@Fruitcake , l really like your poem about manly love fruitcake,
The drunken sods in my case mostly forgot entirely about me once they
got caught in the tender trap !
The wives they ’ chose’ took good care to keep them well away from
The Olde Red Lion and motor bikes ??
Fings were never the same after me getting demobbed from doing me
national service in Cyprus stopping the Greeks and Turks from killing each
other!!
There’s gratitude for yer ? 
BOXING DAY IN THE. OLDE. RED. LION. Pt 2
I looked round the at table at me mates Roger, Taffy and Freddie all had
one of those mini cigar fings stickin out of their mouths and their eyes
were squinting with pleasure as they sucked the smoke in ! Paddy and Bob
Riley were tipping their heads back to finish the last dregs from their pint
glasses, the empty barley wine bottles had allready been collected and taken
away by the potman, who happened to be young Paddy Murphy, Paddies
youngest son, who also happened to be mentally handicapped by reason of a
birth defect, young Paddy acted as the vice potman when the regular potman
decided not to show for work, so young Paddy would be on full pay today !!
My turn to buy the round then!
I held up my empty glass and shook it in the air, George the barman spotted me and raised his eyebrows, l nodded and moved between the table and the
bar to pass my glass to him, he proceeded to work the pump to fill it with
bitter while l picked up the next empty pint glass and placed it on the bar for
George, in this way we refilled every bodies glass and everyone kept to
their original glass! We were strong believers in hygiene !
When George finished pulling the pints he raised his eyebrows again,
again l nodded, he grabbed two handfulls of barley wines and topped them
then pushed them towards me, l duly transferred these to our table and it was my turn to raise my eyebrows at George ? He was ready, he held up two
fingers, it was not an insult, it was the price! I peeled two quid notes out of
my top shirt pocket and handed it to George, he had my change ready,
Which he dropped into my open palm, l put it straight into my trousers
pocket without counting it! We all trusted each other in those days !!
This went on till the six of us had paid their wack and Dennis the landlord
rang the bell for time !!
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you haven’t told us the best part yet DM - the getting to the homestead and the preparation for noddy noddy land?? I have made homemade beer from an early age DM but have never risen to the challenge of barleywine - a slightly more complex manouveure. but a challenge worth accepting
@gumbud , That’s why l left me bike back at the homestead gummy !!
And one of the reasons we only AVE cold meat and pickles on Boxing Day !
Me dad always got a firkin of ale in at xmas too so we wouldn’t get firsty,
Trouble is me ‘mates’ got to hear of this, and they all ended up round
our Ouse??? 
To pick up on me thread,
Paddy Murphy was a great character that used pop into the Olde Red lion
quite regularly, due mainly to the fact that it was the nearest pub to his
house, which was situated at the far end of a gravel road we called the
mile road, probably because it was rumoured to be exactly a mile long ?
This road was dead straight, and passed over the London to Sutton
railway line via a gravel topped bridge !
The mile road had fields either side of it, that belonged to the municiple
sewage works, this sewage works served the whole of the greater Croydon
area, Paddy’s house, belonged to the sewage works. where Paddy worked as
the ‘stockman’ , looking after the two hundred or so heifers that were part
of the sewage cycle they were experimenting with at that time !
Paddy was in fact a very important link in the ‘chain’ of sewage events 
!
Now Paddy was a very small chap, he a!ways wore wellies and an over
large cheesecutter cap, his body he clothed with an old Tweedy type jacket,
Which was also to large, l never ever saw Paddy wear anything else !!Although
Paddy was exceedingly small his hands were exceedingly large, and would
engulf mine if ever we shook hands !Paddy lived with his wife and three
children, Spud Murphy the eldest son, Teresa Murphy his daughter !
The younger son, as l mentioned earlier , was mentally deficient , we called
Paddy too (two?).
It seems that Paddy and his wife had ceased talking to each other some years
ago, although she still cooked for him ??
Maybe that was why Paddy could usually be found in the Olde Red Lion or
the Skinner’s Arms in the evenings, or maybe it was the uvva way around ??
I dunno ?
Anyway, let me drop the sewage lesson, and get to the crux ??
One night after closing time at the Olde Red Lion, Roger, Taffy, Bobby Riley
and me were wending our weary way home along the London road, there
was sllght mist drifting in off the sewage farm, the orange sodium lamps
stuck at every 100 metres along this road created a slightly ghostly effect
in the mist, when in the distance a strange figure appeared coming from
the opposite direction, but on the sewage farm side of the road !
This figure looked just like a leprechaun, and it was staggering from side to
side, and occasionally backwards too!
As we got nearer it became clear what/ who it was !
Bloody Paddy Murphy !!!
We crossed the road to see what was up?
I put his cap straight, as it was over his eyes!
His mouth was opening and closing like a goldfishes !
Paddy was trying to speak !
But no noise was coming out of his mouth ?
He was still swaying backwards and forwards !
Only one thing to do, get im ome !
So, one each side supporting him, and backtrack to the mile road entrance
and then get the old bugger back up the mile to Paddies house !!
This took much longer than it should due to us having had a skinful as well
and it was gone midnight when we arrived at Paddies front door and
hit the knocker, thinking Mrs Murphy might invite us in for a cup of coffee
or summat !!
Not on your life !!
The shriek of rage she let out caused us to drop poor old Paddie on the
doorstep and take to our heels , it was only Paddies prostrate body
blocking the door that saved us from suffering GBH that night l swear ??
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purrect - keep 'em cummin - yes the beers of course oh and the tales too! - I tink if we could get um to a pubblica we could make eh summat money laddie!!
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@gumbud , Yer maybe ? I’m gettin to like this scribbling malarky, can’t
seem to put me scribbler down now, and the words keep coming outta
me fingertips! Cept when l make a typo of course ?? 
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Ah what a tale DM.
To misquote that internationally famed author, Anon,
Heaven hath no terror like love turned to hate,
Nor hell a fury like a woman woken from her slumber.
I have a tale or two of my own concerning the drunkardness of others.
I used to work away from home a lot, and on one such occasion my colleague and I were walking back to our hotel from a most excellent “pub followed by an Indian Restaurant” evening in Derby.
We passed through an area that had been completely cleared of old terraced housing to make way for more modern accommodation. Completely cleared that is except for a lone, and very run-down looking pub on the corner of the road we were on and a narrower one going up a hill. After that, the new housing started.
We saw an indistinct shape in the gutter of the road going uphill, but we couldn’t make out what it was because many of the streetlights had been removed.
Then this dark shape moved.
People in the end house saw us looking and pointing up the side of their place so came out to see what was what. Well, if someone was gesticulated up the side of your house, you’d want to know what was going on now wouldn’t you?
We crossed the road and walked up to this … shapeless form, to discover it was a man in dark clothes completely blotto and making babble of the incoherent kind.
He was so drunk that he tried to climb the kerb and failed every time.
In the end we had to leave him to the good neighbour because we needed to get back to our hotel’s used beer and cider recycling department.
We never did know what happened to the drunken chappie, but he wasn’t there when we drove by in the morn on our way to earn more drinking vouchers.
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@Fruitcake ,. Used beer and cider recycling ??
That sounds interesting FC ? Got anymore on that !!
Is that to do wiv tipping the dregs and spillage back into the system ?? 
I got a bit more on Paddies piss up ! A sort of stop press if you like?
Allthough its 70:years late, if you get wot l mean ?l wos talkin to me dad
about three days after Paddies missus chased us away from her house,
and l told I’m about our good deed the uvver night, and ee said to me
Wot night did this occur ?
When l told I’m it woz last Friday, a big smile came over is face and ee
started shakin wiv laughter!
'Wot Yoo larfin at '? sez l ?
‘Well’ sez ee, ’ You see, on Friday night me and Paddy were together in
in the “Skinner’s Arms” having a couple of toots !! But he seemed ok when
last orders woz called !!
That explained a lot!!
No doubt me dad was depth chargin that night !!
We were in need of a dunny.
Years ago I went to a pub in a village called Nailsea where the internationally famous group called Adge Cutler and the Wurzels sometimes performed live gigs.
Heading for the loo there was a sign in the corridor pointing to the “Used beer and cider department.”
dunny go in there; dunny go out here ; dunny wet ya kecks ;just dunny ok?
It’s an Australian word for the outhouse/karzie/WC/earth-closet/loo/privvy/guardrobe/bog.
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“earth closet”
“guardrobe”
Never heard of these, but I shall be using them in conversation when the need arises .
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@Fruitcake , “dunny”.
Never bin to ozzie, but tried to go to NZ once !!
So dunny is kharzie or long drop ??
I get the idea now !! 
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That’s the badger!
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Guardrobe is a very (Medieval) old name for it. They would be found in castles and were basically a seat over a hole on the inside that made a deposit straight down the outside of the wall, often straight into the moat.
Before sewers and in the absence of a cesspit, an earth closet outhouse would be “in the garden” and every so often the contents would be raked out the back and buried in the ground to be used as fertilizer.
They were the forerunners of the modern compost toilet.
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Thank you Fruity! That is so interesting…! I have just begun reading the “Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England”, by Ian Mortimer so i daresay there may be some reference to it there!
I do like a bit of recycling…