ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
People like Wavell Rhodes are the unsung heroes of Friday afternoons.
They pour the beers and clean the glasses. Good your potato gems and party pies and wishes you a warm farewell as you leave the bar just before close.
Wavell Rhodes is a barman, the last of a dying breed of South Betootanese youngsters who don’t mind rolling up their sleeves and having a go.
But the 24-year-old horticulture student who moonlights as a Betoota Hotel barman has a confession to make.
He hates Fridays.
“One day, I just want to be able to be on the other side of the bar of a Friday afternoon with my squad,” he said.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love my job – but I don’t like Fridays. They remind me of what I’m missing out on. Seeing all the happy faces, the mates catching up and all the shouting, hollering and whatnot,”
“I long for the day when I’m out of uni, working in a garden with the blazing hot sun on my back and a cold schoon of Betoota Bitter waiting for me down the pub. Is that too much to ask?”
However, Betoota Hotel manager Jock Campbell explained to The Advocate that Rhodes is able to take any Friday off he’d like, he just can’t drink where he works.
Unfortunately for him, most of his friends have been barred from the two other drinking holes in Betoota’s Old City district, leaving him with very few options besides the Betoota Hotel.
“Yeah, but nah look,” said Campbell.
“I can’t be having my staff pissing where they drink from, you know? In saying that, I know that Wavell’s mates are banned from most places in town but that’s not my problem,”
“The Fridays he has taken off, he just ends up in a garage with his crew crushing tins and sucking back a few hot ones and doesn’t have a very good time. It’s a Catch-22, I think?”
More to come.
