Remember my old mate Bert? He was 87 years old on November 24th. Of course he had a fall in his house back in early July and was then in hospital for almost a month. He had broken his hip - an injury which required surgery.
For four and a half months Bert has been housebound. He has a walking frame and he cannot get upstairs. His bedroom is now in the front room of his terraced house and he uses a commode for his daily "discharges". Fortunately, his 55 year old son Philip is able to act as his live-in carer.
However, Philip is a football safety steward and every two weeks he spends five hours at Sheffield United's football ground - Bramall Lane. He was there today as United were playing Brentford in a Premier League fixture. I knew that Bert would be on his own all afternoon so I went over to see him and stayed in his house for a couple of hours.
I was able to make him a mug of coffee and a snack. I had also brought over a couple of bottles of beer for him, a banana, a chocolate roll and a bag of cheese and onion crisps (American: chips).
Bert's house
He finds it very difficult to use the TV remote even though his son has helpfully made a big drawing of it with arrows pointing to the vital buttons. I played around with it and was able to get "YouTube" on screen. Then I searched for a couple of Bert's favourite songs that he used to sing in our local pub.
I was able to locate "Whispering Grass" by The Ink Spots, "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn and his most favourite of favourites - "Hev Yew Gotta Loight, Boy?" by Allan Smethurst - a.k.a. The Singing Postman.
It's a novelty song that was a hit in this country in 1966. Sung in a Norfolk dialect, it concerns a relationship in which the need to light cigarettes seemed to be ever-present. The object of the postman's affections was one Molly Windley, his "little nicotine girl". It's got to be one of the weirdest songs ever by one of the most unlikely pop stars and if you are not English you may struggle to understand it. But it's a song that always brightened Bert's face.
I left him after five o' clock watching "Crocodile Dundee" but here's "Hev Yew Gotta Loight, Boy?" Don't have nightmares.
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