Uncle Bob
`Use your feet, and bring the bat down true to the line of flight, head down, and Bob's your uncle !' they said ; or maybe, 'Think the problem through, tackle it stage by stage, and Bob's your uncle !'
Meaning it will be fine, turn out all right. Having no Uncle Bob, I'd fantasise a puissant lordly being out of sight, monitoring my every enterprise.
His hands on all the ropes, and never lost for a solution, supernatural kin, concerned, however we felt mauled and tossed by life, to see us right , through thick and thin.
Years brought wrong choices, people, home to stay. For others too. Unsolvable. Had Bob lost touch, not known his work fall miles astray, or flushed with the high life dozed off on the job ?
No — not remotely all we'd cracked him up to be, just a quixotic simpleton, even before he'd finally cracked up under the drift of things, he'd never won a major title, steered the ship of state, or written Tolstoy. Now he's on his uppers, outcast, derided, an old reprobate scavenging bins for remnants of fish suppers.
Still meaning well, and wishing others joy. From the corner of the pub he tips a wink, seeing again Miss Right meet the wrong boy, smiles 'Bob's your uncle!' raising his caged drink. Andrew Waterman
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