Episode one - ‘Bastard psychotic’

Not only would the village I grew up in survive a nuclear war, it was probably the result of one. The title of this chapter could be used to describe a disturbing percentage of the natives. We enjoyed the neighbourly efforts of the deaf and dumb man, who chased some unfortunate Jehovah’s Witnesses down the street with a loaded shot gun. A woman whose husband would row out into the middle of the small lake on their property whenever they had a visitor, and remain there until the person had left. A gypsy. A mad scientist. A flasher. But we’ll come on to them later. They require at least a volume each.

I want to start by talking about what many believe to be the heart of any community, but which I prefer to think of as the lower bowel; the local pub. Every evening, after the sun had set and it was safe to come out, the jaded doors would be heaved back and allow anybody making a stab at standing upright through. Inside these trusted walls, the villagers could dribble into their pint, or play with their genitals, or kick back and discuss the day in a language which requires a pint of saliva just to ask for the time.

It was a popular place; I had to drag our pet goat out of there a few times (but not before she’d got herself a few phone numbers).The barman had three small children, hence he was at work every night. He ran the place for his wife’s parents, and his mother-in-law would play hymns on the organ in the back bar every Sunday. It was rumoured that her illegitimate son was the man who hid in hedges at night, and had replaced the carpet in his house with newspaper. He would often sit staring into the abyss of a half-empty glass in the company of another regular, who always liked to wrap the evening up by propping himself against a wall, and asking passers-by if they ‘fancied a shag?’ I don’t know what these two found to talk about. Maybe they didn’t talk at all. Maybe they ended up going home together one night and rolling about on the newspaper? Maybe that was the reason it was down in the first place?

Being children, and not allowed within fifty feet of a sherry trifle, we would devote ourselves to trying to spend as much time in there as we could get away with. It didn’t prove too difficult. Either the room was spinning so fast that nobody noticed we were there, or my grandad would be keeping everybody busy, perched at the bar like a geriatric budgie, accepting shots of whisky in return for stories of his youth. Jackanory for piss-heads.

Occasionally, the kids whose fathers would be lying under the pool table by 8.30pm would nip in to ask for money, sweets, cocaine, and it would be handed over without a murmur. We once managed to get twelve bottles of coke out of one loving parent who’d spent the majority of the night chatting up a bar stool. (Whether he got lucky remains a mystery, but nine months later, there were six little bar stools next to his seat). Sometimes there was a fight, but it was normally between the kids (we actually used to organise fights between our friends when there was nothing good on TV). Or we would dare somebody to down the juice from the jars of cockles that replaced the customary bowls of peanuts.