Back to the Locomotive pub in Wellingborough for an evening with Bob, Richard Lovett, me and the spouses, Julie, Sarah and Jan. I get a bit of ribbing for wearing a lavender-coloured linen shirt to the pub, but that’s the price you have to pay for being fashion-forward like what I am. I decided not to wear my alice band on my hair. I notice some of the local drinkers staring at my shirt approvingly. After a few pints – Summer Lightning, Vicar’s Downfall, Bishop’s Finger and stuff like that – we have a game of skittles. Northamptonshire skittles is played on a table about a metre off the ground with a padded surround. There are nine pins in a diamond pattern on the table and you throw three round chunks of wood (called cheeses) from a distance of about three metres. Led by Richard, who appears to remember the rules, we play a game called ‘killer’ where all the names are chalked on a board with three lives marked beside each one. The top of the list throws first and everyone then has to match the score of the previous player or lose a life. Lots of fun and bouncing cheeses. The skittling skills learned in my pub-crawling misspent youth return to me in a miraculous fashion and I thrash everyone else. Well, that’s the way I remember the evening. Later we turn to bar billiards and knock over a few mushrooms (nothing to do with mind-altering fungus).
