I suppose it's something to do with my age but writing about Ted Waite brought a lot of the old stories back to mind. I'm sure there is a new generation of characters growing up in Barlick but they aren't in my orbit and so the mischief that they get up to is escaping me. No matter, I have plenty of memories that make me laugh to this day. I thought it might amuse some of the older end because they knew the same people that I did....
Fifty years ago pub life was far more important than it is today. Barlick had its fair share of watering holes which of course included the Working Men's Clubs as well. It seems to me, looking back, that we had a new story every week about something that had happened. There was the mill owner who was having a drink in the Syke when someone whispered to him that the police were taking an interest in the cars in the car park. He was driving himself that night and had taken drink so he slipped out of the back door and got one of his mates to drive him up to a different pub in the town centre. Shortly afterwards he rang the police and told them that his driver had informed him that his car had vanished from the car park. They got back to him shortly afterwards and told him where it was, someone had evidently pinched it to get down to the Foster's Arms.... Reprehensible I know, especially in this day and age but then we all saw it as a good example of quick thinking.
In those days there was a difference between closing time on Sunday night between Lancashire and Yorkshire. I forget which way it was but suspect Barlick pubs were open later. This led to a cavalry charge across the border to get another couple of drinks in. I forget now who it was but one enterprising man in Barlick had a large American car with a Perkins diesel in it and he did a roaring trade ferrying drinkers round. Funnily enough I can't remember any trouble connected with drink but of course I may be looking back through rose coloured spectacles....
My old mate Ted Lawson and I got into trouble one Friday night in the Dog. We used to go ferreting for rabbits every Friday up to Colonel Clay's land at Malham. We gutted the rabbits up there and buried the rops and then sold the rabbits round the pubs in Barlick for our tobacco money. The last call was always the Dog because it was close to home. Now I don't know whether you have ever noticed this, but very often, if you are doing something, someone turns up who reckons to know more about it than you do. We ran into this in the Dog that night but I'll have to leave the denouement of the story until next week, once again I've run out of space....
Ted Lawson in the Dog, 1977. ( I still miss Ted.....)
