It was a scene from a Hollywood Blockbuster, from the days of the Movies. Our hero reached out his hand for his favourite cocktail. “Did you crush the ice Beryl? Just the way I like it” His movements were smooth, as his crimson smoking jacket wafted across the leather Chesterfield Chaise Longue.

He turned to face Beryl, who glided towards him, all shimmering in red silk and black nylons. “Just the way you like it Arthur” said Beryl, in a voice evocative of the German leading ladies of the 30’s.

As his hand moved tantalisingly close to her perfumed painted fingers, a drink within his grasp, he over reached, fell off the sofa and thudded to the floor in a flurry of “Y” fronts and airtex vest. “Bloody hell” he cried.

As the lights clicked on, it was not Beryl’s elegant black sling backs and red toe nail polish wedged between Arthur’s nose and the carpet, but a pair of pink fluffy slippers. He raised one bloodshot eye to see the landlady, arms folded across her blue winceyette nightie.

“Are you alright love? What happened? Did you lock yourself out of your room. The doors shut by themselves, if you go for a tinkle in the night, you’ve got to remember your key. Happens all the time“. Hauling himself up onto his knees, Arthur blinked he eyes around the bar and breakfast room of the Moline Guest House.

Consciousness and reality came flooding back. “What? Er, ooh. Have you got another key, I seem to have mislaid mine”. “There, there love. Get yourself up off that hard floor, and I’ll go and get it. Time you was in bed. Going diving tomorrow aren’t you?”

Well, not really Hollywood, but Arthur’s night on the couch was probably more exciting than a blown out weekend’s diving in wet and windy Weymouth. Two drifts and another wreck alongside the harbour wall in just 8 metres. Oh well, there’s always the Scillies!

Doggy