Those were the days, my friend

Once we’d successfully located the small series of three caches we were after today, which had involved standing very close to the cache site and having to take a long time to remove a very stubborn stone from my shoe whilst a dog-walker slowly ambled by, we adjourned to a local (to the cache) pub for lunch. It was getting close to 2pm when most pubs stop serving food, so we dashed into the nearest one. It was an unusual building for a pub – it was whitewashed stone and looked like a cross between a village house and a small workshop, but when Ned was last in there they brewed their own beer, which he said was certainly drinkable. Inside it was rather shabby and there was only one other customer, and they’ve stopped making their own beer for the moment, but we ordered a couple of pints and a sandwich each anyway. The landlord chatted as he pulled two pints, then realised he hadn’t pulled the one we asked for, but it didn’t really matter. The sandwiches seemed to take ages to arrive, and a couple more customers came in while the landlord’s small daughter sat at the bar with a colouring book. It was at this point that the three local blokes (all over retirement age I’d guess) started chatting, like you do. But it was a very surreal conversation, and as we shamelessly eavesdropped it flowed seamlessly from the cheapest train fares from Banbury (buy a railcard and get 30% off all fares south of Banbury, and make sure you buy your Underground ticket before you set off), through discussing the speed of the current on the Rhine, via how “comp’nies” want goods yesterday, not tomorrow, or else they could use the canals which would be much less polluting, and that's where the saying 'leggin' it' comes from, which now means runnin' away when you've been caught scrumpin' and nothin' to do with getting yer boat through the tunnel, to the best way to clean leeks (cut them into four, lengthways). We didn’t dare join in because we’d have got very involved and had to have another drink and it was too far to walk home.