Posted on by maryhadow

Joy

“Whoopsadaisy!” yelled Matt, as the Honda CM 125 reared up in the dark, and described a perfect backward somersault.

“Perhaps Si should ride it back?” suggested Will.

“YIKES!” shouted Antony, flying over the handlebars of our new E-bike, and slithering down lane towards home.

I had just received one of the most joyous phone calls of my life – a dream come true after two decades of failure.

Will and his two mates – best friends since they first met at prep school over a decade ago – had been visiting The Forest Inn at the end of our lane, for a drink and a game of pool. Matt, wearing a bandeau, had gone there riding Will’s scrambling motorbike, and the other two were on the E-bikes. “We’ll be back about nine to cook you a steak!” they shouted merrily, as we passed each other in the lane, my horses remaining remarkably calm in the general milieu.

I was a bit worried that they might upset the locals and my B&Ber who was dining there, with their posh, loud, excited voices.

The call was from Will saying, “We’ve joined up with Si, Rob and Jez, and after a bit more pool we’ll all be coming back to the Bothy to chill.  So I’m afraid we won’t be doing your steak.”

It’s taken twenty years, but finally, unbelievably, at last, thanks to our jolly pub up the road, Will has re-bonded with his old mates from Widecombe Primary School, seemingly readily accepted back again into the local community.

Posted on by maryhadow

Dead

My neighbour is lying, apparently dead, on the floor of our local pub.

Tom, the sous-chef is attempting to revive her, using the defibrillator that normally lives in the telephone box down the road.

My new love interest and I are are sitting watching, nursing our drinks, together with a few other locals, everybody pretending not to notice him gently massaging my inner thigh.  No one’s  seen me with a bloke in the ten years since my husband walked.

“What about giving her the kiss of life?” I suggest.

When she hears this, Ann suddenly regains consciousness and struggles up from her prone position on the green patterny carpet.

We’re all here to be taught how to use the ‘defib’ which Ann, parish councillor for the Hexworthy/Huccaby ward, had installed in 2014, and which, to my knowledge, has never been used. Tom has been on a course to learn how to demonstrate its miraculous powers.

“Have you read ‘This is Going to Hurt’?” I enquire.  “It says that for CPR to work, you have to press so hard you break their ribs.”

I’m not really here to learn about the ‘defib’ – I’ve come to support the pub. It’s sad that so few Hexworthy residents attend its events: Christmas drinks, New Year’s Eve parties, a 1970s Karaoke/Disco evening, ‘Pirates and Poldark’, live bands… there’s only one other local couple who also regularly join in with the fun.

“The Pub Is The Hub” says the Prince of Wales, who recently sold the freehold of The Forest Inn to two local families, after it had been lying empty for so long that a family of bunnies and rooks had moved in.

Soon after the pub closed I’d put my family home on eBay for £1 million – the third most expensive thing for sale on the entire site, with the intention of moving nearer to Exeter and normal people.  With no central focus, life in Hexworthy had become increasingly isolated and lonely for me, running a big house all on my own in central nowhere.

With the re-opening of the pub, now I have a sort of extra sitting room, full of people I know, where I can sit at the bar without looking desperate.  It is so life-changing for me that I’ve declared they’ll have to remove me from my home of twenty years, feet first.