I have a friend. I know this might seem odd to a lot of you, but I have a friend. I met him not long after landing on these fair shores. He was drunk in a bar and, naturally, I honed in on him and we got drunk together.
We’ve spent many a night, getting drunk, exchanging woes and generally setting the world to rights.
As we all know, you can only set the world to rights after copius amounts of alcohol. And so it was.
During all the time we’ve spent together, he has had a problem. A problem that he has wrestled with alone. He has been unable to even give me a hint as to what the problem is. So, as I couldn’t know what the problem was, we decided to give it a name.
“Hows things with "Bob?” I'd ask
“Ahhhh, 'Bob' is ok” would come the reply “No change”
And so it was. We would talk about 'Bob', but I would never know what 'Bob' was. In six months, I’ve never found out about 'Bob.'
This weekend I got a call from my mate asking to meet for an afternoon beverage. Of course I obliged, only to find my mate there, sober. Not only was he sober, but he was scrubbed up.
Sober, scrubbed up and in a dog collar. For all the world to see, he was a priest.
Turns out, 'Bob', was a drinking problem and my mate was “suspended” from duty until a minor charge of being drunk whle holding a sermon was investigated.
He was going back to the church, and I would not see him again in a pub. Good for him I thought!
“Would you like to hear my service?” he asked…”I’d like to thank you for you help over the recent months”
…Hmmmm, not sure about this one, but “Go on then, why not?” was the reply.
The next day was Sunday and I headed off to the church. Now I’m not exactly a God fearing man, but today frightened the bejeezus out of me.
Lord have mercy!
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