Pork Pie
A committed man
As he finally got home the sun was beginning to tease at the skirts of dawn. Another Friday night lock-in and another ‘shift’ done behind the rugby club bar. At his age he wondered how much longer he could keep doing it, not that there was anything to come home for since she’d gone. He regretted now the half eaten pork pie he’d found and finished off when he was clearing up. Famished after eight hours without as much as a bag of crisps, it had looked OK, couldn’t have been there long, the meat still pink, ish, and he wasn’t fussy. He’d had a few pints of mild of course, as he always did, but they’d only served to make him hungrier.
He took off his black blazer with the brass buttons and hung it up reverentially in the old oak wardrobe, patting the green and gold crest fondly as he did every time. ‘Y Gwter Fawr’, the big gutter, as his village had once been uncharitably known. With typical West Wales aplomb they’d adopted the insult and made it something to be proud of, to fight for, on rugby pitches across the land. Mountain men. They were adept at turning negatives into positives, relying on an in-bred stubbornness that trickled down the intermingled bloodlines from generation to generation.
He’d done his bit on the pitch from the late forties, a solid player with an iron hand-off in attack and a crunching tackle in defence. No soft centres in his day. He’d…
