The Older Woman

In my late teens and early twenties I worked in the ship-repair industry, for a contracting firm that worked mostly on the Tyne, but sometimes we worked away. So, one time I was down in Avonmouth dockyard, near Bristol, for a few weeks. We had digs in a "hotel" near the dock. As you do, I found a decent(ish) pub to call my local for the time I was there.

Anyway, in this pub I got talking to another away-from-home worker, a Cardiff bloke. He was in his forties. We weren't exactly friends, but we had a few conversations.

One night, when he wasn't there, I'd gotten talking to a local lad, Polo, and when the scrumpy was starting to kick in he said, "Your mate Taffy's a funny bloke."

Well, I said, he's not exactly my mate; but how do you mean?

"He's into old women."

So fucking what? Loads of blokes are into older women. Fucking oedipus rex, isn't it? Fucking Jocaster. Freud... the wanker. (I'd had a couple of those scrumpies myself by now).

"No! Not older women. Fucking OLD women!"

I took this with a pinch of salt.

A week or so later, I was in this pub again, playing pool. When the company's dull, your eye's always half on the door for a familiar face, somebody with some conversation. And so it was I saw this lady come in, blinking, looking about her uncertainly... And then my "mate" Taff followed directly behind, found her a seat, went to the bar and got his pint and a port and lemon for the girlfriend.

She was old. Really old. In the environment of that pub, she was just really old. She must have been in her mid 80s. A shabby grey coat. A shabby brown dress, a confused look, a queer smell about her.

She and Taff had three or four drinks really quite quickly, and then left together. You know how it is, especially when you're young and full of yourself, and you're leaving the pub with someone and your whole body language says, "Ha ha, losers - we're away for a shag!" Well that's how Taff and his lassie left that pub, with a twinkle in their eyes.

Polo was triumphant, the scrumpy-addled bastard: "See! A different one every week!"

He was right. A succession of elderly, rather confused women. I avoided Taff, so couldn't ask him what the deal was. Where did they come from? How was it for them?