THE RESOURCEFUL OLD BUGGER
We’re visiting the father-in-law in his old village cottage, a good sixty miles from the city. The same house where he was born and raised—the one he ran away from at seventeen to join the war, only to return in ’45 with a stump where his right arm used to be…
“Mick’s not here! Gone for firewood!” laments Aunt Jean, his wife. “They’re tearing down the village hall over in Lower Bickerton—gave the timber away for free!”
The old man’s pushing eighty, but he’s still a tough old sod. Not like the soft lads you get these days.
“How far’s Lower Bickerton, then?” we ask Aunt Jean.
“Oh, not far!” She waves a hand. “Three miles or so!”
My wife and I exchange baffled glances.
Soon enough, he “arrives”—his mode of transport a battered old pram from the ’70s, missing its bassinet, listing dangerously under a pile of reclaimed planks. He shrugs off the makeshift harness—a crisscross of belts and washing line strapped across his chest to drag his haul behind him.
“There!” He beams at his unexpected windfall. “One more trip, and we’ll be set for winter!”
“How d’you plan to saw it all, Mick?” I ask, helping stack the planks.
“Got me own sawmill!” He gestures proudly at a rickety workbench cobbled together with clamps and rigged-up guides. One arm or not, he’s made it work.
On top lies an ancient, rusted handsaw with a metal handle—just like the one my dad had. The very saw I learned on as a boy.
My chest tightens. I want to help—could fetch the wood in my SUV, hire a lorry, something.
“Need a hand with anything, Mick?”
But he’s already brushing me off, adjusting his harness with his good arm.
“Bloody lorries are worse! Speed past so close they nearly clip you!”
And he’s not wrong. The A-road’s relentless—great hulking trucks roaring through the village like it’s a racetrack.
“Jean! Off again!” he calls. She comes to see him off, watching as he trudges up the lane before turning to us with pride.
“Provider, that one.”
It dawns on me then—he doesn’t *want* help. This is how he stays a proper old-school bloke. Not just a man, no—a *proper* old bugger. Never mind that he spent his life as a university dean.
I watch him disappear down the roadside, that pram rattling behind him like some grim parody of a barge-tower, the lorries belching fumes in his wake. That pram once held my wife as a baby. Now it’s his stubborn pride on wheels.
I can’t leave it be. That weekend, my lad and I sneak off to the hardware shop. We leave a shiny new Swedish saw on his workbench—hardened teeth, sleek case, the lot.
Five years later, we moved him in with us. The central heating and comfy chairs did him in within months.
After the funeral, at the wake, I found that saw untouched in its case, dusted but unused, perched on the sideboard. The neighbours chuckled.
“Typical Mick. Always saving things. Proper resourceful, he was.”
“Aye,” I nod. “Proper old bugger. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”
