Barry Seven.

I heard on the grapevine that an old mate of mine, Barry Seven checked out last week, it seems that this last few years a lot of people I grew up with are doing that at an alarming rate. Its alarming because none of them seem to be able to reach the average age for clog popping, True I belong to a generation the thinks looking after your body means having a bath every two weeks, but still the statistics make grim reading.

Barry was the type of chap that you liked on first meeting, very tall and thin with a quick wit and a ready smile. He had feet the size of Dutch barges and was fond of winking at the ladies and saying, “You know what they say about men with big feet don’t ya girls”. I know several girls in our peer group that fell for that line and were bitterly disappointed to find out that Barry’s theory didn’t hold water, it passed water but that’s about all. I comforted them the best I could; well I’m that type of chap.

He had various jobs when he left school but never majored in anything other than drinking alcohol, had there been exams for that he would have got A’s across the board.

Over the years he shrunk in stature, had various ailments, and acquired the complexion of a well-worn carpet. He was married and divorced twice, lost a child in a car accident, went to prison for debt but I never heard him complain or moan about anything. I saw him on the millennium new year in a pub with both his ex wives drinking up a storm, Apparently he had been officially confirmed as an alcoholic, and felt that a bigger reason to celebrate than the passing of a thousand years.

Word reached me from time to time about him fighting, or being arrested for being drunk and disorderly. I last saw him on Gorton market with his new wife, she was some years younger than him and quite pretty, she trotted of to look at underwear whilst Barry and I talked old times. I asked him if he still had a drink problem, to which he replied beaming “Nahh mate, sorted that out, got myself a pub in Duckinfield now”. He invited me down of course, but I didn’t go I wish I had gone now, Barry had finally found his vocation, and it would have been nice to see him on the other side of the bar for a change.

In the end it wasn’t his liver that did for him, but the simple act of cutting the toenails on his huge plates of meat, it seems he nicked a toe, which became infected and as a result they took his leg off.
Not long after that complications set in, and last week Barry went to that big boozer in the sky, I’m not sorry I missed the funeral, I have been to enough of them to last me a lifetime. I prefer to remember him smiling and winking at girls, although his smile was always wider when he was lifting a pint of beer.