A tale came my way, the same carrier pigeon as before.
Laura had dined at a restaurant in the company of friends. After dining she walked outside. She was drunk. Opposite the restaurant was a pub, a lively drinkers pub.
A man, an older man, a heavy drinking man with failed marriages behind him, saw Laura on the street. He downed his drink, left the pub, crossed the road in his worn trainers, thread-bare jeans and t-shirt. He asked Laura to join him in the pub.
She did.
Laura carried on drinking. She went home with this man.
A gaggle of nodding heads could not believe Laura had hooked up with one such as him. Nor could Older Man himself.
Laura told me, ‘He’s not good looking, but he is funny.’ My quick-witted daughter was amused by jokes such as this: I used to own a paper shop, but it blew away.
She practically moved in with Older Man, her drinking companion. He provided alcohol to flow.
Here is a tale from her own mouth. The pair of them, him and she, had drunk so much alcohol one sunny afternoon outside a popular pub, that they fell asleep on the cobbles. The landlord asked them to move. How proud that made me feel.
Their relationship became argumentative. Laura flirted with other men. Older Man was in love with her. One night, upset, Older Man left Laura in the pub and went home. Laura knocked on his door. He would not let her in.
What sort of man shuts the door on his drunk girlfriend in the middle of the night?
Laura told her sister, she had slept on a bench in the nearby park, unable to make her way home.
From Park Lane to Park Bench.
addictchild 