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Sabre<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Budget jeans, and stubble,<\/p>\n a lean face more bone than meat<\/p>\n is all I remember of the grown-up<\/p>\n enigma in our dorm, reeking of serious,<\/p>\n stunted in manner, yet sure of himself.<\/p>\n Once in blossom, out came a failed<\/p>\n marriage, temper temper, domestic<\/p>\n violence. This mature student<\/p>\n who called himself Sabre, after the blade,<\/p>\n a veteran of the Falklands war,<\/p>\n lost our confidence and trust<\/p>\n on VE day when he, magician-like,<\/p>\n pulled out a house plant and called it therapy,<\/p>\n declared himself an alcoholic and<\/p>\n drank beyond his fill, falling<\/p>\n and knocking\u00a0 his head on the table,<\/p>\n spilling his blood\u00a0 like morse code,<\/p>\n a message that led to his den.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Weeks passed in which we heard<\/p>\n nothing. The door to his room was<\/p>\n locked,\u00a0 the curtains pulled down.<\/p>\n Being the tidy one, the kitchen fell<\/p>\n into disrepair, dishes filled the sink,<\/p>\n and mould grew up to reach<\/p>\n its prime. Unnerved, by the chaos,<\/p>\n we broke into his room to find him<\/p>\n blacked out in the shadows by his bed,<\/p>\n so many plastic bottles and bags,<\/p>\n the pungent smell of the body\u2019s pureness.<\/p>\n I wish I could say I did him good but when he<\/p>\n couldn\u2019t walk I stocked\u00a0 him right back up<\/p>\n with booze. He forgave everything but<\/p>\n that game\u00a0 of Tenpin bowling.\u00a0 Inebriated,<\/p>\n he couldn\u2019t believe that anyone<\/p>\n could roll the ball so badly,<\/p>\n that I must have rigged it<\/p>\n so he would win the match<\/p>\n but all the mistakes were mine,<\/p>\n nothing was faked.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Raoul Izzard<\/strong> is a 37-year-old English teacher, dog owner, and plasticine animator living in Barcelona with his wonderful wife, Susana. He moved to the city in 2007 to do a teaching course and decided to stay. He can be found at Inklings<\/em> and Devlings<\/em> on WordPress.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sabre Budget jeans, and stubble, a lean face more bone than meat is all I remember of the grown-up enigma in our dorm, reeking of serious, stunted in manner, yet sure of himself. Once in blossom, out came a failed marriage, temper temper, domestic violence. This mature student who called himself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6924"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6926,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6924\/revisions\/6926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}