OLD HORSE

This blip is in response to Can Carrier's challenge: Teddy Tuesday,  
and you're getting two Teds in one blip.

Yvonne is my old bear, who has appeared here before. The other Ted I'm  
remembering was an old friend and colleague of my father who, although  
a well-respected and highly qualified professional man, was like a  
character from P.G. Wodehouse. He called my mother "Old Horse", and  
would sometimes turn up on his way home on a Friday evening, take a  
couple of bottles of gin from the boot of his car saying "How about a  
snifter or two, Old Horse?".

At my sister's wedding he sat in church with an earphone in listening  
to the Test Match on his trannie. After my wedding when we'd gone back  
to my parents' from the registry office, Ted suddenly appeared at the  
back door with his gin bottles and said "I say, Old Horse, a party!  
Can I crash in?" Sometimes he'd arrive with his youngest boys and take my two youngest sisters (aged about 10 or 11) to sit in the pub garden, treating them all to lemonade and crisps until they were sick, and nipping over the road to the betting shop to put their pocket money on the horses for them.

Ted was a loyal officer in Her Majesty's armed forces and on one  
occasion, when he and Dad used to commute to London together for a  
while, he took exception to a remark another passenger - a Canadian -  
made about the royal family. When they arrived at Waterloo, Ted  
effected a citizen's arrest on the grounds that the man had insulted  
the Queen and, insisting Dad accompany him as a witness, marched off  
to hand over the bemused Canadian to the equally bemused Station  
Manager to be dealt with.

I think Ted is still around, but now very elderly and subdued. I  
believe he's even off the gin these days.