![]() |
South
Devon awoke to a heavy frost on the morning of December 5th, 1998. Graham
Fletcher, 38, a self-employed builder and father of two, was one of those
who had forsaken a lie-in to work on this clear-skied Saturday. With the
hard, white sun behind him, he cut through the air on his black Honda Fireblade
motorbike. The snaking, rolling curves of the road between his hometown,
Kingsbridge, and the city of Plymouth, twenty miles away, were described
in the movements of his bike like a finger tracing the contours of a sleeping
face.
A quarter of the way along this route lies Aveton Gifford, a small village of around 500 inhabitants, served by a grocery shop - open five and a half days a week, an Anglican church and two pubs. One of the pubs, The Taverners, changes hands faster than its handful of customers can keep track of. The other, The Fisherman's Rest, has been managed by Jim Povey for five years. "To watch him now, stooped over
That morning, like any other, Jim Povey was performing
the tasks necessary of a pub landlord. There were guests wanting
breakfast, ale barrels to be checked, firewood to be chopped and tables
to polish.
Jim is a proud man, the father of identical twin
boys, Adam and Wayne, now 21. Still a tall and vigorous figure, he is nonetheless
showing signs of the winding down process of age. He wears half-moon glasses
as casually as he can. Although he loves his pub and life in the village,
he spends hours reminiscing over a time when he had less responsibilities;
was more prosperous.
At lunchtime, that December 5th, Phil, an ex-policeman
sat silently in the bar. He is a drawn, emaciated sketch of the rotund,
obnoxiously loud man he was just months previously, before his wife left
him. Rarely eating, and drinking soda water religiously - for which the
bar staff do not charge him - Phil has had to buy two new sets of clothes
as his weight plummeted. Several natives of the village returning for Christmas
wondered discreetly whether he was suffering from cancer.
"The river Avon was cloaked
Two weeks later, after-hours in the pub, Jim recounted
the incident to Jonathan, a young barman who had returned from college
to work over the Christmas holiday.
Christmas and New Year celebrations at the Fisherman's
Rest were a sad affair. One of the highlights came when a young woman,
enjoying her last blow-out before a long-procrastinated stint in a rehabilitation
clinic, let everyone know just what she thought of them. Her parents had
asked the bar staff not to serve her any alcohol, "but its Christmas,"
she kept saying, "Christmas for fuck's sake."
A month on since the accident, bouquets of flowers still sit by the side of the road. Each day they are blown over by the wind or by the rushing air of passing lorries, and each day they are stood up again. Several times, visitors to the Fisherman's Rest have reported seeing a figure there, grieving. Two weeks into the new year, Jim Povey heard that
the pub was to be sold. He always knew that this might happen, but it seemed
more unlikely as the pub stayed on the market year after year. The owner's
high asking price had finally been met, and Jim's spell as landlord of
the Fisherman's would soon be over.
There were two great losses in the village this Christmas. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|