It came to my attention that Alexander Crickston and Sir Loathsome had more to say. Let's tune in:
“Reality?!” shot back Alexander. "I want no more of your mundane and decrepit reality! I seek to elevate myself higher than what I've previously known as 'living' conditions. Squalor and debauchery may be your chosen station in life, Sir Loathsome, but 'tis not mine anymore. I have caught a glimpse of a more polished and refined world, one which I seek to inhabit for the remainder of my days".
"That’s the Alex that I used to know" responded Sir Loathsome. "The one that had a little bit of fire in 'im."
"A fire passionate in the extreme to distance myself from you and your kind" Alex replied. "Driver, make haste for Grimstone Manor!"
"See ya wouldn't wanna be ya" hollered Sir Loathsome, but by then the clatter of horses' hooves all but drowned out his final jab.
"My, my, my. There’s a changed man" Lord Chuggleston, one of Sir Loathsome's mates, glumly said.
"Aye" muttered another, Lady Hampton. "Don't drink the water in Scotland!"
"How long do you think he'll be that way?" growled a third, Earl Smithfield-on-toast.
"No telling" Sir Loathsome spoke as if he was wondering, which was something he rarely did, for he did not wonder about many things. "I'm afraid our old friend has taken up a new way and left the known and well understood behind. His is a path of exploration, of finding what works and what doesn't. We are all called to stray from the Cock and Bull occasionally, in search of that which might otherwise comfort us, until we regain our senses and return home."
"The Cock and Bull is our home?" Lord Chuggleston blurted.
"It must be. We spend so much time here!" Lady Hampton retorted, matter of factly.
"There's no better home for me" Earl Smithfield-on-toast replied. "I have no desire to go anywhere else. Not even over to the Coat O' Arms, which is only a block away"
"When you know it, when you know where home is" Sir Loathsome spoke for all of them, "you are content. Alex has not found home yet, and so he must search for it. I'm glad I'm not in his shoes!"
Breakfast is served!
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And so many a year passed, and Alexander Crickston lived somebody else's dream, which he thought was his. He followed in his father's footsteps and became a quite successful and accomplished businessman. His wife loved him dearly, and his four children adored him, for he slavishly devoted all his time and efforts towards furthering their desires but then one day, one fateful and totally unforeseen day, as Sir Loathsome had predicted, Alexander Crickston woke from sleep and for the first time in decades, asked himself "What the hell am I doing with my life?" The first hints of depression had landed in Alex's mind, and there were more to come.
He tried to push them away but the instances where he fluctuated between happy and not became more and more pronounced. His family and business could provide no cure for this malaise so he took, upon his doctor and family's pleadings, a long overdue sabbatical and went a'wandering.
Across England and Scotland he went, searching for something, he knew not what, and one day he was close enough to his old home town of Everton to drop in- if he dared. Something compelled him to do so and so he wandered through the town, even stopping trepidatiously in front of the door of his old haunt the Cock and Bull to possibly pay his old friends a visit.
But, even after mustering up the courage to go inside and in an incognito way see if anybody he recognized was there, what he found when he entered was that nobody he even remotely knew was in there. The pub was also under new ownership and its interior had been so redecorated as to be almost unrecognizable.
The utter inability to touch base with anything from his past piqued his curiosity so he started asking around, trying to find out what had happened, for he had been away for a very long time.
It was a contact at the local golf links that was able to provide some information, a man name of Tom Pinch, who was a distant relative of old Mr. Whatley, now deceased.
"Your gang disbanded" Mr. Pinch relayed, "about ten years after you left for London and your financial career. Sir Loathsome, I believe that was the name you called him, got killed in a pub fight over a spilled pint of Guinness that interrupted a critical dart's match final. Made all the papers. After that, Lady Hampton disappeared for some time, then reappeared, a shady figure of the same gender from the south of France on her arm, and Lord Chuggleston hit a big jackpot down at the betting shop, which increased his intake of drink for awhile before he went into rehab. He runs marathons now and competes all over the world in his age group, which is quite high"
"Amazing!"
"Yes. Who ever would have thunk it? Smithfield-on-toast then died unexpectedly after a minor bout of Hong Kong flu but he left a wife and daughter. They're doing quite well. Mrs. Smithfield-on-toast is an artist, and her daughter lives in Wales, I think. You might want to talk to Mrs. Smithfield-on-toast- she lives right here in town"
"I think I will. What is her address?"
"I don't know exactly. She's next to the breakfast shop on Trent. Ask at the shop if she's in, she spends a lot of time there"
Everton, village of
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Off Alexander went to the shop, and indeed the widow of Smithfield-on-toast was there. Her name was Nancy.
"Oh- so you're Alexander" she said upon meeting him. "I heard a lot about you. The gang talked about you a lot"
"They did?"
"Oh yes. Pined for you, they did. Lamented that you had gone".
"Oh". The memory of his times with the gang had been so long ago that this hardly registered in Alexander's highly logical brain, but something deep inside became stirred by the news. "I never really missed them"
"That's the way it goes" Nancy said sadly. We never seem to appreciate people at the time we are lucky enough to have them"
"Lucky enough?" Alexander scoffed. "It was a amusing time, but an uncomfortable and disgusting one as well. I've no fond memories of it"
"All the pity to you then" Nancy replied. "You've yet to find home"
"I've a fine home, thank you very much"
"Nah, ya haven't" Nancy replied. "Home is everywhere you are in every moment that you live. It's in appreciating whatever is going on around you and trusting that there's a bigger plan. I can see in you that you've got a bit of wandering left to do. Wander then and while you're doing so, see if you can find home in any of that"
"What a confounding statement!" Alexander thought, and then after a brief bit of garnering more local trivia, he bid impertinent Nancy adieu.
"What in the blazes does she know?!" he muttered to himself while walking briskly down cobbled Trent lane, a possibly very long road ahead of him.