They say that as of
Halloween last year (or perhaps it was the year before. Tempus fugit, and all that) there are seven billion
people in the world. That means
there are six billion nine hundred and ninety-nine million nine hundred and ninety-nine
thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine people who aren’t me. Much as I love being me, and much as I
love spending time with someone I hold in such high regard, when I go to the
pub a significant factor in my reasoning to do so is to have some degree of
contact with some of those people who aren’t.
Think of it this way: I
love beer, and that’s what I do when I drink away from home. That’s who I am. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t also
love wine, and rum, and gin, and pretty much the whole gamut of human ingenuity
that looked at grapes and various grains and thought, “very nice, but I bet we
can make it better.” Humanity, and
its dissatisfactions (and its methods of distraction, for that matter), is
truly a marvel to behold.
And that is why I
drink. Or at least, that is part
of the reason why I drink. To bask
in the marvel that is our magnificent species, and to have as much contact with
them as I can. That is also why,
in this the city of my exile, I occasionally get very wound up by them. Pubs are a social location, they exist
to facilitate social interaction.
They exist to enable social interaction. And thus, if one goes to a pub, one is – or at least one
should be – leaving oneself open to be socially interacted with. It is the tragedy of the gentrified pub
that the customers it engenders are people who completely fail to understand
this. Granted, the kind of person
who habitually haunts the gentrified pub is not necessarily the kind of person
one would automatically want to talk to as one flows through one’s evening, but
the point still stands. As
marvellous as mankind is, it does still throw up a few duff ones.
That is, perhaps,
unfair. And in fact is a thing
that should be remembered: simply being uneducated in the ways of the world
(the pub, in this instance), is not the same as being a bad person. And to be fairer still, there are an
awful lot of nutters in the world, and a fair few of them like to pass their
time in pubs. Whilst they may be
very interesting from an anthropological point of view, you wouldn’t
necessarily want to get stuck in a conversation with one. Still, I would count this as an
occupational hazard, and as I have mentioned elsewhere there are ways of
avoiding these encounters.
The point here is that the
pub is, and has to be to function, fundamentally a democratic institution. If a cat can look at a king, then a
habitual barfly can talk to whomsoever he chooses. Whomsoever he chooses may choose he does not want to have
that particular conversation with that particular barfly at that particular
time, but then we are into the messy business of human relations. One should, however, be open at all
times to the possibility that your interlocutor, as you sit at the bar
(especially if you sit at the bar), might be a person worth knowing. And, should you not be aware of the
fact, I’ll tell you: if you sit at the bar, you are telling the world you’re up
for a chat.
Right, so here’s to the
health of the Seven Billion. I’m
off now to bother some strangers.
Cin-cin.
