Just below the dawdling canal running through Startford-upon-Avon, winds a road heading east out to Wellesbourne - or some town just as equally dull. It was on that road that I met that Welsh-born, Midlands-raised, Red-head. Let's call him 'Welsh-Red'.
If you head the other way on that road - towards Bidford - you'd find yourself along a stretch of tar flanked by houses of the very rich and the very poor. No pattern to their procedure - they just all jumble in all together. A few mansions, then a shack, then a twisted metal garage door, then a tiny yellow car, then some more large houses, then a council flat. Another council flat and then a bald, high-price lawyer leaving the sprawling, low-slung house he bought for his bride some twelve years earlier. He was just dropping off the kids. He doesn't live there anymore. That same bride done tossed him out months ago. She had been OK with his late night fraternising at the office, but once the gaggle of single mums in that line-up of cars outside school learned that he had unzipped his trousers with one of their very own in that very same line-up, well, you know...disloyalty, shame, embarrassment, betrayal, rage... it all leads to the same place - late Saturday nights at that grey-toned house with the kids and the estranged husband replaced by young men, strong drugs and un-eaten take-away. Only way to treat that particular pain....
But all that is on the road to Bidford. I met Welsh-Red on the road to Wellesbourne - whole different set-up on that side.
