Published 'Purple Patch' 1992
Clive told me that he viewed life as a holiday from a far more serious and potentially sadder period that surrounds it upon all sides.
On our frequent meetings together, propped up at the Turk's Head bar, I was subjected to the outlandish ideas that he'd harboured about our sabbatical from the after-life and so forth. I put it all down to pub talk, because men are renowned for jabbering gibberish over a jar - merely for the sake of macho bonhomie and easy badinage. Alcohol oils the wheels of the human cabriolet I always say, as it wends its lonely road between birth and death.
However, where Clive differed from most men of my acquaintance, he was dead serious about the garbage he spouted. One pig ignorant statement for every gulp of best bitter...
He eventually took his beer belly to Our Maker. It was sudden. He was killed by a pedestrian ,whilst driving his car! And, he wasn't kerb-crawling either! .
The story goes that he had stopped for traffic lights and someone opened his door and jabbed a knife into his neck. No obvious motive. The murderer was apparently a man in an anorak who merely strolled away, meticulously obeying the pelican lights.
The various onlookers were doubtful as to the exact circumstances and none of them chanced a citizen's arrest. In fact, one of them said the perpetrator was a young lady in a floral dress. It all seemed pretty extenuating to me.
Well, I found myself arranging Clive's funeral, due to lack of anyone closer coming forward, and his will made me executrix.
Now I sup unladylike pints on my ownsome and can often be discovered muttering to myself in the Turk's Head. Sometimes I think I'm Clive himself on a moratorium from death, but that no doubt is yet one more case of mistaken identity.
