This is really sad…

Position vacant: £7 an hour. Person to drink beer

To customers perusing the notice-board in the village post office, the job advertisement must have seemed too good to be true. For £7 an hour, with all expenses paid, a man was required to visit a local pub and drink beer.

The assignment was to be carried out at at least twice a week at the Compass Inn in Winsor, Hampshire, in the company of an elderly gentleman.

The advert is genuine, and the four men who have applied for the position so far are to undergo trial drinking sessions in the coming week, though their potential employer is open to applications from new candidates.

It is an appeal from a desperate man. Until recently, Jack Hammond, 88, would drink four times a week with a neighbour in Barton-on-Sea. Then he moved into a nursing home a few miles away to be closer to his family. Forest Edge Care Home boasts a garden and easy access to shops; what it cannot offer Mr Hammond is a suitable drinking partner. All but one of his fellow residents are women. Which is how the advertisement came to be placed in the nearby village of Cadnam.

For some it is a sign of the times that an elderly gentleman lacks a companion with whom to visit the local pub, although it is increasingly common.

Mr Hammond’s wife died 12 years ago, and the upheaval of moving into a care home has left him feeling isolated. “It was a bit upsetting when I had to leave as I left all my friends back home,” he said.

Jeeze…I’m only 54 and I can already relate.  I moved to Baltimore and left all my friends behind in Washington because up here was where i was getting work, and I could actually afford the rents.  But at least I’m healthy enough I can drive down to Washington to see my friends regularly.  The day is coming, when all I’ll have is what’s within a short distance from where I make my bed.  But maybe by that time I’ll have voices in my head to keep me company.

People have had to buy sex since before the written word.  Here’s what it’s come to in our age: people are having to buy friends.  Except you can’t.

Better to go down dignified

With boughten friendship at your side

Than none at all. Provide, provide!

So said Robert Frost.  He was wrong.  You can buy sex but you can’t buy love.  You can buy a companion but you can’t buy friendship.  Hopefully Mr. Hammond has had enough love and friendship in his life that he can find all he needs now in a bought companion.  But the rest of us need to look at this and worry about what we are becoming.  It shouldn’t have to be like this.  In an age where advertisers can track our every desire and feed us up products we’re likely to want, just by tracking our web browsing habits, we are loosing our humanity.  How is it, that this guy was moved away from his friends into a nursing home located where it is, simply to be closer to his family, and nobody seems to have given any thought to his need for companionship?

Chris Perry, director of Hampshire Age Concern, often sees elderly men who lack a companion for their regular pub visits. “It is easy to become socially isolated at this age due to bereavement or from people moving away,” he said. “But this man needs to be commended for using his initiative for putting an advert in the window.”

And you need to feel ashamed, very, very ashamed, that he had to.  So it’s easy for people to become socially isolated at that age is it?  So you often see elderly men who lack companionship do you?  Then what fucking use is your goddamned Hampshire Age Concern?