War Stories Part VI - Waldo and the beery breath

Continuing the sagas and stories of my working life, up to now anyway. If you want to read the preamble, click here to go to the first posting in the series, which contains a short version of my CV.

I used to live some 20 miles from work, and had to get the 0659hrs train which arrived at the other end at 0730hrs followed by a half hour walk to work for an 8am start. Sometimes my colleagues who had cars would spot me walking and stop and give me a lift the last bit of the route and occasionally it was Waldo (see previous War Story posts) who did so, in his old scabby Vauxhall Chevette which had been "customised" with various crap-looking stick-on plastic bits on the outside, and the whole of the inside - floor, roof, dashboard, steering wheel, seats - was covered in dark blue fur (no, really!).

Well I say fur, but in reality it was exceptionally filthy, stinking, mangy cheap nylon which would have made your hair stand up with the static were it not for the insulating properties of the greasy dirt which coated it!

Now Waldo often arrived for work still smelling of beer, and I think he was proud of this because it showed that he was a hardened drinker. A real man. The first time he stopped to pick me up though I discovered his secret, because he had an opened can of cheap lager sitting between his legs as he drove, and he took several little sips from it en-route to work.

So the smell of beer coming from him wasn't from a mammoth session the night before, it was from the small amount he'd consumed just before arriving at work!