August 2025. South Milford.
We leave Oddfellows playing Rick Wakeman and adverts for cremation, which is Sherburn in a nutshell, and walk the mile to Leon’s home village of South Milford, where his lovely wife and child would be standing on the doorstep to cheer him on.
A Monday afternoon in two rural Yorkshire farming villages isn’t the best time to get a feel for their pubs, but at least they were open. Well, one wasn’t, so I’ll have to return to visit the Queen o’ t’owd Thatch.
You can trust a pub with “owd” and two apostrophes in the title.
A second Swan of the trip, another pub with impressive floral displays,
another with alarmingly big L**ds flag. Oddly, it’s Castleford Tigers not the Rhinos that get the Rugby League nod.
The Swan looks the major pub of the day, friendly and unpretentious, and has an Old Mudgie approved pie crust,
though I think you can have too many Elvises, even in Yorkshire.
It’s quiet enough to make you worry about cask on a Monday,
but the Landlord is a chewy NBSS 3.5.
“Are ya fluffed old man ?” says someone, confirming we are, indeed, not in Kansas Kelham now.
It’s a relaxing place; we nearly stayed for another and a game of air hockey,
but it’s 16:20 and the last train home goes at 17:35. You know where this tale is heading, don’t you ?
retiredmartin 
“Are ya fluffed old man ?”
But what does it mean?
LikeLike
I gather that there’s a job known as a “fluffer” in certain walks of life, but I doubt that the questioner was asking if the questioned had been in receipt of their attentions in this instance, Rhys.
LikeLike
You hear that people have to stay working for longer nowadays, so maybe the older gentleman was still in the movie business I guess. There’s a lot of demand for that kind of thing in Japan.
LikeLiked by 1 person