Tales from the bone-yard of the soul
Wednesday, 10 June 2026
Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. He is a regular contributor.
OPINION: Sunday afternoon, bone-yard of the soul, and I was as bored and listless as a child in church. My right hand kept slapping me round the chops and telling me to do some work or I’d regret it on the Monday, but all the while the sly left hand kept snaking towards the grog cabinet. “Beneath it all,’”wrote good old Larkin, “desire for oblivion runs.”
For something to do I went for a walk and on London St bumped into a gentleman whose name I am ashamed to say I do not know - nice guy, my age or so, goatee beard, American accent. He and I have had several conversations over the years in the bars and shops of Lyttelton, or, as now, in the street, but having not asked his name the first time I have gone on not asking it.
And in the course of discussing Sunday afternoon being the bone-yard of the soul and similar matters he recalled a column of mine from many years ago. In it I told how back in the 1960s I mixed with all the pop stars of the day and helped them come up with titles for their songs. Specifically he recalled the story of when I was babysitting a kitten recently acquired by the drummer for the Rolling Stones, and Tom Jones came to visit. The story was an involved one but it ended with the terrified kitten suddenly latching on to Tom Jones’ exposed groin, a misfortune whose unexpected silver lining had been the megahit Watts’ New Pussycat.
“Did you know,” I said, “there were readers who didn’t believe that story?”
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My friend shook his head in disbelief at their disbelief, then asked if I had any more such tales.
“Is the Pope a smoothie?” I exclaimed. For even as he spoke I remembered March 17, 1963. Tom Jones was in hospital having just undergone his first nose job. Tom was refreshingly open about his cosmetic surgery, but that didn’t make it any less painful, or the recovery any swifter. He was swathed in bandages when I went to visit and his mood was not made any better by it being St Patrick’s Day. Tom may have been Welsh to the core, but he loved nothing more than a pint of Guinness and an Irish singalong and from his bed he could hear the revelry going on across the road in the Twisted Shamrock, the local fake-Irish Irish bar.
“I’d kill for a pint of stout,” said Tom.
“Sorry, old son,” I said. “Not with those antibiotics. It’s orange juice for you.”
“Just a whiff would do me good.”
I shook my head in commiseration, but even as I did do I was hatching a plan.
Five minutes later I was in the Twisted Shamrock. Green tinsel abounded, Danny Boy was on the jukebox on perpetual replay, and I was in earnest colloquy with the landlord.
I had him sterilise a small beer glass – you can’t be too careful with post-ops – then to fill it with the froth from a pint of Guinness but none of the liquid. A quick squirt of green food colouring and there I had it. It might not be the full St Patrick’s but I was confident it would do Tom a power of good. As I passed matron’s forbidding office, I hid the gift under my coat.
“What the hell’s that?” exclaimed Tom as I flung my coat open.
“A clean green glass of foam.”
“I don’t know,” I said to my friend in the street, “if you’ve ever been crushed to the bosom of an overwrought Welsh balladeer who has recently undergone rhinoplastic surgery, but it’s not something you forget.”