Alf Walks the Dog

‘Butch, get yer nose aht!’  Remonstrated Alf, tugging on Butch’s lead, jerking Butch’s head away from the rather unpleasant yellowing mess sprayed up the garden wall outside No 53 Garden Terrace. 

The drizzle continued to leach its way through the fabric of Alf’s woollen flat cap and worsted jacket and trousers.  His workman’s boots, no longer used now for their originally intended purpose, inured to all weathers, splashed through the eddies of rainwater on the uneven pavement as Alf trudged painfully up Garden Terrace towards Park View.  The road names suggested a pastoral idyll in the midst of the city.  The road names were, if you glanced around you, obviously ironic.  Probably devised by some wag in some non-descript and nameless Victorian planning office as a joke following a lunchtime pre prandial cocktail and a post prandial brandy at the Club.  Let’s be generous, maybe he was simply being optimistic.

Alf noticed none of these things, well used, as he was, to his surroundings.  He had grown up in and around this area, the radius of his existence probably no more than 15 miles.  This wasn’t a disappointment to him.  He didn’t feel as though he had lost out or failed to explore the wider world.  On the contrary, Alf’s unspoken, unacknowledged feelings were ones of comfort and stability.  His life had been, up to this point, like a pair of old pyjamas, slipped into without premeditation.  He lived with his wife, Ada, in a two up, two down terraced house, as his parents had.  He, or rather Ada, had brought up three children, while he brought home the bacon, following his father’s example.  Every Friday and Saturday night, behaviour learned at his father’s knee, he could be found down at his local, The Pig and Whistle, pint of best draught bitter in one hand and a roll-up in the other.  The only thing that had changed in this situation was that these days he wasn’t allowed to actually light the roll-up, but that didn’t stop him hanging it from his lip nevertheless, as his darts thunked their way into the pub dartboard.  He found his tobacco lasted longer that way anyway.  He voted Conservative, as his father had done, because, even though his roots were truly working class, he had never lost the hand-me-down belief that those in the upper echelons of society knew better and that all the red-flag-waving socialism represented by the Labour party was only fit for Eastern Bloc countries and hippies and no good could ever come of it. 

Alf came to a halt at the end of Garden Terrace and eased his foot as best he could under the circumstances, gout and workman’s boots not being the most advisable combination, as Butch cocked a leg against the road-sign and then sniffed around the area, picking up the local news – Rover from No 12, Sookie from Greenfield Road, Spot from Park View and … eeuugh … cat.  Moving on, then.

Alf was a simple man with simple desires, easily fulfilled.  Take this walk, for instance.  Plodding through the grey streets with rain funnelling down the back of his neck may have left any other man feeling somewhat low.  A little depressed.  But not Alf.  Walkies was bonding time with Butch.  Two males against the world.  Or Alf’s world, at least, the predominating hormone in his household being oestrogen, since his sons, Tommy and Ted, had gone out into the big, wide world, leaving Alf and Ada with Susan, their daughter, Vikki, their granddaughter and Vikki’s new baby, Scarlet. 

Susan hadn’t always lived at home.  She had been married to Micky for fourteen years, but Micky’s too-ready hands had lashed out once too often and Susan had eventually come back home, back to her father’s protection, while the divorce went through and she and Vikki had never left. 

Vikki had grown up with her Gran and Pops and, to be honest, Alf and Ada had loved it.  Vikki was their little darling.  Scarlet had been a bit of a shock, mind you, what with Vikki only being 18.  Ada had been distraught, bent in on herself with grief and shame in equal measure.  Alf had just wanted to go out and find the boy who’d done the deed and fled and flatten the spineless piece of … 

Susan took it calmly after tearing off a strip or two, asking Vikki why she had been so careless and thoughtless and didn’t she want a career and a life before she got tied down to nappies and nurseries?  Still, in the end, what’s done is done.  The test of character is what you do when the chips are down, or so Alf believed.  And now they’d all got over the scandal, Scarlet was a blessing.  Noisy and messy and time-consuming and her bits and pieces seemed to seep out of every nook and cranny, but a boon in his and Ada’s twilight years.  Alf wondered if Tommy, Ted and Susan had taken up so much time and space when they’d been nippers.  He didn’t remember that they had.  Maybe he hadn’t noticed.  Or maybe babies these days just had more things.

Butch made another stop which necessitated Alf bringing out a plastic bag to remove all deposits and then, absolving himself of any responsibility, Butch stood scouting out the area while the clean-up operation took place.  The owner of 64 Park View watched surreptitiously out of the window.

‘Yeah, she’ll be out to bloody well check after we’ve gone, boy.  Bloody ‘ell, what’s Ada been feedin’ yer?  Disgustin’ this.  Come on, Butch-me-boy.  Last lap now.  Home strait.’

Man and dog turned now onto home turf, Field End Road.  Number 6 was at the end and behind the red front door, both Alf and Butch knew, was a soft armchair, a warm fire and a steak and kidney pie for tea.