Wainwright

Well the wagon that was supposed to keep him going through January has proven to be a very rickety beast from which he has fallen on a couple of occasions and had to make running repairs with just a few pints of strong cider to sustain him.

Despite this the month has as we feared been very quiet and has yet to produce anything worth your correspondent’s effort.

This past week has seem him crack however on 3 occasions and so we are optimistic that the wagon may be approaching a state too broken to be repaired. His good friend Big Gay Ben enjoyed his last day at work with him on Thursday and this provoked a beer at lunch along, it must be recorded, with a very fine pie from The Old Duke pub, never has a spit and sawdust place impressed him so with its food.

Having cracked at lunch he could hardly avoid a beer in the evening to, again, mark BGB’s departure but depressingly he kept himself to 3 pints before heading home.

Clearly his good friend Jaberwocky is a friend of this column and he sought to further tempt him off the wagon on Friday night with a curry (along with the lovely Boggy, one of the Angels and his good friend Metro). Sadly even the previously infallible temptations of Kingfisher on tap failed to work their magic and just 3 of the bad boys passed his lips before he and Jaberwocky retired to the Coronation for a last orders pint, one has to worry how that place will survive once the smoking ban comes into force.

Today he is heading up to Birmingham for a quiet celebration tonight of the lovely Dennis’s birthday (which is next Tuesday). He is carless and so has entrusted himself to the rail network. Of course due to engineering works he had to go via Newport to get to Gloucester and then get a coach the rest of the way. 4 hours door to door does not compare well with the one hour he can do it in his old car. THe miracles of public transport.