A Swift Half.
English watering holes in Hertfordshire on an August Sunday when the mercury is aspiring to 80 degrees plus are not conducive to civilised behaviour. But then, perhaps that is the point. The hotter it gets, the more you drink and the natives of this "sacred isle set in a silver sea" throw off their traditional reserve.
On this occasion the Town Inn in Hatfield was no exception. A long shiny bar, cold nurtured Guinness at £3 a pint and the regular congregation, ( mainly lager drinkers in this case) of imbibers celebrating their equivalence of High Mass. The main alter server on this occasion was in fact a bar maid; well equipped to hold her own when it came to reciting her own litany, in words invariably comprised of the earlier letters of the alphabet.
The pool table was occupied with players alternately configured in unorthodox stretched positions. The liquor stock sparked invitingly from backdrop lighted shelves. The jukebox played some meaningless rhythm and strategically placed TV's high up on the walls displayed muted sports channels. Outside was the quarantined smokers garden and questionable behaviour conducted in a legerdemain fashion.
There is perhaps a certain incongruity with the English dress sense when it comes to unexpected hot weather. The women show too much flesh irrespective of whether they are nubile or the overweight, smoking, tattooed variety. The men are in a class of their own, alternating between a lost tribe of Israel and the British Expeditionary Force evacuating the Dunkirk beachhead. Purists of the fashion world would swoon at a proudly blatant display of dated Empire attire.
He mused on if he had reached that stage in life of lapsing into being incoherently drunk. If anything he felt that that border had been traversed earlier in his youth, and now he was deep inside enemy territory.
I think it was George Bush who once revealed that if he had not become the American president, that he would have ended up sitting on a bar stool in Texas. But then one must draw a distinction between politicians and writers.
Each to his own.
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