Brighton Mick

Attended the funeral of a long term customer of TB last week (he went back to the time when TB had both public and saloon bars and used to be crowded with people, mostly with jackets and ties, on a Sunday lunchtime. So well before my time), so this by way of a memorial.

Despite his name, he was actually born in Shoreham-by-Sea and was brought up in Portslade. And while he had plenty of stories about his time there, I think he had lived for near 50 years in the Epsom area, where he had found his wife and made his family. Furthermore, he hated his birth - not sure about baptismal - name of Arthur, preferrng to be known as Mick. Arthur only got out for hospitals, funerals and such like.

I offer an anecdote from the TB itself, rather than one from Brighton. I think it dates from before the smoking ban, mid to late evening. The bar was reasonably busy with maybe a dozen or more of us in the immediate vicinity of his far right hand end of the bar, next to the till, including one person who was something of an expert on pop and came, as it happened, only two states away from Tupelo itself. Something of an expert on the whole subject.

The conversation drifted, for some reason which I forget, onto Elvis the King, and then into one of those foolish, alcohol fueled disputes about the year in which he was born, this being before the time when you could ask your telephone about such things. The dispute got quite lively with Tupelo holding out firmly for date A and with Brighton (as he was sometimes known) holding out equally firmly for date B, a few years adrift of date A. The dispute raged backwards and forwards, there were arguments for and arguments against, and money was staked.

I am not quite sure now how it happened, but we all, including Brighton, came to realise that date A was the right answer. But Brighton still held his corner, still kept his flag flying. He kept it going until he we had all lost interest, although it has to be said that his protests had weakened by the end. But he never conceded defeat and he never bought Tupelo a drink, never mind paid up.

Great fun all round.

PS: for those not much interested in the King, Tupelo is also an important stop on the Natchez Trace, the New World equivalent of our much shorter Icknield Way.