{"id":2160,"date":"2024-09-15T08:38:19","date_gmt":"2024-09-15T08:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2160"},"modified":"2024-09-15T08:38:22","modified_gmt":"2024-09-15T08:38:22","slug":"the-things-that-are-precious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/the-things-that-are-precious\/2160\/","title":{"rendered":"The Things That Are Precious"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Two<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The old man sat in a high-back chair just along the bar from where I nursed a warming beer. I hadn\u2019t noticed him when I came in, but he seemed like he\u2019d always been there, like a decorative feature hired by the owners to add colour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou look like they\u2019ve salted that beer,\u201d he said, his voice the timbre of oak barrels and Marlborough Reds. He hunched over his shot glass, not looking up, a heavy coat draped on the back of his chair, one sleeve dusting the floor, the other tucked under his dirty overalls, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing thick forearms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cEh?\u201d  A one-word query was the most I could muster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour beer,\u201d he angled his glass at mine. \u201cYou\u2019ve been hanging on to it for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh yeah,\u201d I said, picking up my glass. \u201cLost in thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPenny for them,\u201d he said, scraping his chair around and putting a work-boot on the brass rail lining the foot of the bar. He looked up and pushed his cap back on his head revealing a face, which was lined but strongly featured, with a firm mouth haloed by grey stubble, a stubby nose, and dark blue eyes glinting below a prominent brow. \u201cA man not drinking his beer has got to have troubles on his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou could say that.\u201d I replied. I offered a drawn smile. It was the autumn of 2008, banks were crashing like drunk drivers on the financial highway to hell, and my second mortgage, the only prop for my business in an increasingly fraught trading landscape, got ticketed as subprime by some cold-eyed, lickspittle, computer jockey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cForeclosure is our only option,\u201d the letter said. My wife though, had other options. These were mostly to do with taking the kids to her mother\u2019s. It had been coming for a while; long hours, frayed tempers, the constant battle with bills, and a devotion that drifted away through the holes in our domestic life, all combined to turn the things we used to adore into the things we now despised. Until nothing was left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNothing, huh?\u201d he asked. I guessed I\u2019d been rambling. \u201cYou know, I was like you. Standing on the precipice. My business, marriage, and my very standing in the community, gone overnight. I went to my priest and confessed I was thinking of ending it all. He said to me that the things that were precious, the things that mattered, I still had: my life, my health, and my mind. He told me, this is a trial. Just draw a line, he said, and start afresh. So, that\u2019s what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you do?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI give pennies,\u201d he said, sliding a coppery coin across the wet surface of the bar. \u201cThanks for your thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I picked it up and turned back to him, wondering what I was worried about, but he was gone, with only the echo of beating wings to say he\u2019d been there at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou look like they\u2019ve salted that beer,\u201d he said, his voice the timbre of oak barrels and Marlborough Reds. He hunched over his shot glass, not looking up, a heavy coat draped on the back of his chair, one sleeve dusting the floor, the other tucked under his dirty overalls, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing thick forearms. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"yes","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1129,1384],"tags":[1383,127],"class_list":["post-2160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1129","category-sept-2024-precious","tag-precious","tag-things"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-yQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2162,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160\/revisions\/2162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}