It's a small world, after all

Six degrees of separ-ale-tion

Got that annoying song in your head from the Walt Disney World ride yet? Good. Imagine how I’ve felt writing this update.

I’ve been to WDW Florida three times, though not since the year 2000. And I can still remember the whole bleeding ride. That annoying song. Those slightly creepy dolls everywhere you turn. The just-too-cold air conditioning to be comfortable, despite the blistering heat outside.

Why, I hear you ask, has such a juvenile ride remained firmly implanted in your memory? Well, for that you’d have to blame my sister. On our last family trip to Florida, whilst I was excited about blasting through the loops and rolls of the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster (featuring Aerosmith), or dangling precariously over the alligators on Busch Gardens’ suspended, looping coaster Montu, my sister only wanted to ride It’s a Small World. On repeat. And because it is such a boring ride, it didn’t have much of a queue.

So whenever we had a few minutes and wanted to escape the heat, I’d be dragged into those same darkened tunnels, to hear that whiny, slightly sinister refrain over and over again.

What’s that? It was 23 years ago and I should be over it by now? Perhaps I should be. But you’ve never met anyone who is such a Mouse-ophile as my sister. I’m not kidding. Her first job was in the Disney store. She’s lived and worked at Walt Disney World on two occasions. Any artwork in her house which isn’t a photograph of family is related in some way to the Mouse. She even forces her children to wear Disney clothing on an almost-daily basis.

So the fact is, whenever I see her, I cannot help but think about Walt and his bloody mouse.

Although the reason I’m thinking about her, and thus the Mouse, in this update is a little more contrived, but nonetheless relates to the theme of it being a small world.

You’ve doubtless heard the phrase ‘six degrees of separation’, and the trivia game it spawned, ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’, where, it is purported, you can take any film actor and, with a maximum of six moves, get back to Kevin Bacon.

(As an example for those who haven’t seen the game, start with Elvis Pressley. He appeared in ‘Change of Heart’ in 1969 with Ed Asner. Ed Asner then appeared in ‘JFK’ in 1991 with Kevin Bacon)

Well, it turns out, one two occasions, with two separate people, I’ve discovered links to my own past whilst in the pub, from people who have no right to be linked to me outside of the pub.

Sven

As far as I can tell, there is no Scandinavian blood in Sven, and he isn’t a reindeer from a Disney film (see, it’s a bleeding curse!). I’ve called him that because he has a love of a particular car marque from Sweden. Some might even call it an unhealthy obsession.

The classic car world is one with which I am not too familiar, but I’m aware of the stereotypes. Old men, oil stains on their clothes, a scruffy old flat cap, muck and grease under their nails, and a slightly adenoidal voice. They have those old AA metal badges pinned to the front grille of their classics, and probably a load of other pewter plate memorabilia on proud display in their living room and garage.

What they don’t tend to look like is a young chap, often immaculately turned out in the shiniest brogues a man has ever owned, nice smart overcoat, with a pair of pin stripe black slacks and a tasteful shirt to match.

But that is normally how Sven appears at the pub.

To say it is unusual to see a thirty-something man not conforming to the ‘classic car lifestyle’ choices and yet live, breathe and sleep classics is an understatement.

So the fact that I know two people who do that is utterly bizarre.

In fact, I shared this same thought with Sven one day.

I told him about another chap I used to work with, who had a penchant for classics too. At the time, he’d have been in his mid-twenties, and his everyday driver was a classic short-wheel-base Defender pick up, complete with hard top. He’d swapped that for a long-wheel-base one with back seats, all the while keeping his cherished Triumph TR7 neatly tucked away under a tarp in his dad’s garage, immaculately polished, chrome wheels glimmering, to only be fetched out on the sunniest of summer days.

These cars, classics all, were an investment. His ultimate intention was to sell them both, buy himself a cheap runaround and use the remainder of the proceeds as a deposit for his house.

When he found love, he did just that, and bought himself a house. And then, of course, he was immediately missing the lifestyle. So his cheap little runaround of choice? An MGB GT.

‘This sounds familiar’, says Sven. ‘Is his name Gary Grimshaw?’

Incredulous, I replied that it was. Turns out, Sven had grown up with Gary at school and they had bonded over their mutual love of classic cars. In fact, they remain firm friends and they have both recently been seen on each others’ stag weekends.

How strange that I have separately become friends with two people who chose the classic car lifestyle who were already firm friends.

I’m not sure what that says about my choice of acquaintances, or the people I attract…

Moose

I introduced Moose a couple of updates ago, where he’d done me a little work on the car and I’d demonstrated a bit of a naïve understanding of the pub-based favour-for-pint economy. We’ve been friends with Moose since well before the P*ndemic hit, and had spent many evenings with him, his partner and the rest of the group.

In fact, as the pubs were forced to close, we, along with seemingly everybody else in the UK, took to socialising on Zoom on a Saturday evening. The fact is, we must have spent a hundred hours talking to each other over the course of several years. And throughout that time, we never established how we were connected before the pub.

That is, until we were talking one day as pubs began to reopen.

We’ve all had conversations where you jump from topic to topic, and would then struggle to explain how you went from talking about a bit of DIY to the merits of various ages of cheddar cheese. Well, this was one of those types of conversations.

And at some point, the subject of my nephew and trains came up. I suggested that my nephew’s love for trains reminded me in some ways of a lad I grew up with in a different town on the other side of Wakefield. I told Moose that the young chap in question had been to one of my birthday parties as a child, at Milwaukee Exchange in Birstall, and had conspired to split his head open on the corner of the hand dryer in the loos.

This young lad was obsessed with trains. He had an enviable Hornby layout, drew trains, read books about them, could name different classes of locomotive at a glance. Properly fanatical stuff. And then I said he shared my first name.

At which point Moose volunteered this lad’s surname. I was slightly taken aback, since as far as I knew Moose was from round these parts and had no reason to be anywhere near the other side of Wakefield as a child.

‘Oh’, says Moose, ‘that’s my cousin’. His mum’s sister is the mother of the fella in question. Now it may seem a little weird that, years after the event, I’d met and become friends with the cousin of someone I knew as a child.

But I didn’t just know this lad. Our families were, for a time, inextricably linked.

His dad (Moose’s uncle) used to play football with my dad and uncle on a Thursday evening. His sister (Moose’s younger cousin) was best friends with my sister at school. We used to go to their house for minding when both of my parent were at work in school holidays. We used to go for day trips with them, sitting four abreast in the back seat of their car, the two middle children sharing the same seat belt.

And his mum (Moose’s auntie, Moose’s mum’s sister) even worked for my mum for a spell, when she had her own pub.

In fact, I remember being in the pub when she worked there. She was writing the blackboard behind the bar, and was struggling a little bit. She asked me how to spell ‘barbecue’. I was probably five or six at the time. I did my best to help her but in the end she ended up putting ‘BBQ’ instead because she could spell that.

I’d even been to Moose’s grandma’s house. When we got onto this particular topic, I was able to describe quite a bit about the layout of not only her house and garden, but the road it was on. It turns out, not only did Moose’s gran live on this road, but so too did, at one time, my old junior school headteacher.

Now, I think you can understand why I think it’s a small world…

If you enjoy reading about our regulars, please leave a like and comment below, subscribe for free if you haven’t already, and share this with your friends and family. Thanks for reading!