That Bloke at OUR table

There was someone sitting at our table. This was the second time in less than a month that this had happened. My friend in the wheelchair was ropable but I suggested, good old level-headed me, that we cool it.

Mind if we sit at our table? I asked.

Be my guest, he said quaffing his ale.

We won’t bother you, I said and then after we got our beers we became companionable.

Our friend introduced himself.

Steve, he said extending his arm for a handshake. I didn’t want to seem prissy and Covidy, so I shook it with all the manliness I could muster. [I go to gym :)]

Unlike our former usurper, the bloke with a book, Steve was not a reader. He was a man of action who spent much of his life as a pneumatic/hydraulic mechanical engineer working in mines throughout Queensland and W.A.

He was a good drinker too, downing four pints to our one. And he was still lucid and like our former companion a Catholic who still attended mass.

How come, I said to my mate after, we always end up with Catholics?

And loners, he said.

Maybe it says more about us than them? I suggested.