Due to circumstance beyond our control, Bankstone News finds itself obliged this week to resort to regaling you with an absolutely true and unique story about something that actually happened in Bankstone’s home town Brighouse just the other day, and which if it bears any resemblance to something alleged to have taken place anywhere else at any other time can only do so by dint of the most extraordinary and yet absolutely genuine of coincidences. Enough said, I think we can agree, by way of preambulance. Here, without further ado, is that absolutely authentic account of recent events round Bankstone’s way.
A little while ago an unfamiliar customer – possibly a Rastrick man by the (suspiciously foreign) look of him – ventures into popular Brighouse ale house The Badger Baiter’s Arms, and orders three pints of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. He sits himself down in one corner of what we call the Salon Bar (It was meant to be the Saloon Bar, but it’s not easy finding a sign painter who can spell round here), and starts taking little sips from each of the three pint glasses in turn.
When he’d got through all three of them, he makes a little stack of the glasses and wanders back over to the bar to order another three just the same. Barry asks him: why get three and let them sit there going flat – wouldn’t they taste better one by one?
“Well,” the man says “I’ve two brothers overseas now, one in America, one in Oz, and when they left we all agreed we’d drink like this to remember when we all supped together back in Rastrick in the old days. (See: Rastrick man, I knew it!)
“That’s a nice little tradition, I’d say” Barry observes when he tells us all about later, and we all agree. Any road up, turns out this chap’s lately moved to Brighouse and soon becomes a regular. Doesn’t say a great deal, but seems right enough, sitting there every evening, chugging away steadily, three pints at a time. The amount he’s getting through, Barry’s soon pretty fond of him and occasionally slips him a bonus round toward the end of the evening.
Then one night he comes in and orders just two pints. People at the bar notice and fear the worst. An ominous silence descends on the Salon Bar and all you can hear for a minute is muffled chatter and that idiot Danny hammering away at the one-armed bandit over in the Pubic Bar.
Barry, looking (deceptively) sober for once, asks softly: “I don’t want to intrude on your grief, but I wanted to just… you know… offer my condolences, so to speak.”
Bloke looks confused for a moment, then the penny drops and he’s smiling for the first time ever, laughing in fact. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. Both those b*ggers are right as rain. It’s me: I’ve given up drinking.”
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