Williams, at Vrondee, chips in Les, apropos of nothing, while Geoff is getting there with Scavin, Salvin, Scalding, ‘ Scalding Farm , that’s it.’
The conversation about the route continues in this vein, me cruising along on the cushion of the pub seat, silent, listening as Tony’s imaginary school bus driver passes Dai Stephens’s place with the new bungalows and some kids called Jones, and down the back lane to Llanstefan and then right at Ceri Owens’s, who is in a bad way with cancer (‘Hell of a good bloke, Ceri Owens’), and switches back to Glasbury when the weather is bad, before turning up via the waterworks and back down over the brook, where the floods can be a bugger but the fishing is good.
Eventually the minibus reaches the school gates and that week’s crossword is finished. Someone jokes they should join Tony one morning and see the route for themselves.
For now, everyone is content exactly where they are, comfortably ensconced close to the fire, in an empty ancient pub, beer within reach, and nothing but their memories and a softly snoring publican for company.
*
I find Geoff sitting alone nursing his pint. He drinks lager, with a splash of lemonade on top. No one ribs him for the lemonade. With a smaller man there might be some ribbing. Not with Geoff, though; he’s too big a man for that.And too kind. He wouldn’t know how to give it back.
Top-up? I ask. He’s good for now, he says. He tells me to pull up a chair and asks how I’m keeping. I don’t think he really understands what a freelance journalist does, but he listens politely when I describe my week and he nods from time to time and says it sounds like I’ve got plenty of work on and that’s certainly a good thing in times like these.
I enquire after Les, who is recuperating at home after a knee operation, and from what Geoff understands he’s doing fine. Mike can’t make it tonight because he’s got something else on. He doesn’t know about Peter or Tony.
Paul wanders in and, on seeing that it’s just Geoff and me, wanders out again. The dragon is long finished. He’s on to an owl now, I believe. And then Geoff gets talking. It’s the old stone cottage with the new double-glazed windows opposite the post office in Clyro that starts him off. He remembers when the house came up on the market, back in the 1960s it would have been. He was working for Bryan Jones at the time.
‘You know Ashbrook, the garage? Well, that used to be a dairy farm.’ It was his first job. An old woman called Davis used to work there and when she died Bryan tried to persuade Geoff to buy it. ‘Well, I hadn’t got, what, two bob.’
The house ended up being sold at auction in the Crown in Hay and made £350. ‘“You want to buy that place, boy,” Bryan said to me. And I said to ’im, “Well, I haven’t got no money.” And he said, “Well, I got some money. I can lend you some, no problem, if you want to buy it.” I swear to you, as sure as I’m sat on this seat here, that’s what he said.’
I smile, occasionally interjecting on a point of clarification or just to show I’m still listening, but otherwise only too happy to sit and listen to Geoff reminiscing.
‘Where my house is now – exactly where my house is – there used to be a big rock there. Come soaring right out the ground, it did. One of the first jobs I did when I started work was I ploughed that field. With an old Fordson Major tractor, a trailer plough hitched on the back. We edged from the top end right down to the road at the bottom. And there was this rock. And we used to sit on that rock and have our bait, you know. Cor, I tell you, what a view that was.’
I stop him to ask what ‘bait’ means. Food, he tells me. ‘Bait time, grub time.’ Slab of cheese, hunk of bread, an apple maybe. None of them had flasks back then, so they’d put their tea in a bottle and wrap the bottle in newspaper to keep it warm.
Post office field, they used to call it, he
The conversation about the route continues in this vein, me cruising along on the cushion of the pub seat, silent, listening as Tony’s imaginary school bus driver passes Dai Stephens’s place with the new bungalows and some kids called Jones, and down the back lane to Llanstefan and then right at Ceri Owens’s, who is in a bad way with cancer (‘Hell of a good bloke, Ceri Owens’), and switches back to Glasbury when the weather is bad, before turning up via the waterworks and back down over the brook, where the floods can be a bugger but the fishing is good.
Eventually the minibus reaches the school gates and that week’s crossword is finished. Someone jokes they should join Tony one morning and see the route for themselves.
For now, everyone is content exactly where they are, comfortably ensconced close to the fire, in an empty ancient pub, beer within reach, and nothing but their memories and a softly snoring publican for company.
*
I find Geoff sitting alone nursing his pint. He drinks lager, with a splash of lemonade on top. No one ribs him for the lemonade. With a smaller man there might be some ribbing. Not with Geoff, though; he’s too big a man for that.And too kind. He wouldn’t know how to give it back.
Top-up? I ask. He’s good for now, he says. He tells me to pull up a chair and asks how I’m keeping. I don’t think he really understands what a freelance journalist does, but he listens politely when I describe my week and he nods from time to time and says it sounds like I’ve got plenty of work on and that’s certainly a good thing in times like these.
I enquire after Les, who is recuperating at home after a knee operation, and from what Geoff understands he’s doing fine. Mike can’t make it tonight because he’s got something else on. He doesn’t know about Peter or Tony.
Paul wanders in and, on seeing that it’s just Geoff and me, wanders out again. The dragon is long finished. He’s on to an owl now, I believe. And then Geoff gets talking. It’s the old stone cottage with the new double-glazed windows opposite the post office in Clyro that starts him off. He remembers when the house came up on the market, back in the 1960s it would have been. He was working for Bryan Jones at the time.
‘You know Ashbrook, the garage? Well, that used to be a dairy farm.’ It was his first job. An old woman called Davis used to work there and when she died Bryan tried to persuade Geoff to buy it. ‘Well, I hadn’t got, what, two bob.’
The house ended up being sold at auction in the Crown in Hay and made £350. ‘“You want to buy that place, boy,” Bryan said to me. And I said to ’im, “Well, I haven’t got no money.” And he said, “Well, I got some money. I can lend you some, no problem, if you want to buy it.” I swear to you, as sure as I’m sat on this seat here, that’s what he said.’
I smile, occasionally interjecting on a point of clarification or just to show I’m still listening, but otherwise only too happy to sit and listen to Geoff reminiscing.
‘Where my house is now – exactly where my house is – there used to be a big rock there. Come soaring right out the ground, it did. One of the first jobs I did when I started work was I ploughed that field. With an old Fordson Major tractor, a trailer plough hitched on the back. We edged from the top end right down to the road at the bottom. And there was this rock. And we used to sit on that rock and have our bait, you know. Cor, I tell you, what a view that was.’
I stop him to ask what ‘bait’ means. Food, he tells me. ‘Bait time, grub time.’ Slab of cheese, hunk of bread, an apple maybe. None of them had flasks back then, so they’d put their tea in a bottle and wrap the bottle in newspaper to keep it warm.
Post office field, they used to call it, he
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