In Memoriam Peter O'Toole

Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell.

In a Bad Mood

 It gets to you sometimes.  It really does.  It starts with the perennial shortage of money, and ends with a long walk home, half-cut and seething, wondering why you’re doing this to yourself.  When money’s tight and your opportunities for distraction are thus limited, if your chosen pub lets you down, it’s going to be a long time until you can give it the chance to make things right again.

And in the meantime, you seethe.  There is a lot to seethe about in this world these days, most of it to do with childish faith in bankrupt economic theories and the shocking disregard in which our “elected” representatives hold us.  And I confess, I seethe about these things on a regular basis.  But (and I suspect it is by this and similar mechanisms that the powers that be manage to get away with their bullshit), they don’t make me anything like as angry, or trouble my sense of well being half as much as being disappointed by an excursion to the pub.

I blame the particular pub for this, and more than that, I blame the drinking culture in this town.  In this I am justified.  The fault lies squarely on an inability to accommodate Bacchanalian excesses on a weekday.  But as an individual within this localised society, ones perception of oneself is coloured by that society’s perception of one. Given that ones post-excessive, hungover state of mind is likely anyway to be touched by the hand of guilt (for no good reason, or at least, no good reason that you can remember), the perception of others – others who, it must be emphasised again, are absolutely in the wrong - weighs heavily upon one.

It’s not enough to touch your core beliefs, of course, but it saps the joy that surrounds them.  Without that joy, without the lift that the thought of going to the pub gives you (and this is all the more true when your financial situation curtails the opportunities to actually do so), you lose the sense of consolation, the sense that there is another way of being which you can attain.  If not right now, then tomorrow or next week or next month.  The pub, in any worthwhile context, smiles at you, it urges you on through the quagmire of the quotidian, and basking in that promise you’ll find a way to reach it.  If the pub frowns, then you’re lost, trapped in the festering, bubbling, seething morass of other people’s misplaced – and misguided – morality.

The absence of a healthy drinking culture means there is no community of drinkers that can be relied upon and among whom you can take your place.  You may, by chance, run into a few pleasantly inebriated people at the bar, but it is a situation that cannot be relied upon to manifest itself regularly.  Bad nights happen, of course, wherever you drink, but if there’s money, and a place where your brand of merriment is more commonly appreciated, then one bad evening will disappear in the alcoholic tide of other evenings.  As it is, you’re beached, stranded on the polluted shores of other people’s sobriety.

The truth is, under normal circumstances, I could probably drink my way out of this impasse.  Throwing alcohol at a problem is a failsafe solution to most things.  Let down by the pub, though, the question arises of where this course of existential therapy would take place.  That pub doesn’t appeal, and if that pub - which hitherto has come closest to satisfying your socio-alcoholic needs in this town - isn’t working, then the chances of any of the others doing so is small.  When the symbiosis of pub and punter has broken down, what is there that one can do?

Like getting back on a bike after you’ve fallen off, you have to get back in there.  A line must be drawn, a stand must be made.  In any relationship, a time comes when you have to say, up with this I will not, cannot, put.  And that time is now.  So, as soon as money permits, I will be there, drinking heavily for my beliefs, consequence be damned.  I have right on my side, I have faith in my heart.  So cin fucking cin.

On Relationships and Their Manifestations

 

You drink because you want to, or perhaps because you must.  You drink for pleasure, you drink from boredom, and you drink to ease the pain.  You drink for company and to lubricate the wheels of social interaction, and often enough, you drink to get away from everything and everyone.  You drink.  And that’s a good thing.

Because you drink, you frequently find yourself in pubs.  Because you’ve been drinking for a long time, you find your relationship with pubs more fundamental than your relationship to booze.  Your relationship with the pub is, as I may have mentioned before, clearly inconceivable without the booze, and naturally it is the booze that draws the two of you together in the first place, but once you’re there, your relationship with the particular pub in question can blossom into existence.

Now clearly there are pubs that, having been once, you’d never go back to again.  Theme pubs, gastro-pubs and the like, where the gastro has so overtaken the pub that the honest drinker is pushed into a corner and left feeling that his simple need to consume the establishment’s massively overpriced beer is an inconvenience.  Where any semblance of someone having fun is to be frowned upon.  If you drink amongst people for whom a second glass of wine is viewed as risqué, then what chance do you have?

Then there are pubs that simply happen to be convenient, neatly positioned for you to pause and regroup on your journey from A to B.  They may be perfectly pleasant in their own right, you may even find that you tarry a little longer than you had anticipated.  Quite possibly to the extent you decide that whatever it was you were going to do at B is not worth the bother and perhaps you will just stay for another one after all.  The chances are, however, given that for your everyday peregrinations it’s a little bit out of the way, you won’t go back.

But once in a while, you stumble into a pub for the first time, and something clicks.  It answers a need in you.  Perhaps it’s a particular calm, or then again, a particular vivaciousness in the atmosphere.  Perhaps it’s the ease with which you fall into conversation with the gentlemen at the bar.  Perhaps it’s as simple as the barmaid being pretty and open to distraction.  Or perhaps it’s something more intangible.  It would be easy to overwork the psychology involved, but there is a sense of recognition when you find a pub to which you immediately know you will return, a sense of familiarity, a sense of felicity, a sense of yes, right here.

That said, no relationship is always plain sailing, and even that initial sense of rightness can be misleading.  You can go back to a place at find the atmosphere gone, twats at the bar, and a superfluity of boorish barmen.  Even then, though, on the strength of the initial encounter, you are inclined to give it another chance or two, and if like me, you are still bereft of a proper local to call your own, a few more after that.  At the very least, you come to an understanding.  While it may not be The One, it is at least there, and fulfilling at least some of your needs.

Thus I find myself without a local as such, but with at least a couple of pubs I enjoy and that I’m seeing on a regular basis.  While I may have moved on, I have perhaps not yet fully let go of the old pub, and am still looking for something of that in any new pub I chance upon.  And that is perhaps in part because something deep within me is longing to hear those three little words that can change the world, three little words that make the whole of that mess we call existence make sense.  Those three little words that at the very least ensure a night of magic: “on the house.”  Cin-cin.

Opening Time

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.

Off the Leash

 

Booze never fails puts me in a good mood, and  I often marvel at its capacity to do so.  Walking into a pub and carrying with me all the petty annoyances of the day, it still strikes me with epiphanic force when, usually about half way down my third pint, a transformation occurs.  The miserable git who was sitting there a moment ago has disappeared, and in his place is a cheery soul, propping up the bar with a grin on his face.  This, it seems to me, is an innate property of drink, its capacity to induce merriment and release the good mood lurking beneath the foetid crust of quotidian concerns.

It’s a noble state of mind, and one I’m always happy to be in.  But there are times when it’s not enough.  There are times when the pressures of life have built up to such an extent that you really need to cut loose; and to enter the realm of unfettered euphoric Bacchanalia, there are other contingencies which need to be addressed.

First amongst these is, inevitably, money.  Bar-propping is an expensive business at the best of times, but to allow yourself off the leash you must be able to forget entirely the financial consequences.  The need to count pennies is a force that runs counter to the full expression of the euphoria you are hoping to achieve (and in fact, runs counter to most that is good in the human spirit), and will always undermine it.

Second is time, and for very similar reasons.  If you have to worry about getting up for work tomorrow, or even worry about calling in sick, then you’ll be hard pressed to really embrace the course of therapy upon which you have embarked, and following the evening through its labyrinthine twists and turns, often into the next day and often into the day after that, becomes deeply problematic.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it’s the company you keep whilst on your merry way.  It may come as a surprise, but there are certain circles, certain pubs even, where drunkenness is frowned upon.  This is not where you want to be.  If you cannot fully commit to the course you have chosen from the very beginning, then you may as well go home.  If you are, tacitly or otherwise, on the defensive, amongst people for whom drinking is a polite pass-time rather than the highest expression of the human spirit (civilisation begins with fermentation, after all – beer, wine, and bread*), then the essential gregariousness inherent to the project is opposed, its freedom crushed by the weight of staid disapproval.

It should be remembered, however, that this is a spiritual quest, and not a case of mere mechanics.  Like Eckhart’s dark night, the ground may be prepared, but the Spirit may yet choose not to descend.  That said, when I found myself on the receiving end of a small piece of financial good fortune, it was only ever going to end one way.  A trip to the city was what was needed, and an unfettered, euphoric, three-day Bacchanalian binge. 

And that was exactly what I got.  Off the leash and in good company, chasing through old pubs and new, feeling the sense of liberation that only undiluted alcoholic folly can bring.  A return to the fold, touching upon the divine.

All good things must come to an end (or so we are led to believe), and now I find myself back in the town of my self-imposed exile.  Having reconnected fully with my inner Dionysus, inevitably it is screaming at me to keep the party going.  But for all the reasons outlined above, I cannot.  I must betray the god within, quiet him until the next opportunity presents itself.  This saddens me, but at least I’ve enough money left to pop to the pub.  It will all seem a lot better after a pint or three.  It’s a noble state of mind, cin-cin.

*What Faulkner actually said was, “civilization begins with distillation,” and there is a good case to be made; for myself, however, I prefer this amendment, pointing as it does to the moment we as a species raised ourselves above brute survival.

On Virtue and the Sober Mind

 

I have written before that one should embrace the possibility of the pub at any opportunity that presents itself: there will always be another chance to be bored and frustrated at home.  Penury, however, twists your thinking to the extent that even this self-evident truth is thrown into doubt.  I’ve got a little money spare, and am wondering if spunking it in the pub is the right thing to do.  Of course it is, but the longer you allow such doubts to linger, the more they prey upon your poor, alcohol-deficient mind.

The question you have to ask yourself is, what exactly do you want to save this money for?  The answer to that question is easy: to spend at the pub another time.  The corollary to that question is, therefore, is your burning desire to be in the pub now greater than your burning desire to be in the pub will be at some unspecified time in the future (probably tomorrow)?  The answer to this secondary question is obviously going to be predicated on pure speculation, but one can say with a degree of confidence that it is in the nature of burning desires that they burn now, and demand satisfaction immediately.  So the short answer to the corollary can only be yes, the burning desire to be in the pub now burns hotter than any other possible desire to be in the pub could ever burn.  Problem, if ever a problem it were, solved.

Or so it would seem.  A doubt is still lingering, and will have to be analysed before it goes away.  It will have to be analysed if only because a lingering doubt can severely curtail your enjoyment of an evening out.  From somewhere, a little voice masquerading as reason is insinuating that the money would be better left unspent.

There is  of course a degree of security in knowing you’ve a night out in your pocket, that you won’t find yourself stranded in sobriety without hope of escape.  But this is not what the voice is really telling you.  This observation fails to address the issue that sobriety is exactly where you are stranded right now.  What is actually happening here is that the devilish voice is telling you there is some virtue in holding onto money for its own sake.

A revelation like this goes far enough against your nature that it will shock you back into something resembling your right mind (insofar as a mind deprived of alcohol can ever be right).  Poverty is making a miser of you, and that cannot be healthy.  Money is a means to an end, and if a shortage of funds is beginning to transform your personality, is beginning to rob you of that aspect of yourself that helps you rise above circumstance and so keep you sane, then it becomes imperative that you get down the pub right now.  The consequences of not doing so are unthinkable: this is no longer about saving or not saving money, this is about saving your soul.

The spiritual shackles of poverty are thrown off, and a spring has returned to your step.  It is time to embrace the glorious insanity of it all.  I’m off now.  Cin-cin.

A Few Words on Smoking

Summer may have just arrived, or perhaps this is just another mocking preamble to another dismal washout. Summer is, let's face it, a dream we've been dreaming for a number of years now. Whichever it turns out to be, though, I can at least say I've made it through another winter without dying of pneumonia. Whilst it wouldn't ever be enough to consider voting for those mendacious incompetents for whom it is a campaign platform, I do miss smoking in pubs.

It was a July, if memory serves, when the ban came into force, and otherwise rather a pleasant day. I had been out the night before, locked-in, late for work and was decidedly the worse for wear. Stumbling out of work and into the pub, there was still something of a party atmosphere (these were the glory days of the old pub, when come-down Sundays were so much fun, the Monday and often the Tuesday were needed to come down from them). The Landlord, with malicious irony, had replaced the customary bar-bowl of generously over-salted popcorn with those sweet cigarettes for children which were somehow still legal.

There was a party atmosphere, but it was, for the most part, all happening in the garden. The interior of the pub was curiously deserted. Not smoking was a novelty, and just as the night before had been spent in a carnivalesque celebration of the last day of legality, so today, released again by the novelty of the situation the carnival continued, as if a rolling party were merely looking for something to which to attach itself.

The novelty of the situation wore off very quickly, but that summer, such as it was, was passed outdoors. The pubs (and I think this was true of most pubs), remained deserted inside, the rumour spread of a possible extension of the ban because the young were seeing smokers having too much fun outside, and an echo of carnival remained. It was winter when the ban took on its final form.

On any evening, in any pub, the universal expression of memory lapse would punctuate proceedings. At random times and at random points around the pub, the cry of “oh, fuck” would be heard, and to the accompaniment of ironic cheers, someone with a lit cigarette in hand would make an embarrassed dash for the door. The last time I was caught out in this way was a full three years after the ban was introduced. Old habits die hard, but the most disturbing thing was not so much the ban itself, but the speed with which it became normal.

Normality breeds the rituals of the normal: you adapt, for better or worse, your ways of being to any situation into which you are thrown. An etiquette emerges, and the smoking ban became a way to manage ones social obligations. On entering the pub, if there was no one at the bar you recognised, you would buy your pint, have a few sips, and then pop into the garden for a smoke. You would, however, leave your pint at the bar, so that if there was anyone in the garden you knew but didn't want to speak to, you had an excuse to leave their company after a relatively short period of time. An unattended pint is universally recognised as overriding any other obligation, thus no breach of etiquette has been committed and you can depart an unwanted situation with honour intact.

Similarly, if you found yourself stuck at the bar in one of those conversations that are the occupational hazard of the pub-drinking man, you, your pint, and your cigarette could all decamp to the garden, in the hope that by the time you needed to refill, your interlocutor would have wandered off in search of someone else to annoy. Of course, wherever there is etiquette, there are breaches of etiquette, but in the end, being followed around by a nutter with an agenda is at least no worse than being cornered by a nutter with an agenda.

And this is how the dance of the pub plays out, flitting from garden to bar, to friends and from nutters, from pint to cigarette and back again. The dance was always there, of course, made of groups and their offshoots and the solo-drinkers joining together with each other or other groups before spinning off again into the evening. Particles and their compounds at play to the music of chance. The ban just made clearer what had been happening all along, it underlined the movement and clarified its articulation. And the ban did one other thing, which I think its architects didn't have in mind. In the dancing and spinning and moving from group to group and from place to place, I'm smoking much, much more than I ever used to.

Anyway, for now at least the sun is out, and I'm tempted to call it summer. I'm also tempted to while away the afternoon in a pub. And as a wise woman once said to me, the best way to deal with temptation is to give into it. Cin-cin.