Gray gave me another two fingers of Guinness to wash down my pie and James said, steady on, old-timer, but he winked again so I knew it was okay. And then Lucy goes, come on, lad, don’t keep your crowd waiting, go on wi’ yer story. So then I told them all about Leonard and his Austin and Little Big Man and why you needed a Facebook page for marketing purposes. And then about Toad Hall and the bush in the middle of the path and Bill’s full English breaky and the invisible Gloria. And about the Noble Goat and how it looked like the dog was driving the milk float, and Lou behind the bar and Big Al reciting a John Keats poem like wow, and me still winning by a tit’s whisker.

And you know what’s cool? I had to keep stopping because the guys were all laughing so loud they couldn’t hear me. Like really and truly proper laughing. Like my story was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. When I got to the bit about the two Franks having a dustup at Swansea’s Got Talent and Leonard asking if the registration desk lady’s husband got an encouragement certificate, Beano slapped the table so hard his glass bounced off and fell into his lap and gave him a trouserful of Guinness. Which made them all laugh even harder, and then Gray nudged me and went, och, Norman, I haven’t seen the old geezer laugh that hard since old Robbie Jones finally bought a round back in ’87.

Every time I stopped talking one of them yelled at me to keep on going. So I kept on talking about how I turned into an alien for a night at the Premier Inn in Bournemouth and about meeting Adam. Then about having to make a run for it because of ruining all the towels and Leonard getting to have a go on Adam’s mobility scooter. And about Leonard making Little Big Man look so good on Facebook that I actually got a spot at the Fringe for one night only at the Duke.

Then because they kept on saying, gaun yersel’, Norman, I told them how when we got to Edinburgh the Soft Fudge turned out to be a weird old empty house in a dodgy neighborhood, but it did have clean sheets. And that we woke up and Leonard had nicked off in the Austin and Mum went out to look for him and she didn’t get back by six o’clock at the latest like she promised. Then I said about the dodgy geezers outside the window and how it gave me the idea to call a responsible adult, but that Big Al and Kathy and Tony and even Adam didn’t answer their phones and so I called James, who used to know my mum a long time ago.

I looked over at James, and he was frowning a bit, like he was trying to remember something, but then he gave me a nod and a wink, so then I told them how I caught the bus to rescue him from the tumble dryer of the Whiskey-a-Go-Go, and how we pretended to be chefs and broke into Slim’s office and found a load of money and the cooked blue book. Then, after the part about escaping on the moped and seeing Slim’s goon with his bum in the bins, I folded my arms and sat back and said, that’s it, folks.