After leaving blitzed and battered Bristol behind and moving to soon to be blitzed and battered Bath the old man bumped into a chap with a gammy eye called 'Monty' Porter in the Kings Arms in Princess Street. The old man mistook 'Monty' for the legendary 'Smokey' White, a long-lost buddy who he had last seen on the London Embankment on a November evening in 1938. (The old man had given up coal mining for an above surface job as a lift-operator in a Waitrose supermarket store.) "What ever happened to 'Smokey' White?" was a question that was often heard from the late 1930s on. (Some say that 'Smokey' White was a mythical figure, an emblem for a lost sense of Old Working Class fraternity.)
The drinker in the saloon bar of the King's Arms turned out to be 'Monty', not 'Smokey'. This was at one and the same time a major loss and a signifiant gain. The old man had been labouring at Fairfield House on the Newbridge Road. (From 1936 to 1940 this was the residence of the exiled Emperor Haile Selassie.) Instead of having a sandwich at the Royal Oak something had prompted the old man to retrace his steps, re-take the road he had previously not taken, and walk into the King's Arms' welcoming embrace.
On the walls of the saloon bar of the King's Arms are drawings and paintings of the King's Bath. the pub is a few minutes stroll from Queens Square and apartments filled with delightful Queen Anne furniture. (Although the recently refurbished Assembly Rooms would soon be blown to bits by German bombers, the residents of Queen Square never had any doubts that their Queen Anne furniture would survive the war unscratched.)
'Monty' Porter was a regular at the King William on the London Road who had taken a liking to the Prince of Wales which is a stone's throw away from the King's Arms. When his building site work was finished he would stroll through Queen Victoria Park and have a "quick half" in the King's Arms before heading home. When he was mistaken for the legendary 'Smokey' White by the old man he said this was quite understandable. "For someone clearly fatigued after spending eight hours labouring for the Emperor of Ethiopia it is a wonder you did not mistake me for the author of The English Constitution!"