Lit by un unusually bright waxing gibbous, here we are around ‘closing time’ at The Royal Oak. Being the last Saturday night before Christmas, it’s been an unusually busy night with the final ladies’ wasp chewing competition of the year. Always a popular event with the more rowdy types off the local estate competing against the local landowning toffs who learned wasp chewing skills at Swiss finishing school.
The extension to the right of the pub is the skittle alley, and again it’s been a busy night with young farming types apparently using hedgehogs instead of balls and beer bottles for skittles. Youth eh?
And in contrast in the lounge bar, it’s been the annual get-together of the local railway nerds. They’ve been sharing sticky photographs of their trainspotting exploits over the last year or so. They also brought toy trains and thermos flasks to show off to their fellow like-minded souls. Very little beer is drunk, just tea, milk, warm flat lemonade and the occasional half pint of shandy for the more rebellious.
The Morris 8 Series E, the local taxi, has arrived to collect Beryl, our favourite geriatric reveller. She will have spent most of her time egging on the wasp chewers shouting “go girl, fight fight!”. But with the impending lock-in, the taxi might be better to pick Beryl up at 6am when the landlord throws everyone out.
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