Short Stories to Entertain

Eleven on Sunday morning and Ricky wa s not feeling too well. The truth wa s he wa s a disgrace. After pledging to be abstemious for a while, last night was Eddie’s stag night and of course things got out of hand. Eddie Bloomfield wa s a popular chap and his intended, the very lovely Janie Klonk , who by the way could not wait to gain the Bloomfield surname, was perfectly suited to someone as nice as Eddie. Being so popular the stag night venue was packed with every friend and family member you could name. The beer was free flowing and copious amounts had been funded by Eddie’s uncle who was single and bursting for the opportunity to indulge his only nephew. A combination that was impossible for Ricky to resist.  

He walked into The Ship, a dark gloomy pub with its small windows and dull decoration and dark low ceiling beams and had to stand at the short bar next to a smelly old man in a black grubby jacket to wait to get served. It was so depressingly gloomy in there the curtains might as well have been drawn.          The old man looked at him and smiled with brown teeth, then said, “ O ld Sid’s down the hole changing a barrel.” Then he turned back to chew his cheek while studying his empty glass sitting on a brightly coloured beer mat tapping out a rhythm with chewed down fingernails.           Robert Lucas thought some old men had a look that kind of made them seem sad and this old man seemed sad. Sad and pale. His hands shook a bit and the greying stubble on his chin was patchy like he only had a blunt blade that skipped a bit here and there. That stubble giving him a kind of whitish mouldy look. His eyes had that s...