A bit of local colour

During the late fifties, when I did postgraduate stuff at Liverpool University, I lived on the other side of the Mersey, in Seacombe, a poor suburb of Wallasey. I regularly used to drink in a pub, the official name of which was the Five Bars Rest, but which was known locally as “The Jawbreaker’s Arms”, for obvious reasons (Joke: If a stranger asked about all the sawdust on the floor, he would be told: "Until last night, that was furniture.")
Now, by the standards of Seacombe in those days, I was not only a bit posh, but also, being six feet four, an easy target in a public bar for any aggressive midget who wanted to prove that “The bigger they are, the harder they fall”. Damn little men.

But I had a secret weapon in the form of a no-hoper called Jeff Sanders. Jeff had no job, no life, no prospects. His ambition in life was to get “the latchlifter”, the price of half a pint of bitter, to get him esconced in the pub, after which he waited in hope that others would buy the rest of his evening’s intake.

I liked Jeff. He had had a bad start in life, but he wasn’t a bad man. In fact he was intelligent and thoughtful, but he carefully disguised those qualities since you can’t use intelligence to headbutt a man. Instead, he depended on the sort of innocence that characterises the village idiot. I subsided his boozing, and in return he was, amazingly for such a puny fellow, my protector. If any marauding midget came near, Jeff would explain “He’s all right, he’s good skin. He's a friend of mine,” and I was left alone.

After a while, I was accepted by a proportion of the regulars in the public bar, mainly because I could throw a pretty straight dart. I don’t think I could hit the treble-twenty now, but there was a time when I could….

One interesting consequence of my acceptance into this blue-collar community was that I was regarded as the person you would consult if you needed information. Such a request would often start with the words “You’ve been to Oxford college and passed all your degrees, answer me this….”

I didn’t mind, but quite often, the question was on the lines of “Who scored the winning goal for Everton in the 19xx Cup Final?” At that moment, my refuge was to offer to buy the next round of drinks. And maybe knock off a few treble-twenties while I was at it.