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| The day we got Arthur drunk | |
| Written by arablethecrocket | ||||||||||||||
| 07 May 2007 | ||||||||||||||
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This story is true. I may have changed the rules a bit and dotted a few I's too many but the basic bit is true The day we got Arthur drunk By Alan Crook I don't want you to get the wrong opinion here. I don't want you to think that we set out to drag some innocent waif into a den of drinking and squalid existence. Far from it, we were the innocent ones and Arthur was the one who reduced us to tears. Perhaps I should explain. The we in this case was my brother and I. He was the grand old age of 10 and I barely scratched over 8. We lived in Didcot which at the time was in Berkshire, now by the miracle of county planning it is in Oxfordshire, but in the mid fifties it was were it was and we were a part of it but we couldn't give a monkey's uncle. All we really cared for was eating drinking and playing in the trees. We lived in an innocent era blissfully unaware that our actions could in any way effect any one let alone Arthur. The Arthur in question was a dog. A great, big, ugly, Belgian boxer dog that only had one eye. What's more he only had a leg on three corners, the forth one he lost in a fight with a Jack Russell. His appearance was bad, but his social skills were even worse. He was constantly snuffling and shaking his head, this coupled with a permanent stream of slaver from his massive jaws did nothing to endear him to any one. By far the worse social gaff that he had was his near constant flatulence. There was a permanent air of rotting cabbage about him which we as little lads saw as a great opportunity for some giggles. We would sneak him into the girl's toilets at school, or stand in a bus queue looking all sweetness and light whilst various folk did their best to remain aloof from the pong. We wandered into a department store once behind a very well dressed lady pushing an equally smart pram, never once were the disdainful glances sent our way. We even managed to get him into our lounge before my mothers coffee morning. After this prank mind, we had to disappear, to the nether regions of Didcot till the dust settled. It was incredible what you could do with a very smelly dog. We didn't actually own Arthur. That honour fell to a pub landlord on the other side of Didcot. We found favour with the dog after our family had dropped in for a pint. We boys sat on the wall drinking lemonade. Arthur came around the corner and for once he met someone who didn't cringe back in horror, far from it, we were so bored we even made a fuss of him. As far as Arthur was concerned it was love at first sight. From that fateful evening Arthur actually used to wander the length of Didcot to seek us out. Much to our mother's horror he became a regular guest but she made sure that he never got over the threshold of our house. We lads didn't even mind that we had to walk him back the two miles or so to the pub. It wasn't as though it was difficult walking after all most of Didcot is as flat as a witch’s bosom. Besides, we were usually treated to lemonade and crisps, but that was just a bonus after all the pranks we had pulled on his return journey. The day in question followed the night before. Mum and dad were to hold a new year's party to beat all new years' parties. We were dispatched to our neighbour opposite and bribed, cajoled and threatened into submission, and forced to listen to the distant beatings of the drums and squeals of laughter from our prison window. Mrs. Wonson our prison guard was all but deaf and shook when she got excited which meant she was on the verge of being incontrollable when we were ensconced. We liked Mrs. Wonson, she was barmy and at least she was some consolation for our estrangement. She really was old and not just old to us boys, she topped ninety and sang every bit as much as the records though the words left some room for improvement. She was a widow and lived on a diet of jelly babies, milk, and Guinness. Her house was spotless and she divided her time equally between it and her allotment. The only time she actually ate some of the produce was on Sunday lunch when she had dinner with us. She spent the entire evening dancing at the window, grabbing each of us in turn and prancing like a whirling dervish as the music struck up. Since she was all but deaf she just reacted to the bits she could hear. The outcome was that every dance to her was a polka, whether it was fast or slow. As a result we greeted the New Year dancing a polka whilst singing Olde Lang Sine. New Year's Day saw the entire world asleep. The entire world that is, apart from my brother and I. We sneaked from the prison and across to the bomb site. There were bodies everywhere. One poor chap was asleep standing at the sink with his hands in a bowl of cold water. There was a comatose form in the garden hammock this in the middle of winter. The coal hole door was open so we could only assume that there was a body in there. Our parents were sleeping on the floor alongside three other bodies two of whom were in army uniform they were all lying flat and facing the ceiling but in the attention position as if some horizontal parade was taking place. If snoring, sleeping in ridiculous poses and general dishevelment were indicators of a good time was had by all, then mum and dad had scored a ten on the Richter scale of parties. All this was of no use what so ever to lunatic boys, starving lunatic boys at that when there was nothing left in any shape worthy of being eaten. There was nothing for lunatic boys to drink either, which, contrasting with the amount of discarded bottles, was somewhat ironic. We were fed up, and rampantly curious as to what this whisky stuff tasted like. There were glasses available and whisky available and two lads who rarely stood back from a lark so why not. We topped up two lemonade glasses to the brim and sat the back door step. After a count of three we simultaneously raised our glasses, but neither of us got beyond a tiny sip and we melted into a joint Yuk. Whisky and little boys don't mix. We had just got as far as the k in Yuk when who should turn up but Arthur. Being brothers we instantly thought of the same thing “Would Arthur like whisky?” We upended the glasses into a large washing up bowl (kept solely for the purpose of this dog's massive thirst) and set it before his mussel. At first he wandered around not quite sure but one sip and he was into it full steam ahead. Arthur did like whisky, he didn't even bother to raise his head as he drained and then licked the bowl. We still had a fair bit left in the bottle so we did the proper thing and poured that in as well, it didn't seem right to put half a bottle back. Now normally there are two kinds of drunk the aggressive kind who seem to think they rule the world and the singing type. Arthur sang. I mean sang. He sat back and raised his head and followed it with a howl enough to wake the dead, but not our household. We could see trouble arising, it wasn't hard, after all we had our dad's twelve year old whisky bottle in our hand and the bowl still bore traces of amber liquid. The dog was reeling from one side to the other and insisted that his voice was something worthy of praise, and we had that indelible guilty look that even we knew we couldn't hide. The walk to the pub could have been a straight forward affair but for several small snags, most of them due to Arthur. For a start he rolled from the road to the hedge and then back to the road. I say rolled because with three legs he normally lollopped, but on this occasion he rested his weight on his front legs and swung his back one round an action which meant we had to pick him up and steer him on more than one occasion. We could probably have made it to the pub in this way but we reached one of his scent points and he had to do the honours. You would have thought that since his leg was missing on one side he would have widdled that way round, but it seems Arthur was incurably right handed so to speak. In order to accomplish his mission normally he would put his nose to the ground, raise his good leg and send streams of widdle in the right direction. This he did or at least he tried to do but the drink was in control and as he cocked his leg he fell sideways still with the leg in the widdling position. The sight reduced my brother and me to tears so much so that we slowly sank to the ground and sat on the pavement lost in fits of laughter. About this time a very beautiful young lady alighted from a taxi clearly still dressed for a party. This was the fifties and nothing was spared in the young lady's attire. It flounced out with reams of material everywhere. Everywhere that is bar at her bosom level here there was acres of naked flesh enough to stir the fires of two little lads. As far as she was concerned she saw two waifs sitting distraught and crying she added two and two, made five, and thought they were crying over the death of their pet dog. She sprung into an overdose of sympathy and strode across the road to comfort us. “Oh boys, boys” she crooned, and dragged us into her warmth. We didn't object, we just nestled down in the comfort of that caring bosom and took our chance on what would follow. We didn't have to wait long. From that heaving nest of young matronly concern we heard what could only be called a trumpet voluntary. Arthur excelled himself with a volcanic eruption that shook our host to the quick. We peeped from our vantage point just in time. He followed this with a great fountain of widdle that formed a perfect arch as it cascaded with a terrible gurgling sound falling directly into the drain. We were lost. Again we sank to the ground tears rolling from our eyes. The young lady didn't help. She adopted a truly annoyed stance, stamped her foot and said “ooh men!” She turned and flounced to her house. We were totally beyond control for over five minutes. When we finally surfaced the dog had made its own way so far down the road we just let him get on with it, and we dragged what was left of ourselves back to the mayhem of our home. Arthur never did go back behind the bar of the pub. His owner was at a loss to see why. The dog would always widdle on the cases of whisky when the draymen came. As for my brother and I, neither of us can look a glass of whisky in the eye without thinking of Arthur.
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