This is the house where Chris used to live. It is a half timbered effort, dating I guess from somewhere in early 1800’s. As you can see, it is not situated in bucolic seclusion, at least not now, but rather on the edge of what used to be the middle class enclave of this once prosperous northern mill town and near a main road, although there is a pleasant little park nearby. It was, however, fortuitously situated from Chris’s point of view, because it actually adjoined the car park of a decent pub.

I am going back maybe nearly thirty years now, to when I was still a young man. Some of our younger readers may not recall, but in those days pubs, as opposed to “bars”, were numerous and quite popular. This one was perfectly adequate, if not spectacular. It was quite a busy, social place. In those days the pub attracted a decent cross section of younger and older customers, a proper mix of students, working men and women, and teachers, accountants and small town solicitors and the like, just an ordinary community where people would meet and drink, and talk to each other.

In those days, as I recall it was a pub that sold Boddingtons and Oldham Ales – I think the former owned the latter brewery – and fine golden Boddingtons beer was my choice. The landlady was a fearsome looking but kindly woman who looked like a painted dragon, a true landlady from a sea side postcard. But I well remember the home made sandwiches and local pies being handed out for free at Christmas time and so forth, when it was “Standing Room Only” at the pub.

Now as for Chris, he was something of a fixture in the pub, at least as I recall at weekend evenings. I did not know him very well, and perhaps nobody did. He was a small, reasonably dapper man, in his mid fifties or thereabouts. He had a sandy moustache, and used to always wear a jacket and tie. He looked a bit tired and had that watery eye of someone who has drunk a bit too much for a bit too long. As I understood it, he had always lived at the house with his father and mother, and latterly when they passed on, on his own.

Of an evening he would park himself on a stool at a corner of the bar at the pub. His tipple of choice was gin and tonic, and he would quietly and steadily imbibe all evening. That was in the day when no one turned a hair at smoking in pubs and public places, and he would steadily chain smoke as well. He never offended anyone, and would engage in the kind of polite, uncontroversial pleasantries and platitudes with other regulars that caused no offence. And ultimately at closing time he would wobble his way back across the car park, on his own, to his house about twenty yards away.

Looking back now with a little more wisdom and understanding than I had then, he was clearly a very shy man, perhaps yearning company but unable to break down whatever barriers held him back. I never really had a proper conversation with him, though he would always nod and smile a hello, before ordering another “G and T”.  I did not even know (and still do not) what job he did. I can only assume it was something which did not involve confrontation or leadership, perhaps a book keeper or clerk.

Now Chris didn’t always look in the best of health, as the lifestyle I have described might suggest. And indeed, perhaps inevitably, there came the day when I noticed Chris sitting at the bar, sipping his customary gin and tonic, but with his throat swathed in bandages. The years of alcohol and tobacco had taken their toll, it seemed, and Chris had cancer. Nowadays, such are the advances of medicine, perhaps he might have survived. In those days, there was no chance of treatment, and Chris was told to continue his vices for as long as he had, for there was no point giving up by that stage

And so, shortly afterwards, sadly and inevitably there came the day when Chris no longer occupied his place by at bar any more.

Other changes have taken place too. The once famous Boddingtons and Oldham Ales brands seem to have disappeared, victims of incompetent management by new fangled corporate executives, and also the pressure on pubs in general caused by the supermarkets and government taxes. The pub is still there, but the landlord seems a surly man. Perhaps that is understandable. The middle classes have fled the centre of the town in what I think can only fairly be called “white flight”. A very great deal of what used to be the middle class area round and about is now inhabited predominantly by the Asian Muslim community, and going down the pub is not really high on their agenda of a Friday night, for obvious reasons. The pub is no longer very busy, or very welcoming.

Some may say that this is a sad story. Certainly the “Health Police” would jump on it as an example of the horrors and dangers of drinking and smoking. Others may say that this is the story of a lonely man who lived a “little” life. I can see why there would be force in these points.

However, it seems to me that is not the whole story. Chris did no harm, and that is the first rule of the good doctor, as I understand it, and no mean feat in life. And as it seems to me, there is no “one-size-fits-all” pattern for the soul, or prescription for what a successful life should look like. The life which seems for one a failure may be quite the reverse for someone else. Chris doubtless found a kind of solace in his quiet evenings by the bar, and he had his life to lead, and his destiny to follow, not anyone else’s. And then it was time for Chris to call time on what may have been a lonely life, and find true peace, away from the bar.

And consider this. I have been to the funerals of “successful” men who had been noisy instruments in the great orchestra of life, but where there has been a distinct lack of atmosphere, or love.

Let me then add a postscript to this story. For Chris’ funeral took place in the local Catholic church (my church, as it happened) which is a quite large and imposing Victorian one. I went. It turned out I was not alone. You see, it seemed half the bloody town had turned out, and no one had a bad word to say about Chris. It was packed: indeed it was “Standing Room Only”, and I had to stand at the back, next to the almost inconsolable dragon landlady. I don’t think she was crying because of lost revenue, either. Others cried too. And so, perhaps it was not such a “little” life after all.

And I wish I were back there, thirty or more years ago. Would I tell Chris to put out his cigarette and order a fruit juice? No, I would buy him a large gin and tonic, and shake his hand.

Tonight I shall raise a glass to him. The toast shall be:

“To Chris! We remember you fondly! Bravo!”

Gildas the Monk

Elena ‘andcart
July 31, 2012 at 08:53

Grey. Gray. Testing, Testing. My American Spell Check doesn’t pick on
either of those. While it has a nasty habit of picking on words that I know
are right. But Google always gives you both. Not sure why. But any parent who
buys their child an Apple needs to keep an eye on this or God knows what might
happen to English English.

JunicanJuly 30, 2012 at 23:48

Just for fun……I suppose that I could be considered to be a ‘Chris’. I used
to go to the pub for a couple of hours every night until the smoking ban. Now
I only go three times a week. But I still have my favourite spot to stand and
drink by beer. I ‘exchange pleasantries’ with everyone, young and old. I
suppose that a lot of people would see me as a bit of a sad case, but nothing
could be further from the truth.

Only a comparatively few people, at the pub, know me well enough to know
what I think about while I am standing there. For example, take last
night.

I grow tobacco plants (it has become my hobby since I gave up the golf).
Last night, while standing in the pub, vaguely contemplating, a thought came
into my mind. I was thinking about the effects of the current cold, wet
weather on the plants which I am currently growing. A thought popped into my
mind.

Plants get their water from the ground along with various essential
chemical elements. The leaves get their carbon from the carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere. They ‘photosynthesise’ carbon dioxide and water, using the energy
of the sun’s light, to produce ‘biomass’ – their twigs and leaves (mostly
compounds of carbon).

A thought came into my mind in the pub last night. I wondered how important
the ambient air temperature was in these chemical transformations as compared
with the ambient temperature of the soil in which they were growing.

This afternoon, I put a thermometer into the soil two inches deep near
where my tobacco plants are growing. At 4pm, the temp of the ground was 15
degrees c. I then pushed the thermometer to a depth of four inches. At 7pm,
the temperature of the soil was……15 degrees c. I shall now wait for a couple
of contiguous hot, sunny days, and I shall then check the temperature of the
soil again at the same depths and at the same times. Would anyone like to make
a bet on what the most likely temperature of the soil is likely to be? Only
when I have done the ‘hot, sunny day tests shall I think about the
implications………. Whatever!

Many and varied have been the matters which I have contemplated while
enjoying my beer. I get my best ideas in the pub.

So rather than think of the physical presence of Chris, think of his
his pleasures – the company, his tobacco, his G & Ts, his meditations, and
hope the you too can achieve such contentment.

GildasTheMonk
July 31, 2012 at 08:23

Bravo!

Gloria Smudd
July 30, 2012 at 22:52

Dammit. Note to self: proof-read before pressing ‘Submit’. Grey, not gray.
And I should have been careful enough to type ‘and there I met my very own
Chris’ instead of ‘and I met my very own there Chris’ (which is clearly
nonsense).

GildasTheMonk
July 31, 2012 at 08:28

I always get the gray/grey thing confused too, Gloria. it is for this
reason that I keep close to hand a charming novella about colour schemes,
“Fifty Shades of Grey”, which helps me get it right. There is also a rather
charming related Twitter account, @FiftyShedsOfGrey which features tweets of
old huts and sheds.
I really need to get out more.

Anna
RaccoonJuly 31, 2012 at 08:39

Gray and grey are different spellings of the same word, and both are
used throughout the English-speaking world. But gray is more common in
American English, while grey is more common in all other major varieties
of English. (like the one and only original!)

Both spellings, which have origins in the Old English grǽg, have
existed hundreds of years. The American–British distinction did not
develop until the 19th century. As the Ngram at the bottom of this post
shows, gray became the preferred spelling in American English around 1825.

The phrase grey area/gray area, meaning an area having characteristics
of two extremes, may be spelled either way. Graybeard/greybeard, referring
to an older man with a beard, is also spelled both ways. So is gray
squirrel/grey squirrel. But greyhound—the breed of dog—is always spelled
with an e.

Gloria Smudd
July 30, 2012 at 22:47

When I was an Art Student (wouldn’t you know?) in Brighton at the beginning
of the 80s I worked in a pub and I met my very own there Chris among the other
‘reg’lars’. He was a tiny bloke with pale blue eyes with a white outer ring to
the iris, a sparse but vigilantly-trimmed moustache, wandering eyebrows and a
drinker’s nose that was all shades of green, gray and blue. His thin hair was
always brilliantined into rigid comb-rows and he always wore a tie and a
tweedy wool overcoat. I asked if I could paint his portrait and he came into
the Art College and sat patiently for me for about 5 hours in total. I still
have the painting I did of him and I must admit I only really concentrated on
his face and never finished his coat but I remember him talking about his
granddaughter who said “Eldidopter” for helicopter and I knew that he was in
his son’s life and happy that his line was continuing. I stopped working at
that pub and worked at another soon afterwards and never saw him again but his
unfinished portrait hung in my mother’s house (she actually bought it from
me!) and his rheumy eyes now stare out from the canvas in a rarely-visited
room upstairs in my own house. There is a Chris in my life, a Chris in
Gildas’s life and, if we look, there is probably a Chris in everyone’s life.
And in a few years I will be Christine, if anyone ever takes the time to
notice me.

ZanshinJuly 30, 2012 at 18:09

Good post Gildas. A life lived is better than just living. Cheers to Chris
and all like him.

PericlesJuly 29, 2012 at 22:15

It’s not just Chris or pipe smokers that are gone ;  it’s almost
everything that used to make this country – including the Celtic parts – what
she was.  The greatest of those things ?  Good manners.

In the days when those now found in their Kraftfahrzeuge ten feet from
one’s rear bumper would have had to wait on draughty railway-station platforms
to go anywhere the people – even the most vulgar – of the United Kingdom were
civil to one another.  Then came ‘equality’ and all the other trappings
of the socialist state.

~ · ~

The Queen’s joining in the spirit of the Olympic opening ceremony was
typical of Her Majesty’s graciousness, something of constancy that so often
throws in to sharp relief the sheer repulsiveness of modern life in
Britain.  Not that Her ever patient Majesty would dream of expressing
such a sentiment but, seeing the expression on that famous countenance as H.M.
stood watching the ceremony, I found it hard to avoid feeling that what was
coursing through a mind that has beheld from the throne of England the history
of six decades was, “My God !  Is this what we’ve come
to :  a people defined by film and television ;  by
‘celebrity’ ?”

ΠΞ

GildasTheMonk
July 30, 2012 at 07:26

Manners! Along lost art! On a slight aside I cheered and cheeeres as
Rebecca Adlington achieved an amazing bronze medal last night; a performance
of sheer guts and determination based on years of dedication. I understand
that a “comedian” by the name of “Frankie Boyle” had earlier made a “joke”
in the form of derogotory remarks about her appearance. I suppose should not
give the “man” even the oxygen of a mention, but were I about 500 years
younger I would call him out for a duel. What a totally filthy, nasty little
toad he is. No manners at all.

Ancient + Tattered
AirmanJuly 29, 2012 at 19:39

Bravo Gildas for relating a good story well.

GildasTheMonk
July 29, 2012 at 21:25

Thank you, kind sir

delcattoJuly 29, 2012 at 19:25

Thank you Gildas. I will also raise a glass to him.

Further to that, this afternoon I spotted a man out strolling beside the
river and smoking a pipe. He stopped for a while and obviously enjoyed his
reflective smoke as he peered down at the river, perhaps at his own
reflection. My first thought focused upon the absence of pipe smokers &
how, although I no longer smoke, the scent of pipe smoke is one of life’s
pleasures.

Mudplugger
July 29, 2012 at 20:03

We are right to mourn the Chris we didn’t know because we’ve all known
others similarly defined.

And delcatto is right to mourn the passing of pipe-smokers – my late
father was an enthusiast, getting through 8oz a week, even having a regular
weekly order shipped from his local tobacconist through the BFPO system to
wherever he happened to be with the Eighth Army in North Africa, Sicily,
Italy, France, Holland and Germany – all those half-pounds of St. Bruno
caught up with him and kept him going for 6 long years.

I never took to the pipe and perhaps now it would be particularly unwise
to start – can you imagine the effect on a pipe-smoker of the car’s air-bag
going off ? Dad’s AEC trucks didn’t have air-bags, maybe that’s why he
survived the war unscathed, to carry on smoking into his mid-80s.

Elena
‘andcartJuly 29, 2012 at 20:13

Funny, that. My Dad served in Burma as a Chindit, and not too many of
them survived. But he went on into his 90s on 60 untipped Woodbines a day.
They don’t seem to make them like him anymore. Except for me, of
course.

GildasTheMonkJuly
29, 2012 at 21:26

Bravo to your father. The Chindits were the best of the best

Elena
‘andcartJuly 29, 2012 at 21:55

The funniest thing was that he couldn’t even swim, but he somehow
got across that river in flood, when an awfully large proportion of
them drowned. I suspect it was the fags that kept him going.

ivanJuly 29, 2012 at 21:36

I’ve smoked a pipe for over 50 years so I know what you are talking
about.

Now I’ll just give you the latest EU nonsense from the box I get my
tobacco in. In large letters it says: SMOKERS DIE YOUNGER and under it EU
Directive (2001/37/EC).

So now we have the EU not just suggesting that smokers might die
younger – they don’t say than who – but they make a directive about it, Ho
Hum.

BunnyJuly 29, 2012 at 17:39

Thanks for that Gildas, I shall raise a glass to him too, it was a good
post, made me happy and a little sad at the same time.

GildasTheMonk
July 29, 2012 at 21:24

Thank you. Me and you too

Elena ‘andcart
July 29, 2012 at 14:58

Chris had company, which is probably all that he wanted for. That’s what
Pub used to be all about. I’ve even done a bit of it myself in establishment
where lone women didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. Chose your own poison, or
at least, that’s how it used to be. But nowadays people tend to do it alone.
That’s the real sadness.

the doctorJuly 29, 2012 at 14:46

I did not know Chris , and that is my loss , but I do not think that he had
a little life ; it sounds has if he had a life well lived .

Backwoodsman
July 29, 2012 at 12:59

Thank you, Gildas. A small , even inconsequential tale, but one that I
suspect reveals so much about the shared disquiet of the regulars of this
Parish.

GildasTheMonk
July 29, 2012 at 13:17

Thank you Mr B. A very apposite and insightful observation

Elena ‘andcart
July 29, 2012 at 10:50

Pubs aren’t interesting places anymore, not since they banned Smoking.
Perhaps it’s a good job that Chris went when he did. Who want’s to sit in a
Pub for hours if you can’t smoke? I know I don’t. Now I can only wonder when
they will ban Drinking as well. Fancy nipping down The Pub for a fruit
juice?

Pissed-offJuly 29, 2012 at 09:15

Well said perceptive Monk – Here’s to Chris.

Friend of Dog
July 29, 2012 at 08:53

A touching story. Unfortunately it is not only Chris that has departed, he
has been joined by tolerance and contentment both at official and individual
level. Very sad.