ground that is. I have no intention of ever trying a vegetarian bake and even less of trying a vegan bake. Now the O2 phone shop was fun. The plan was I was going to have Rhona’s old phone, so I could accept text message code numbers from PayPal and the like. I had no intention of using it to text anyone. I don’t do texting, and in any case I have no one to text since I have no friends or relatives I have any intention of communicating with. I had no intention of using it for anything else. I have a laptop which I use for internet usage, and, like Sasha, I have a Solway Communications dish for broadband and my ‘landline’ which I use for phone calls. Rhona was going to buy a new phone with a new number and transfer her contact list, photos, and video clips from her old phone to her new phone.

“The lass in the O2 shop was nice and during the transactions we discussed all sorts whilst waiting for phone things to happen. She asked what I did, and I said I was a retired mathematician. The usual conversation ensued. She said that she was no good at maths but her daughter loved it. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she wasn’t talking about mathematics but arithmetic and that she, like nearly all folk who were not mathematicians, had no idea what mathematics was. I admitted a lot of what she was talking about concerning phones went right over my head, and that though I was not stupid I had no interest in anything O2, nor any other mobile service, had to offer. I made her explain in sufficient detail what she was talking about to enable me to understand what was going on. Rhona when asked said, ‘My husband is the one you have to convince. If you can’t, and he says, ‘Let’s go and try somewhere else, Love’, that’s what I’ll do. You won’t be able to con or fast talk him into anything he is not completely happy with, and he won’t be happy with anything he doesn’t completely understand. It’s why I keep him. You have to explain well enough to ensure he understands entirely what you are talking about. Trust me, though he has no understanding of, nor use for mobile phones, he is incredibly intelligent, and if you fail to explain well enough to convince him I’ll buy a phone somewhere else.’

“After a lot of reëxplanations I was happy at what she proposed and why. She’d managed to match our requirements with a customised deal that I was prepared to pay for. She kept asking Rhona, ‘Are you happy with that Mrs. McKenzie?’ Rhona kept asking me, ‘Am I happy with that, Love?’ It took a while for the penny to drop(28) with the lass, but eventually she realised Rhona was telling me what she wanted, I was interpreting that in terms of what O2 could deliver and I was making the decisions as to what Rhona would accept. Then we did the same with the phone I was going to be taking over. The lass had difficulty understanding and accepting that I only wanted a phone to be able to deal with folk who wouldn’t do business any other way and that I wasn’t interested in it for anything else. Part of the routine she went through asked me if we had enough money to fund the contract. I was irritated by the repetition, so replied, ‘That is less a month than I usually spend on whisky in a day.’ Her forty year old, I worked his age out a little later, colleague standing at her side had a wry smile on his face. Rhona asked him, ‘I take it you like dram(29) then?’ There then ensued a conversation concerning whisky, Scotland and his visits to various distilleries. The lass was amazed and said, “I’ve worked with him for I don’t know how many years and I never knew that about him.’ The lass and I reached accord, she printed off the contracts for me to read, I read the relevant sections that applied to us and electronically signed on behalf of Rhona and myself. She then asked her colleague, ‘Graeme, will you do the transfer please?’

“Now that was more than interesting. Rhona immediately asked, ‘Graeme? Is that spelt with an h?’ He replied, ‘No. It’s Graeme.’ He spelt his name out. Rhona said, ‘Now that’s interesting because that’s my husband’s name. It’s what his family call him, and I met him because I was a friend of one of his sisters. He usually goes by his first name which is William, so everyone calls him Liam.’ The lass looked puzzled, so I explained, ‘In England use names are usually from the first part of a name, so William is often called Will, Bill or one of their many variants, but in Celtic cultures like Scotland or Ireland the use name is more usually from the back of the name which is why many Celtic Williams are called Liam. Murray become Ray, Alasdair uses Dair, Edwins are called Win rather than Ed or Eddy, and Torquil has Quil or Quilla though in jest some younger boys use Kill or Killer, but that usually stops when they grow up. It’s the same with girls’ names. My sister Morag has been called Rags all her life, Bonelles get called Elle or Ella, Charlottes become Lottie or Lotta, and Brichtredes are often known as Treedie. Some times there is no obvious connection between a use name and the name it is associated with especially in Welsh culture. Evan has Yanto as a use name and Dafydd uses Taffy. And once you start using the Celtic languages the situation becomes even more complex.’ Graeme nodded in agreement.

Graeme asked Rhona exactly what it was she wished transferred over, and went through her phone’s list of stuff, deleting what she didn’t want copied over. When that was complete he read what was left seeking agreement and other than one app which he then deleted it was in accordance with Rhona’s requirements. Then it was just a question of waiting till the transfer took place which was probably about half an hour. In the mean time we chatted. Some how we got back to the subject of mathematics, and I said I’d taught for ten years in the town at Whiteport Academy. It turned out that as Graeme left the academy in the July I’d started teaching there in the September, so we both knew a lot of the same staff and pupils there. That’s how I knew he was forty. We also seemed to have liked the same folk, and disliked the same folk too. Rhona asked if he wore the kilts and telt him that I used to teach wearing the kilts. He did and said his was a hunting McDougall. There then followed an extensive Celtic conversation of current events and nostalgia too. We talked concerning the kilts, my granny and her three sisters were all kilt makers, the beauty of our native land, distillery visits, and the merits and demerits of watering whisky. We discussed adding a splash of peat water to cask strength spirit to drop the cloudiness out of it. When we left after the data transfer on the phone was complete, I’d no idea the process took so long, I shook hands and said ‘Thank you for your help, Graeme.’ He replied, ‘It was a pleasure, Graeme.’ It had been a well spent hour and a quarter.

“Next was Asda. First I filled up with diesel at the Asda fuel station. Nearly eighty quid [$100 US] for half a tank. Bugger me haven’t prices gone up, despite the international barrel price of crude staying constant. God love our bloody government. Then we went into Asda and had steak pie, chips, peas and gravy with a coffee and a tea; we were starving. It was okay given our desperation, but that was all it was at twelve quid [$16] for two microwave thawed and heated meals on seriously small plates. The plates matched the cutlery which looked like it was designed for young kids to eat with, but you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.

“Then we commenced battle versus the shopping list. We managed to buy all we had on the list, plus of course a few extras mostly in the spirits section which was nearest to the cafeteria. We were accosted by a woman in the beers, wines and spirits section who had clearly no need of any more liquor. She had long, black, dyed hair and looked like Cruella Deville but with neither the beauty nor the charm. She looked to be in her early forties but was probably in her twenties possibly even a late teenager. It happens, and it happens a lot round there. Rhona said if she’d been on a bus the woman would surely have sat next to her.(30) Though the woman didn’t claim to know me she seemed over familiar. I’m used to being approached by folk whom I have taught in the past, and of the many who approach me with my name, some I remember, but many I don’t.

James the man in his middle thirties who said, ‘Mister Mac, how are you doing?’ I knew close to twenty years ago who when he spoke to me said he’d been working at Asda for ten years I did remember even though I taught his brother not him. Funny thing was that I bumped into David his brother three years before, on our previous visit to the opticians.

“I know Whiteport is not the wealthiest of communities, but the crowd of vultures hovering round the poor, terrified looking bloke in his early twenties putting reduced stickers on some of the near sell by date stuff looked like they were getting ready for war. I saw one of the harpies an hour later pushing a trolley containing four dozen eggs with reduced price stickers on them, some ready meals and six cases of cheap Asda own brand lager. Each case contained a dozen cans. Why is it I asked myself that folk like that are always obese, ugly, covered in tattoos and carrying more metal in the form of body piercings than there is in a scrap yard? Poor diet, poor genes and too much inbreeding came to mind, but I didn’t really want to know. At the checkout, Rhona went for a sit down after I’d put everything on the conveyor belt leaving me to stack stuff in our two trolleys.

“I was puzzled by the five pound bag of potatoes that obviously she must have put in a trolley, since we’d grown at least a quarter of a ton [250Kg, 560 pounds] this year. I was even more puzzled since they were green, and hence clearly not of the best eating quality. I decided to say nothing about it, but tis said that the ways to hell are paved with good intentions, and my resolution failed. When I asked about the potatoes Rhona said, ‘I didn’t buy any potatoes.’ ‘So what are these?’ I asked pulling the bag from the trolley. ‘Oh’ said my beloved, ‘I thought they were pears.’ Now you know why she needed new glasses. We were both disappointed by the poor variety of goods available, even given the supply problems all shops were facing, and decided when we went to collect our new spectacles we would go to Tesco.

“When we arrived home, first we fed the cats, lit the fire and had a drink, and I don’t mean coffee. We’d prepared a meal of Pea soup and garlic bread for when we returned. However, we were not up to eating so much as drinking after putting all the shopping away. Sitting down in front of a warm and relaxing, open fire with a drink and a purring cat on your knee decidedly influences your decisions, and an early night was a mutually decided excellent option to take.

“However, the following day, things did get worse and better. I looked for gold jump rings on Ebay and found a gold plated keyring style version that would do the trick for Rhona’s pendant. It cost two and a half quid bar the penny [£2.49, $3.00] that’s for five hundred of them. Anyone want a five mil [¼ inch] jump ring or even four hundred and ninety-nine of them? I’ll give you a decent price. Then the following day, I got the letter from the opticians saying they’ve snapped my old frame, so I had to either take my other frame in for glazing or select a new frame. Either way I had to go back to Whiteport. I went for a new frame, the difference in price is next to nothing. Having a cheap new frame glazed is actually cheaper than having new lenses put in an old frame. There was no way I was handing over my only other pair of specs that I could see through. Can you just go in and hand over an old frame or select a new one? You have to be joking. You need an appointment for either option. Four days minimum waiting. I’ve said it before and I’ll doubtless say it again, but it is good to know things are returning to normal, completely screwed up.

“The day came for the appointment at the opticians when I was going to select a new frame. A one o’clock appointment and we were a quarter of an hour early. We were going to risk a corned beef bake apiece from Greggs, but fate decreed it was not to be. The queue moved so slowly we left before we were anywhere near the front. I wanted a pair of glasses that would take a big lens because I find them easier to use; I don’t have to turn my head as much. I like blue frames and they have to be solid plastic with no nose pads or separate bit over the ears that I can break because if there are I will break them for sure. I hadn’t managed to find anything in twenty minutes when the lass came over to help. I telt her what I wanted, and she handed me a pair. Without trying them I said, ‘I don’t like them.’ Rhona said, ‘You’ve got to buy a pair, so what’s wrong with them?’ My reply to that was, ‘I can buy a pair for nineteen pounds I don’t like, so why would I spend seventy nine pounds on a pair I don’t like?’ The lass handed me another pair to look at. Blue, solid plastic, big lenses. Without taking them off her, I said, ‘I don’t particularly like them, but they’ll do.’ Rhona sighed, but said to the lass, ‘He’s made his mind up, and he’ll not change it now.’ The pair I’d said would do were ninety-nine quid.

“So we went for me to have my frames centred on my eyes and the distance between the centres of my pupils measured. That was a mere five minutes of a job. Then I said, ‘Now we come to the difficult part, arguing about the price. The lass messed about with her calculator and said, ‘You owe us fifty pounds.’[$70] ‘Not on your life,’ said I. ‘You break my frames which I appreciate can happen, but want to charge me fifty quid for you doing it. I’ll take my prescription and that of my wife to Vision Express first. Your letter said you had and I quote snapped my frame and said I had to pay a contribution to the cost of a new frame. That’s reasonable. Fifty quid is more than a contribution it’s more than the cost of many of your new frames, and as such is not reasonable. When the young man I spoke to a few days ago about my frames asked if I wanted new frames or my old ones reglazing I said, ‘Throw some numbers at me in terms of prices.’ He telt me based on a middle priced new pair at a hundred and twenty-nine quid,[$172] I didn’t think that to be a middle price but I let it slide, reglazing my old pair was fourteen quid[$20] cheaper than than a new pair, so I said reglaze these. I’m not certain what the price situation is, but I do know your numbers don’t stack up.’ She went for her Supervisor.

“I reiterated what I had said and lo and behold, after some verbal legerdemain about no special deals being available on reglazing your own frames, but new ones had all sorts of special prices available, none of which I believed, she said they owed me fifteen quid[$20] and they put it back on my credit card immediately. Tell you, Lads, it always pays to argue. It was worth sixty-five quid[$90] to me.”

There was a murmur of agreement with that, and Alf said, “They only ever tell you anything to your advantage when you push them, and they could be any bugger. It’s how everyone does business these days. What happened after that, Liam?”

“We went to Tesco, and had an all day breakfast with coffee. Same deal as Asda, small plates, small cutlery and marginally acceptable food. Only difference was the price. It was eighteen quid.[$24] All edible except the hash browns which were minging,(31) though I ate mine and Rhona’s too. I had a plate of chips with mine to bring the calorie, cholesterol and grease counts up to acceptable. You know how it is once you start ageing, you’re fine when you leave the house and then it comes on you. A visit to a lavatory is required. Tesco’s lavatories are clean, don’t stink, the water is hot enough and the hot air blowers dry your hands in no time, but they were lacking in a couple of respects. Soap was noticeable by its absence – the liquid soap dispensers were all empty – but worse than that was the lavatory paper was bugger all wider than a bus ticket.[25mm, 1 inch, obviously a serious exaggeration] That means given no soap extreme care needs to be exercised in the act of wiping. Anyway after having exercised extreme care and with washed and dried hands I returned to the act of shopping.

“Rhona pointed out some truly spectacular savings if only one had a Tesco club card. I had a moment of enlightenment at that point and immediately commenced a deep search of the darkest recesses of my wallet where I found a cracked Tesco club card I had not used since living near a Tesco store which was at least twenty-five years ago. Rhona asked a Tesco uniformed lass if there was an expiry date on club cards and was telt no. According to the till receipt the card had saved me fifty-five quid,[$75] but as I said to Rhona, ‘All the stuff with the deals on was over priced to start with.’ Not all is what it seems. The best part of the day was the barely damaged pheasant I picked up off the road on the way home. But another day was completely wasted because we arrived home in the gloam(32) and by the time we’d put the shopping away it was no longer gloaming it was pitch black outside.”

~o~O~o~

Dave said, “This is all a bit depressingly heavy, Lads. When I’ve a fresh pint and a drop something to strip the hairs off my chest I’ll tell a one that’ll lighten the tone a bit. Has anyone got anything truly toxic left? Or are we down to drinking something depressingly legal?”

Sasha said soothingly, “There’s no need to worry, Dave. I’ve got a few cases of home distilled Żubrówka bison grass vodka.(33) That’s good enough to satisfy even the worst of us on a truly cataclysmic day. This stuff is the real deal, not the modern commercial stuff made to satisfy the US FDA who banned the real stuff in nineteen seventy-eight because they said it contains blood thinners called coumarins that they considered dangerous to health, nor is it the emasculated legal European version. The proper stuff has been drunk for going on eight hundred years without any buggering about with it at all, and it’s a bloody sight safer than some of the chemic distilled in the back woods of the States and even more so than some of the stuff sold during the days of prohibition. They had mad and blind folk locked up in asylums for decades after prohibition ended due to the poisons they’d been drinking.”

“Yeah, but what is it, Sasha?” asked a middle thirties looking man who had only recently become a regular Saturday night attendee.

“The commercially available stuff in the US is a vodka distilled from rye and flavoured. It’s said to taste like the real thing and has a blade of the grass in every bottle as a sop to authenticity. It was made to sell in to the US and was only made legal there in two thousand and eleven. The blueish green grass is found in the woods of Poland on the Belarus border and it gets its name because it’s found where the bison that are a protected and endangered population are to be found. The European commercial stuff has a limit of ten milligrams per litre of the coumarins. The real stuff is made on farms and by woodsmen and obviously has no limit on coumarin content. The neutral vodka is poured and pressed through the grass to extract the flavour and it has a greenish tint to it. It is hard to get hold of unless you have contacts because it’s only selt to trusted customers. The base vodka is produced from various sources according to the producers resources and their product too has a blade of the grass in every bottle. I don’t reckon the US stuff is remotely similar in taste to the proper stuff and the European legit stuff is a poor imitation, but that’s just my opinion. If you want to try a glass, Pauli, as usual throw a couple of quid in the kids Christmas party box.”

Stan disappeared and came back with a case of six bottles, and the party box was passed around whilst pints were pulled and corks pulled to fill spirits glasses. Since no tax of any kind had ever been paid on it a couple of quid’s worth of donation provided a very healthy slug of Żubrówka. “Okay, Dave, have at it,” Pete said.

“Some time after the war, late forties or early fifties I’d guess, there was a touring troupe of entertainers that worked their way around the towns of northern England and southern Scotland. It was the usual, jugglers, puppeteers, pretty girls dancing, singers, mostly typical family entertainment. They were more than welcome everywhere they went to a population that had just come out of a major war and had little money. The austerity folk lived with here was worse than it had been during the war. I’d remind you that Britain still had food rationing till some where in nineteen fifty-four and was the last country to end rationing. This tale revolves about a particular performer who was a stunningly gifted ventriloquist. He mesmerised children particularly since he was also a gifted mimic and could talk just like their mothers, fathers and grandparents after listening to them speak just a couple of sentences. He particularly entertained adults with his parodies of politicians of the day. What astonished all was his ability to make it seem as if the animals at the livestock fairs and sales were talking. He held lively debates between some of the animals imbuing them with anthropomorphic characteristics. Particularly popular were discussions between dogs on who to bite next and why.

“At the Penrith summer festival where there was a large animal auction as well as the usual entertainments he’d performed a spirited discussion amongst several pigs as to who would make the largest hams, the most sausages and the tastiest bacon. Another such discussion took place between two bulls as to the attractiveness of the cows in their vicinity and the relative sizes of their udders. It was vastly amusing to the men, brought a blush to many a maiden’s cheeks and went completely over the heads of the children present. It was when he moved on to the pen of sheep that the serious disturbance occurred. The sheep were straight off the fells and their shepherd who all knew spent most of the year on the tops with the flock was with them. Before the performer had said a word, the shepherd in a loud voice proclaimed, “You don’t want to believe a word that comes out of the the mouths of those yows.(34) They’re all bloody liars.”

It took a few seconds for the penny to drop with a significant part of the audience when the uproarious laughter took over. Sasha noticed that neither Gladys nor Harriet were behind the bar any more.

~o~O~o~

With glasses topped up and bottles of Żubrówka passing round with the charity box most were looking around to see if any was going to continue. With nearly an hour to go before supper it would be disappointing if there were no further tales. Eric looked about and said, “I’ve a wee one, Lads. Not much of a tale, but it amused me. The grandkids had been harassing Shauna to make them some jelly to go with ice cream, but she hadn’t got any of the stuff she usually uses which is like a block of concentrated jelly maybe three-quarters of an inch thick and kind of divided up into twelve one inch squares like a bar of chocolate is. What she did have was some red jelly crystals that purported to be strawberry flavoured. She’d got it for free when she’d bought something else, you know how they stick a little sachet of stuff to other things as a promotion. I don’t know how long it had been in the cupboard, but it was at least ten years. She’d never used crystals before, and didn’t particularly want to, but the rain was hammering it down and she wasn’t up for going out in it to the shop to get what she normally uses. Following the instructions, she mixed it with the appropriate amount of boiling water in her trifle bowl and stirred it for the specified two minutes till the crystals dissolved. Foolproof you’d think. Well it sure fooled us and the kids too. The top three inches of the jelly was pale and weak on taste, but the bottom quarter of an inch was vulcanised to the bowl. I reckoned the crystals had separated out at the bottom and set like cement. The kids ate the soft stuff and I put the bowl complete with the vulcanisate and a bit of water in the microwave to melt and mix, stuck it in the fridge with regular mixing and the kids ate it the day after. I reckon they’ll eat owt as long as there’s ice cream with it.”

After the agreement and laughter had faded Pete looked around and seeing Aesir, a visitor from Finland looking like he had something say he asked, “Aesir Lad, you look like you have a tale to tell. Last week’s contribution was sound, so have at it if you want.”

“I have just a small one that amused me when I was a young man. As I said last week I am mixed Swedish and Scottish and used to stop over here and work with my Morfar, my mother’s father, when I was not at school, and even when I was at university I came over during my holidays. Morfar was a builder. This relates back to when I was in my late teens because I had a driving license. It was at the time when the UK was trying to change from Imperial units to metric units. Morfar sent me to the builders’ shop in his ford transit truck for some three-quarter inch plywood to surround concrete. My apologies, but I don’t know the proper words.’

Alf said, ‘You went to the builders’ merchants for some shuttering ply. Yes?”

“Yes. Thank you. I really only understood metric measurements, but I asked for what Morfar had specified. The young man in the place who was probably the same age as myself was very condescending as looking down his nose at me he said, ‘We only sell materials in metric measurements now. Plywood is sold twelve, eighteen or twenty-five millimetres thick.’ I rapidly worked out eighteen millimetres was very close to three-quarters of an inch, so I asked what sizes the eighteen millimetre sheets were sold in. It was a while before I stopped laughing at the patronising fool on the other side of the counter when he said without a blink, ‘eight by four’, which I explained equally condescendingly should really be twenty-four hundred by twelve hundred millimetres. Morfar and his men were still laughing from time to time about it till I went home a few weeks later.”

The old men thought that to be absolutely hilarious and as Stan said, “The world is full of the ridiculous and even fuller of fools, but it becomes truly farcical when the two meet. Has anyone got another short one to take us up to supper time lads? Anything at all?”

Aesir nervously said, “I can tell a short one, but I am not sure it is appropriate. It is of a medical nature.”

“There been Saturdays where all the tales have been medical, and some pretty grim, Lad, so don’t let that stop you. Someone get the lad another pint and top his chemic glass up too, Stan.”

“I’m on it, Pete. Whenever you’re ready, Aesir, off you go.”

“I’d have been twelve or thirteen, of an age where spots due to puberty were erupting on a daily basis.” Alf nodded to Stan who smiled at Alf’s recognition of Aesir’s command of English. “I had one on my neck that seemed to be different from the rest. Bigger and much more painful. Within days it was huge and excruciatingly painful. I was as usual when in Scotland working with Morfar. The spot was just below my shirt collar which constantly chafed it which was even more painful. In the late afternoon Morfar noticed it. I’d said nothing about it till then. I couldn’t see it well even with two mirrors and I couldn’t bear to touch it. The pressure was unbearable. When Morfar saw it the string of curses that came from his mouth in two languages was truly impressive, well it impressed me.

“As soon as we finished work he took me straight to his doctor who said, ‘It’s a carbuncle, a collection of linked boils. Cover it with warm compresses as hot as you can stand and wait till it bursts to drain. That will relieve the pressure and the pain will go then. That’s all I can suggest.’ Morfar called him all sorts of names, but he wouldn’t do anything. Morfar took me to the Accident and Emergency department of the local hospital where the doctor said much the same as the first doctor. Morfar hadn’t stopped cursing for going on an hour at that point. Before going home he called at a pharmacy for some stuff called phisohex(35) which he said would help sort me out. When we got home he said, ‘I’m going to wash all the skin around that damned thing with this, and then I’m going to do something that is not recommended that any other than medically trained persons do. I’ve done it before and it works, but we have to keep all the skin around that thing clean so as to prevent spreading the infection. If that happens it is not good, but if we leave it till it bursts naturally you’ll have the same problem and be in pain for a lot longer. I’m just going to help it get there faster to stop the pain sooner. When it bursts the pressure will go and the relief will be immediate, but there’s no saying how much pressure is in it so we’ll do it outside. Okay?’

“ ‘What are you going to do,’ I asked. ‘I’ll strop my cut throat razor and then boil it for half an hour to make sure it is sterile and then I’m going to lance it which because my razor is so sharp will put no pressure on it. Then it’s a clean up job with warm water and the stuff I got from the pharmacy.’ ”

Pete asked, “Those things can be huge, Aesir. How big was yours?”

“Morfar said it was about an inch and three-quarters [43mm] across and not quite an inch [22mm] high.”

“Christ almighty!” Alf said, “I had a much smaller one behind my knee when I was about that age too, and it was excruciating. I can’t believe those doctors wouldn’t do anything. Bastards the pair of them. What happened then? Did it hurt to have it lanced?”

“Morfar washed my entire neck with warm water and then the phisohex before drying the skin. He then dressed the entire surrounding area with a heavy gauze so that nothing that came out of it could touch my skin. We went outside and he said, ‘Stand still.’ I did and I felt nothing except an awareness that the pain had gone. He’d sliced the entire top of the carbuncle with no pressure at all. The stuff inside it had travelled a metre twenty or so. [four feet] After that he cleaned up the mess on my neck dressings before rewashing the entire area again with warm water and the phisohex before covering the Carbuncle site with dressings. He burnt the gauzes and dressings and reboiled his razor for half an hour. Then he turned the soil over where the contents of my neck had landed. Every day for over a week he rewashed and dressed my neck with new dressings and burnt the old ones, but twenty-four hours after having it lanced it I could feel it was healing. I’ve never been so grateful for anything in my entire life. I asked him how he knew what to do.”

“I was going to ask you the same question,” said Harry.

“Morfar replied, ‘On the Isles nurses are rare and doctors non-existent, so folk learn to do things for themselves, often because the alternative is pain or death. That kind of knowledge had to be passed on, though that was always strictly unofficial. Which meant if they wanted to survive they had to learn how to do things properly and in the case of my neck that meant scrupulous attention to sterility and cleanliness to prevent further infection.’ It’s true, for it is what happens in the high arctic too. You hear of appendix surgery done by all sorts of persons who are not medically qualified, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know what they are doing. There are any number of persons who know how to set and splint broken bones so they heal properly. None are qualified to do so. Too, just about every baby born till very recently was delivered by older women who were neither midwives nor nurses, they just knew what to do. The same women laid out the dead too.”

“It used to happen in these parts in years gone by too. I mind my grandparents talking about that sort of thing. I’m glad we’ve access to modern facilities in Carlisle and the bigger towns, but maybe the loss of all that knowledge is not entirely a good thing when it hits the fan.” Pete had a thoughtful look on his face as he continued, “An interesting and thought provoking tale, Aesir. Many of us can relate to it and it was entirely appropriate for this audience. It’s been an interesting selection so far, but I can hear Harriet sorting out supper for the ladies, so I suggest we deal with the glasses and clear the tables. If someone rounds up empties I’ll wash ’em. From the looks of it, Stan, we could stand another case of rare stuff up here. Fetch a couple of cases of that farm stilled, wild Armagnac of mine up will you. It’s not the tame stuff, but it’s slightly more refined than some of the other stuff we’ve been sampling tonight.

~o~O~o~

When Harriet entered to inform them supper would be served in five minutes, she saw the cleared tables and said, “Thank you, Gentlemen. Supper in five minutes. Mum’s just nursed Gloria, Dad, and has taken her to bed. She’ll probably be back down in ten or fifteen minutes, to help clear up the supper things on the other side. Don’t worry. If I let her do that she’ll be too tired to help clearing up after closing time, so it’s the best of a bad job. None of the older women will let her do too much.”

“Okay, Love. I see you’ve got it all under control, including your mum.”

Frank smiled and asked, “What’s for supper, Pet?”

“Tatie pot,(36) Uncle Frank. Uncle Vincent’s best black pudding, and skirt steak this time not mutton. I’m surprised you had to ask, cos Auntie Aggie prepared it this morning ready for Auntie Veronica to put in the oven earlier on.”

Frank laughed and said, “I’m only married to your Auntie Aggie. You don’t seriously think she tells me owt do you?”

It was to much laughter that Harriet left to reappear with a trolley on which were six enormous casserole dishes. “I’d be much obliged, Gentlemen, if you make sure there is nothing left to be dealt with in the kitchen.”

“We’ll do our best, Lass, won’t we, Simon?” There was a lot of laughter at Alf’s comment since both he and Simon were huge men with appetites to match. Twenty-five minutes later, Harriet was back collecting the empty casserole dishes and the plates, Pete was pulling pints and Sasha was pouring Armagnac.

~o~O~o~

“Okay, Sasha, what the latest on your teeth. I can see you’ve not got any, but what’s the score on the dentures?”

“When I had the bottom set out, Pete, Sammi my dentist gave me erythromycin and metronidazole to take home. I’d used erythromycin before. I telt you about that before. She reckoned the constant metallic taste in my mouth was most likely due to a vitamin deficiency. I didn’t reckon that was true then and after taking multi vitamins for a month I certainly don’t think so now, but the metallic taste is far less noticeable than it was. That other antibiotic she gave me was metronidazole which also goes by the name of Flagyl. I looked it up, internet to the rescue yet again. I’ll tell you what it said. Metronidazole has a high efficacy treating anærobic bacterial and protozoal infections. It is particularly prescribed for vaginal and dental infections. Which means the good thing is I won’t get any infection of my vagina and since I’m neither breast feeding nor pregnant I should be fine taking it. The down side is it can be seriously dodgy with alcohol. I know they tell you not to drink with anything, most of which is bullshit, but they really mean it with this stuff, and you’re an idiot if you do. It’s a classic case of too many warnings, most of which are nonsense, causing most folk to ignore them all, even the ones that they really need to take heed of. If you take too many tablets it says to head for your GP or casualty.(37) Again the list of possible contra-indications, that’s medical folks’ mumbo jumbo for side effects, Alf, is as long as your bloody arm, though unlike in days of yore they have left off ‘Death’ as your first choice.

“Did you take them, Sasha?”

“Don’t be daft, Stan. I’d have had to give up drink for ten days. That could have killed me.”

“Anyway, the bottom set have been out a while now. Initially there were a few bone splinters moving to the surface of my gums which hurt till they came free, but I think they’re all long gone now. My gums were firming up, but though I could wear my dentures for an hour or so at a time I couldn’t eat with them. I just couldn’t put enough pressure on them with out hurting my gums. I couldn’t use the front teeth to bite anything, nor the back ones to chew with. I wondered how the hell I’d ever be able to chew meat when I couldn’t crush a bloody grape. My false teeth were rocking as my gums shrank. I wondered at one point whose mouth the teeth were supposed to fit. I went to see the lass, and my teeth were a better fit after she used some of the dental equivalent of bog(38) on them, but they were still no good to eat with. In order to get my teeth to stay in I had to use a lot of dental fixative, and even the better one from Germany was awful. As the stuff warmed up in my mouth it softened, and the pressure of my teeth squeezed it out for going on half an hour. That’s the experience I hated, and the truth is I couldn’t face putting myself through it.

“I was supposed to visit my dentist for the impressions of my final set of teeth a month or so back, but my gums were still shrinking. They cost too much to have a set made that you know in advance are only going to fit for a couple of months. So I rang the surgery to defer the appointment for three months. Nothing doing, my dentist is full of arms and legs(39) and will be on maternity leave then. Okay, no big deal I thought, and I asked when she would be back. Turned out it would be in nine months. I can wait that long, women have to, all women. There’s an old expression that goes ‘A cow or a countess either way they have to wait their time and nine months is what it takes’. I even considered what do I do if she doesn’t go back to work. Childbirth has that effect on some women. Answer, get another dentist. I’m managing, and at least by then there will be no further changes to my gums. I’ll just live with it. What was not so easy to live with was Elle. She knows I don’t like having no teeth and that all the things I enjoy eating I can’t, so she was harassing me to keep trying my teeth. ‘Just try them for an hour a day, Sasha,’ she kept saying. I think I’ve finally managed to get her to understand that whether I wear them for five minutes or all day the experience with the fixative is the same, bloody awful.

“I knew I’d finally got through to her when she said, ‘I don’t get it, Sasha. None of the old folk I nursed ever used fixative and loads of them had no teeth at all.’

“She finally convinced me that when she’d said no teeth she meant literally that, and further when pressed she couldn’t recall a single person who had to use fixative. Since most of the folks in the nursing homes she worked in had to have help putting their teeth in I was convinced again. At that point I said, ‘Okay, you’ve convinced me that when I get a set that actually fit properly I won’t need fixative, so stuff the ones I’ve got. I’ll wait till I get a set that fit.’ ”

“ ‘But that’s in the middle of next year!’

“ ‘I know,’ said I, ‘but I’m a patient man.’ So that’s where I’m at. I’m not even bothering for another seven months, and I’m getting really creative in the kitchen. Somebody push me a bottle of Simon’s chemic over will you, please.”

“It’s time to get the dominoes out, Lads. Anyone for a pint? Partner me, Sasha?”

“Surely, Pete. You pull pints and I’ll let those dogs out. I’ll leave the back door open for them till I’ve drained my brain too.”(40)

“I’ll set ’em up, Lads,” volunteered Stan, “if some one will collect my pint.”

“No problem, Stan. Partner me?” asked Phil. The focus of the evening had already shifted from tales to domino strategy.

1 Kero, kerosene.
2 Aways, in this context means a long distance away.
3 Get a holt on, get hold of, acquire.
4 Nowt, nothing.
5 Owt, anything.
6 Riving, splitting, cleaving. To rive, to split, to cleave.
7 Rived, riven.
8 A froe, frow, shake axe or paling knife is a tool for riving or cleaving wood by splitting it along the grain. It is an L-shaped tool, used by hammering one edge of its blade into the end of a piece of wood in the direction of the grain with a wooden beetle or mallet, then twisting the blade in the wood by rotating the haft or handle.
9 A beetle, A mallet for driving a froe made from a piece of branch wood. Such a beetle has an integral handle and is often made on a shave horse with a drawknife rather than by turning on a lathe. Also a heavy wooden hammer used by timber framers often up to 15Kg [30 pounds]. Such a beetle has a separate handle, shaft like a sledge hammer.
10 Books, accounts.
11 Mince, a UK term for minced meat. US ground meat.
12 Gan radge, gone (with) rage, become enraged. Commonplace Cumbrian dialectal form.
13 Ratched, rummaged, sought.
14 Maker mark. A signature mark stamped, burnt or otherwise placed on an article indicating the individual crafter who had made the article. Also called a touch mark.
15 Drawknife, A wood worker’s and joiner’s tool. A knife with a handle at each end at right angles to the blade, used by drawing towards oneself over a surface.
16 Shave horse. A combination bench and clamp. A worker sits astride the bench and clamps the work piece to the bench by operating the treadle bar below with his feet. Often used to shape green wood with a drawknife.
17 Normalised state. Normalizing is a heat treatment that makes a metal more ductile and tough. It involves heating and then cooling by exposure to room temperature air. There is a lot more to it, but that is a simple explanation.
18 Hostage rum, illegal locally distilled rum. A term used amongst smugglers in the Caribbean islands.
19 Alfred Wainwright, the one name above all others who has become associated with walking in the Lake District. His seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, first published in 1955–66, has become the definitive fell walkers guidebook.
20 BT, British Telecommunications.
21 A steak bake, and many other kinds of bake exist, is a small pasty one can eat immediately. Served in a small paper bag they are popular food to eat on the move in the UK. Especially popular with working men for lunch.
22 Pins, legs.
23 Riving into, in this context means verbally abusing.
24 The ‘air puff test’ is a slang term for non-contact tonometry (NCT), a test used during an eye exam to measure the pressure inside your eye. The air puff test gives your optician an eye pressure reading known as intraocular pressure (IOP), which helps detect glaucoma.
25 With it on her, she is irate to the point of being verbally combative.
26 GP, General Practitioner, a family doctor.
27 Double yellow lines painted at the side of the road in the UK mean no parking under any circumstances.
28 Penny to drop, old term from coin operated mechanisms that did not function till the coin had dropped to the bottom, indicating thinking time. It took time to realise.
29 Dram, a Scottish term for a small drink of whisky or other spirits. The term is widely used by non Scots too.
30 ‘The looney on the bus always sits next to me’ is a UK meme that most are familiar with.
31 Minging, disgusting.
32 Gloam, dusk, as daylight is fading and dark is falling.
33 Żubrówka bison grass vodka is a distillate flavoured with a grass from the woodlands of Poland near the Belarus border that is found where the country’s endangered Bison population live. The modern ‘safer’ version is flavoured to taste like the original.
34 Yows, dialectal for ewes, female sheep.
35 Phisohex is a bacteriostatic cleansing agent. It cleanses the skin thoroughly and has bacteriostatic action against staphylococci one of which is responsible for boils.
36 Tatie pot, Cumberland tatie pot is a casserole made with mutton / lamb or beef, onions, carrot, swede / turnip, potatoes (taties) and herbs. The proportions and exact ingredients vary according to availability, but what makes it tatie pot is the addition of black pudding, a blood sausage. There are probably as many versions of it as there are persons who cook the dish.
37 Casualty, Accident and Emergency unit, ER in the states.
38 Bog, vernacular for car body filler.
39 Full of arms and legs, a vernacular expression for being pregnant. It is only used by men.
40 Drain my brain, vernacular expression for urination.