It never completely leaves
you, the thrill of going to the pub, no matter how many times in your life that
you’ve been there. Once the
decision is made (and in truth, once you’ve posed the question, it’s a decision
that has already been made), it shakes you free of inertia and lifts you to a
higher plane.
So it was, after giving up
on an unusually fitful night’s sleep, I found myself outside very early in the
morning to clear my head, and the promise of a lunchtime pint was the
motivating factor. I found myself
outside rather too early, with a head so clear that the urge to cloud it again
settled early upon me. Rather too
early, as the pubs would not open for quite a while to come.
There is very little on
this earth as pathetic as a grown man staring folornly at a locked pub door at
eleven o’clock in the morning, wondering why it won’t unlock until twelve. The loosening of the licensing laws has
been of clear net benefit to the country, but when eleven o’clock is seared
into the mind of every drinking man and woman as the beginning of the day, this
tendency to twelve o’clock starts seems designed to confuse the already very
confused. I resolved I would not
be caught out in this way (God, not again), and decided to find something else
to do until the hour of my deliverance arrived.
Thus resolved, the problem arose of what that would actually
entail. The early morning is not
my natural habitat, and whilst there is a certain pleasure to be taken from
seeing a familiar place from this unusual perspective, the novelty had already
worn off by the time I was wondering what to do with it.
Being somewhat short of
funds (and replete with enough self-knowledge to realise that a lunchtime pint
is more than likely to become a teatime pint, a suppertime pint, and quite
probably a nightcap as well), my initial reaction, to prepare the ground by
indulging in God’s gift to the all day drinker, namely, the Full English
Breakfast, was right out. In a
town such as the one in which I find myself, this cornerstone of British culture
has become something of a luxury item, and whilst in the city, there are many
places where it can be had for less than the price of a pint, the thought of
sacrificing two or even three was too much to bear, and would anyway leave the
projected economics of the day in tatters.
Coffee, however, remained
an option. But although it is the
friend of those, like me, who find the very idea of morning too much of a
challenge to contemplate unaided, once it leaves the confines of ones own kitchen
and establishes itself in its public form, the cafè, it becomes an altogether
more insidious liquid. Overpriced,
and generally speaking a watery memory of what real coffee should taste like,
it can hardly come as a surprise that as parasitical a practise as insurance
(and so ultimately, the stock exchange) was born in the places
of its sale.
Unwilling to risk adding
to the sum total of human misery, and in any case distinctly uninspired by the
visions of corporate blandness that revealed themselves to me as I walked past
their windows, I dismissed the idea of coffee, and continued to walk.
Coming to a park, the
thought struck me that, if my way to the pub was blocked by the vagaries of
time, then perhaps I could, in some small way, bring the pub to me. Parks have benches, and park benches
have a proud tradition of being sat and drank upon. It would, of course, involve me finding an off license of
some description, one willing to be charmed into selling me booze before eleven
o’clock in the morning (the concept of twenty-four hour drinking seems not to
have yet filtered down to the retailer), and further, risk the opprobrium of
the kind of sober folk who pass their mornings in parks, but the promise of a
can or two to pass the time and fortify my resolve was enough to help me rise
above such mundane concerns.
And so it was I wandered
off in search of an offy, and so it was, as I wandered and searched, I beheld a
sight that brought joy to my heart.
An open door, and attached to the door was a pub. I checked the time. It was later than I had thought. It was, give or take, eleven
o’clock. I approached gingerly,
afraid that this, my oasis, may yet turn out to be a mirage, but a word to the
man behind the bar confirmed to me that these were indeed the gates of paradise
thrown open in the welcome it behoves the just to embrace.
And so it was, amidst the
gentle sounds of a pub in the process of opening, of people popping their heads
around the door to say a quick hello to the barman, of the one or two who came
in for an early lunchtime pint, of the rustle of a newspaper, of the clink of a
glass and of bottles being prepared for the day; amidst these happy noises full
of promise my salvation was vouchsafed.
My day had finally begun.
Where it would end, I couldn’t say (and to be honest, even now looking
back, I’m still trying to piece that one together), but closing time was a long
way off, there was a pint full in front of me, and with my heart full of
happiness and glorious anticipation, it struck me a day doesn’t start better
than this. Cin-cin.
