Six Bells a ringing

I was just reflecting on the walk we did the other day.
We stopped at a pub called the Six Bells on the High Street in Brentford. We needed a stop and the Fullers sign seemed to call to us from across the road as we walked along. It was obviously a newly refurbished place and was looking well looked after with a nice smell of food cooking (the food also looked good as people across the bar were served as we waited to get a drink).
Alison was sitting in a comfortable leather arm chair as I wandered up to the bar and an old chap standing by his half pint said hello to me. He asked me if I was local and when I said I wasn’t he grinned and said he had thought so.
We got chatting as I waited and it turned out that he had been coming to the pub on and off for nearly 60 years and had actually worked in the place over a 40 year period – some of it part time and some of it full time. I asked him about what he had done and what the pub had been like and learned how the pub’s lay out had changed over the years, how it had declined and even that it had been a major international darts competition venue in the fifties and sixties. He talkked animatedly about how he had been the cellar manager for a long time here and that it had been a Fullers pub for as long as he had known the place.
He was a spritely 78 years old, keen to have a chat in his local, deaf in one ear, with a lovely sense of humour and he took delight in telling me how the refurbishments had meant that he had been able to walk through the front door to the left of the building for the first time in almost twenty years. He named the couples who had run the pub over the decades and how it had become a dirtier, less respectable place in recent years.
All of this took just a few minutes and when I had been served I said cheers to him and sat down with Alison. About five minutes later he popped across from the bar and gave Alison a boiled sweet saying that it was to help her keep up her energy for the rest of our walk. He chatted briefly to some of the other people in the bar as he finished his drink then he got ready to go, stopping briefly to wish us luck. I stood up and shook his hand and wished him all the best and he took his leave with a happy grin on his face.
Being Mr Memory Man I had forgotten his name by the time I had sat down with my pint but he reminded me so much of my dad that I found the whole encounter quite touching. Like my dad he obviously thought that you should be able to say hello to people as you pass them on the street and chat to people when you meet them in pubs and in other public places such as bus stops and Dr’s waiting rooms. The refurbished pub was not quite the sort of place he would have wanted to be but it did not take much for it to be a reasonably pleasant and friendly place despite itself. I hope he keeps on finding other people willing to chat with him on a regular basis.
It also touched a chord in me regarding the things I am writing about on the subject of pilgrimage. He is definitely someone we encountered on the way who enriched the journey for us. He did not reject us because we were strangers/aliens or outsiders. He didn’t reject us because we had backpacks and were going on a relatively long walk. These things made us appear more interesting to him. He was one brief encounter heralding many more; a glimpse of what is to come.
I look forward to meeting so many more new faces and, when we cross the Channel I just hope my French will be up to it!