Thursday December 3rd 1998
I stayed at the pub where R works. It’s stuck out on a crossroads. An accommodation block has been built to its side – and the rooms are reasonable, albeit all ruddy mahogany stain and chintzy bedspreads.
A bonfire seemed to be constantly burning behind a fence at the immediate rear of the pub, so that the air is filled with the acrid fumes of old meat and cardboard being burnt.
M, the landlord and his wife talked about two Scotsmen who got fighting drunk during a golden wedding party the night before (the night I arrived – in fact I clocked these two in the bar already spoiling). The party all arrived by coach from Chorley.
Both were boyfriends of grand-daughters of grandad whose golden wedding it was. They got pissed on Glenlivet and beer and started to get chippy. The cousins then said don’t talk to our grandad like that.
They all go out to the car park with Grandad trying to stop a fight.
Grandad bans eldest boyfriend off the coach so he goes off.
Come the end of the party the younger one then says, ‘I’m not going back on the coach with you lot because you’ve been so unpleasant to my friend.’
Grandad says fine and drives off.
Young un then starts rooting around inside the Inn minibus, then in the accommodation block.
What’s going on calls M. ‘I’ve called the police and they’ll be here in three minutes.’
Young un pricks up his ears like a jack rabbit and scarpers off down the garden. Across the bottom is a sizeable barbed wire fence. Young un hits this and goes straight over.
Beyond the fence are two cesspits. Young un goes straight in. All M hears in the still of the night is the squelch squelch of sodden shoes as the lad goes off into the night. They reckon he’ll be back at Chorley by 8.30 the next morning
The Lancashire air is constantly filled with the sweet aroma of silage – a smell I associate with all my time in Cockerham riding my bike to and from the university – smelling the difference in the temperature and humidity of the cool air as I cycled up and down dips and past fields through light mists.
I dramatically enjoyed this aspect of my life at Crookhey, the sense of being in the country, able to roam, enjoying the presence of the land.
