My dad wasn’t a drinker. He would have a couple of pints and once the alcohol hit home he would be singing. It was worse if there was a stage, which had the effect of drawing him to it in an almost magnetic fashion.
The other thing that happened to dad when he’d had a few drinks was that, I suppose, he became a lot braver. I’ll give you an example.
When he was in his fifties dad was working shifts in a factory at the other end of town and occasionally I would meet him on his way home in the middle of the afternoon, more often than not he would be looking around the shops, but occasionally he might have a couple of pints on the way home, One day I saw him in the street and he took me for a drink in one of the local pubs.
We got a couple of beers and sat in a quiet corner to enjoy a drink and a chat. The bar ran the length of the pub and it was crowded at the other end of the room. There were enough rowdy individuals to have gone twice the length of the entire bar but they were all at one end, three and four deep to the bar and they were very noisy and all seemed to be having a good time.
After a while, the throng parted and one of the men made his way through the gap and wandered off (as you do when you have been drinking beer by the pint) totally oblivious to what was going on around him. Dad recognised him immediately.
“Did you see that?” He said.
“What?”
“Did you see who that was?”
I took another swig of my drink and replied that I hadn’t seen anything.
“That was our Ken.”
I hadn’t taken much notice, but dad had seen my brother wander past where we were sitting and by now, he was intensively scrutinising the gathering at the bar.
“Look at that.”
I said that I couldn’t see anything unusual, but dad apparently had. He told me to keep an eye on the empty glasses that were piling up on the bar.
Sure enough, the men drank up and as each one finished drinking, he left his empty glass on the bar. The unusual thing that dad had noticed was that nobody was buying another drink.
Dad sprang to his feet and pint glass in hand he went over to the men at the bar and in a loud voice that cut through the drunken laughter he said,
“Have you all got something wrong with your hands?”
It went instantly quiet until someone asked him what he meant and dad waved the remaining finger and thumb on his left hand, something I'd never seen him do before, dad neither drew attention to his missing fingers nor hid the fact that they were not there anymore, but on this particular day he said, “I lost three fingers… but I can still reach my wallet when it’s my round.”
It went quiet again and dad continued, “You all seem to be very good at spending Ken’s money for him.”
“Ken’s our mate,” came the reply, “anyway, what’s it got to do with you, you old fool?”
“I’m Ken’s father.”
It went quiet again and then a low muttering started up when the realisation hit that today’s supply of free beer had just dried up and as if with a single thought they all walked in a disgruntled fashion out of the pub.
When Ken came back into the bar he did a classic double take, there was a bar full of empty glasses and nobody in sight but dad and me in the corner having a quiet drink together.
“All on your own are you lad,” dad piped up, “what do you want to drink?”
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