29 May 2026, Freewriters Community Daily Writing Prompt Day 3118: A Bad Day for All Concerned

This post was inspired by today's 5-minute writing prompt in the Freewriters Community - 29 May 2026, Freewriters Community Daily Writing Prompt Day 3118: throw him under the bus

Enjoy !

Image by scharfsascha from Pixabay

This one is a true story, from quite a few years ago. Back in the late '80's, I used to drink in South Wimbledon, at the Leather Bottle pub. That was after the legendary Southampton pub in Surbiton was closed down.

The Leather Bottle was a pretty average pub - not a dive, but not some fancy upmarket gastro-pub either. That came later; it was used as a regular location for filming The Bill (a UK police-themed TV series that ran for decades). They spent the money doing the place up, and the producers decided it was no longer fitted the look they were after. You can see what I mean if you look it up on Google Earth, it's got a daft blue paint scheme and silly little picket fences blocking off where we used to park our bikes.

But the great thing about the Leather Bottle was that it had awesome live music every night and on Sunday lunchtimes.

The landlord (whose name I won't give here) was a really lovely bloke if he liked you. But he was Irish, and incredibly fiery if he didn't like you or you broke the rules.

One lunchtime, someone he'd previously had trouble with came in. The landlord spotted him, and told him he'd been barred and to get out. They troublemaker started to kick off, so the landlord grabbed him by the collar and dragged him outside.

I don't know anyone who admitted seeing the actual fight, but it ended when the landlord shoved the idiot into the road, right in front of a number 131 bus. Splat. Permanently barred. From the pub, and from life.

The landlord went down for several years, and we got a new landlord with less of a short fuse. I heard the story a little while later, from the father of a girlfriend who was a bus driver based at Merton garage; he drove the 131, but it was a colleague of his driving that day. Poor chap was pretty traumatised. So yeah, a bad day for all concerned.

Also... oops, I spent a bit more than 5 minutes typing this up. D'oh ! That's what happens when you get carried away by a story.....