I went for a couple of pints with No Longer Grim Jim and The Tall Thin One (TTTO), to a bar in Broughton Street. As seems usual nowadays, the first half hour was taken up with discussions of various ailments. I have none of those anymore. No Longer has recovered from his ones, and TTTO has recovered from his ones as well, except that he can’t yet play golf due to having had an argument with a pavement when out jogging, which damaged his wrist.
Jeremy Clarkson wrote about a pub game in The Sunday Times last week. The game involves someone in a group making a true statement about themselves, and if the others in the group can’t also truthfully say the same thing, then they have to pay the first person a Pound, or whatever.
We didn’t play this game, because if we had, No Longer would have won a fortune. For example, he could say something like “I haven’t been on holiday for 30 years” and it’s unlikely that many others could say the same thing.
No Longer could also truthfully say “I have never drunk a glass of red wine”. This would also almost certainly be a winner.
No Longer is very dogmatic. He knows what he likes, and knows what he doesn’t like, and there is nothing in between. He likes golf, cars, watching football, occasional pints of beer, his work (now that he is no longer a teacher), sports quizzes, the SNP, Natalie Portman, running…and…well, that’s about it. He doesn’t like anything else, and usually refuses to try anything else.
He tried a glass of white wine in 1974 and din’t really like it, so he never tried it again, and has never sampled red wine. He went on holiday in 1977 and didn’t really enjoy it, so he hasn’t been on another one since.
One really good statement he can make, which would win him a Pound in the truth game, and which I asked him about, is that he’s never had a fresh vegetable in his flat. He doesn’t like fresh vegetables!
He lives off processed food. I asked him whether he’d ever had any fresh fruit in his flat. At first he said no, then he remembered that after one road race he’d been given a tangerine, and he’d taken it home and had actually quite enjoyed it, but not enough to ever try another one.
No Longer passed me a book from JJ, who is also thankfully in better health than when I last reported, about 200 years of Elgin Academy. I’m not mentioned in it, but there are several photos of pupils, and one of them taken in 1962, which was before I attended that school, includes No Longer and others in the class that I joined in 1964. When my printer/scanner is fixed I’ll post it. I recognise some of the faces – Dexy, Tinky, Ann, Flossy, Titch, Neil, Heppy.
TTTO, who is usually correct, reckons that good sense will probably eventually shine through, and that if Labour look as if they will do well in the next General Election, folk will vote ‘No’ when faced with the loaded question of whether they agree that Scotland should be an independent country.
What a fascinating group of people! Never did I imagine that you’d know anyone who didn’t like vegetables and someone else who didn’t drink wine. Or was it the same person? The middle class folk in this town are a real eye opener, so they are!
One hopes TTTO is right. No Longer’s right about Natalie Portman if nothing else.