2.3: A typically sketchy explanation

Alcock explains to ‘Poor Tom’ that he is really the Minkey, the Swan Hotel’s glass and bottle washer - Alcock kindly refers to his role as ‘chief glass and bottle washer’ - and shows him the newspaper clipping from 1977. Strangely, the idea that he has spent most of the last 25 years washing up in a pub does not seem to please the Minkey very much, but it does, at least, seem to open up his memories. 

Since the time that the Swan Hotel had to close because of the Pandemic, leaving him homeless, - though its paying customers seem to have gone on living there throughout, unbothered! - the Minkey has been living in a crude hovel on the Heath, with only a damp copy of the complete works of Shakespeare for company. No wonder, briefly last night, he thought he was ‘Poor Tom’! Like Japanese soldiers left on deserted Pacific islands after the Second World War, he has been completely unaware that the world had largely got back to normal and he has been living alone and unloved in autumn storms and the winter cold for ages.

Alcock decides to put this as right as he can and commissions Lois-the-Hippo to knit a simple apron (as the Minkey seems to have lost the one from the 1977 picture). It is perhaps best if we ignore the ‘fruity’ language heard in the Potting Shed while this simple task is achieved.

Clad in a stylish new apron, the Minkey follows Alcock, somewhat reluctantly, back to the Swan Hotel.