Bill would tell us stories of his work, of holidays, of his biggest adventure, which involved travelling across the Irish Sea to the Isle¹ of Man in stormy seas. He had been young with men who still lived a few doors from him. He would tell us how, as a sleeping child he was lifted from his bed, and placed on his father's shoulders to see a German Zeppelin fly overhead during the Great War, and of how as a young man, he had continued working as a painter and decorator（装饰者） up in the Westlands during the Great Strike in 1926.

"I heard some fuss（大惊小怪） down in the town, but I let 'em get on with it - daft buggers."

Bill dispensed² with the whole matter of industrial relations:

"Honest day's work, fer a honest day's pay," he intoned, solemnly, and sounding the 'h' in 'honest' - causing secret amusement in my brothers and myself.

Bill knew everything. Later, as an older teenager, I would joke with my father about Bill's encyclopaedic（百科全书的） knowledge. We took him out for a drink at a country pub in the summer, and we sat outside, where a railway line ran alongside the beer garden, deep at the bottom of a cutting. When our conversation was cut into by the sound of trains burrowing³ through the cut in the earth, Bill checked his watch.

"That's the 6.20 from Crewe," he said, nursing an unfiltered（未滤过的） Park Drive in his brown coated fingers- then another glance at his watch, "He's ten minutes late."

My Father and I exchanged smiles, and would later laugh, once Bill had shuffled⁴ off up the backs, and his green gate had closed.

Bill knew sporting figures too, and had a particular penchant⁵（嗜好） for telling us about his latest encounters with local football players, particularly Gordon Banks, Jimmy Greenhoff or Denis Smith of Stoke City.

"I saw Denis down Stoke the other day when I was going to the market," the tale
would begin,

"'Denis', I shouted, he saw me from across the street,

'How you doing Bill?' he shouted.

'You want to sharpen up on defending against crosses from the left,' I told him, 'that goal as got in on Saturday wouldn't 'ave 'appened! Mark my words.'

'Right you are Bill!' he said."

Bill had advice for everyone - often whether it was sought or not - but he was so much one of nature's gentlemen that he was impossible to resist. You found yourself nodding sagely⁶, and tracing the patterns of the end of his animated⁷ index finger, in receipt of the raised eyebrows⁸, the thorough showmanship（表演技巧） of Bill Smith righting the wrongs of the world.