It Was The Year of '01

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We went down to Penmaenpool today, to take lunch with two of the three Johns from back in the earliest days of our living here in Gogledd Cymru [North Wales]. John One - Latham - is the friend from whom we bought our first house back in '82, in Gerlan, and John Two is my old schoolmate, John Gwilym Jones, who has lived in Majorca for almost as long as we have lived here. It's the first time Gwil Bach and I have met up since our late friend Johnny Kyte's sixtieth birthday in Birmingham, twelve years ago. Much time and more friends have passed in the interim, and the draught as my dad was always wont to put it, continues to grow stronger by the year. John mentioned a saying: 'Don't Let The Old Man In': en Español, 'No Dejes Entrar Al Viejo', also the title of a song by Toby Keith, covered by Willie Nelson et al.

Nelson has been a frequent musical companion to us for over forty years now, and whose own compositions as well as his many covers have been the soundtrack to many a drunken late-night post prandial session over the decades: 'The Red-Headed Stranger' forming the backdrop to many a teary, possibly even maudlin, evening's end before heading home in an alcoholic haze of many hour's making: the Parthian musical shot usually being 'Blue Eyes Crying in The Rain' from that very album. Alas, those days are now passed, along with many of the friends with whom we shared them; but still I refuse to let the old man in, as there are too many potential tomorrows to go just yet awhile...

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