A duel with a lone stranger

It is one of Murphy’s lesser-known laws that a stranger can often be a fiend you do not know. No matter what the old song says.

Coming into the bar, he gave the impression of someone better suited to be throwing people out of it. A large man in height and girth, discharging cuffs in all directions, he demanded a gin and tonic and then proceeded to address the assembly at large.

It appeared he had just been to Oasim, the medical building around the corner.

“Now where can that name possibly come from?” he asked so, thinking he really wanted to know, I told him.

“It stands for Odds and Sods in Medicine,” I said. And realised too late, by his reaction, by the cold Paddington Bear stare, that it was a rhetorical question.

Rhetorical, because he had wanted to answer it himself.

“Yes, indeed,” Gin-and-Tonic allowed. “Odds and Sods in Medicine. So named by Dr Frank Counihan, a Quixotic gentleman.”

The large hand around the glass moved nearer, the stare shortening on its focal axis.

“You, sir,” he said to me, “are obviously someone who has travelled. Would you happen to know the derivation of ‘scuba’, as in diving?”

That was the time to have left, pleading an instant appointment, perhaps at Oasim. But I mistook madness for myopia.

“Well, yes. I believe it’s something like, let me think. Self-Contained Underwater . . .”

“Breathing Apparatus,” G-and-T conceded, so making me thirty-love. But I could see it was going to be a hard set.

“How long is a nail?” Next service, exploiting the backhand.

“As long as it needs to be?”

“No,” he said. “Precisely two and a quarter inches. It’s a measure used by tailors.”

Time for a fast return. “There’s a little town in the North Western Cape called Reivilo. Where,” I asked, “does that name come from?”

“It’s Olivier spelt backwards,” he said, quick as a flash. “Now, one for you. In which ship did Francis Drake sail the world?”

“The Golden Hind.”

“No. Good try. Right ship but wrong name. It was called Pelican at the time. Renamed later.”

“Could you,” I ventured, “list for me the five boroughs of New York City?” He was good, but I had him for a point. He got Manhatten, the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn but missed Staten Island.

Audaciously, G-and-T came back to me in the same court. One US state was surrounded by seven others. Which? Didn’t know, couldn’t have guessed. Kentucky.

A bumper now from him, since we were right out of tennis-type metaphors. “How much coal can you get in a room?”

“A  roomful?”

“Wrong,” he said. “Nine tons. A room of tons is nine tons. Look it up. And what is a frog?”

“Frog?”

“Yes, other than the slimy thing in ponds.”

Fortune must look kindly on amateur builders and one-time brickie’s mates. “A frog is that little hollow in a brick,” I said, “where you slap in the cement. It’s what helps hold walls together.”

“And an elephant, apart from the tusker kind?”

“It’s a size of paper,” I said.

“A pig?”

I shook a head that suddenly had begun to swim with creatures in various forms of mutation.

“A pig is a segment of an orange. What,” he asked, “would you say a ram was, if not an uncastrated male sheep or the zodiac sign or – “

“Hold on,” I said. “Whoa!” For a minute I thought I had checked the verbiage but he was just ordering another gin.

“A famous English sportsman,” I said, “scored a half-century for England at Lord’s before lunch and then went on to net the winning goal in the European Cup Final at Wembley.”

“You mean on the same day?”

“That very afternoon. It was that silly time of the year when the seasons overlap. He had professional contracts to honour in both codes.”

G-and-T drew deeply on his memory reserves. “Denis Compton. No? What about his brother Leslie? Quite right. Leslie never played cricket for England. Peter Parfitt? Bill Edrich?”

Mild panic began to produce the most unlikely names from the past. “Trevor Bailey? Cyril Washbrook? George Mann? How well known was this chap?”

“Practically a household word.”

He fired a frustrated cuff. “All right. You’ve got me. Who was it?”

“Roy of the Rovers,” I said and fled.

John Ryan’s Time Wounds All Heals column.