I slouched out of bed this morning, to the ringing in my neck. The pounding feeling in my stomach explaining in clear terms that I needed to piss.
That sudden empty feeling of stupidity slash regret that accompanies the most unnecessary of hangovers. My bank statement flashes before my inner eye. The till receipts of card-purchased pub rounds no doubt crumpled in my pocket. These flash before the same eye. My third worrisome destitution-monitoring eye. The eye that imagines myself as a fallen bum character in a Paul Auster novel.
Yesterday was a sacred drift. An existential exploration of space and cultural identity, to redefine notions of habit and normality in a routine world.
And what brought on such decadent artistic behaviour in ones so young and so poor? That frustrated feeling of having not achieved anything that day. Despite decent efforts and good intentions, the day was unfruitful. Myself and Adam reconvened in the park.
“I’m bored. Nothing new has happened to me. I want new experiences. A kid jumped into my garden yesterday and that was enough to prompt a short story. But I write best when I feel alien, when I’m moving.”
That’s right. Adam wrote a lovely short story about a young lad who was being chased by a police woman on a horse. Adam told her that he hadn’t seen anything, despite the kid crouching out of her view by the wall.
“Do you have any money?”
“It’s all relative, obviously.”
The drift begins.
Just outside my house, I kick an unwrapped chocolate bar up the street. I pick it up, it looks like a Tunnock’s Caramel. It was an hilarious thing to place the bar on the bonnet of Riggy’s Golf.
Striding into town, to explore the unknown. Seeking adventure and personality and action and situation; open to spontaneity, to conversation.
First we must satisfy and quench the raging and profound calls from the deepest depths of our most banal internal human nutritional desires.
We must have our tea. But, reader, where to eat!
Somewhere new. No, somewhere old, whose door we have never darkened.
As it happens, the Trent House (the nearest pub) was looking rather inviting. God works in mysterious ways.
We curiously stalked our way to the bar. Half pints are in order this evening. We don’t deserve pints.
The hilarious ritual of pool was proposed. Perhaps upstairs would offer entertainment and epiphany. We could push coloured balls around a table for a bit. Our skill in removing the balls from the table would render us a social success.
Pool was proposed, dear friend, and who are we to stem the tide of consequence? Pool it must be.
There is no good reason not to do anything.
As we nod and walk upstairs, one of us cuts through the façade,
“Done well here haven’t we. Drifting our way to the nearest pub. Bloody genius.”
As we entered the room, the usual bustle of imposing masculinity was being enacted. Male bodies and grey vapours and loud music created quite a wall to the proceedings. The room was rather busy and the chances of two weaklings muscling in on the sport seemed unlikely. We manoeuvred our way past the action and found a table with some girls that we knew. Sarah and Laura sat slumped on the pub furniture. All sighs and armpits on show.
”What happened?”
”It’s just been a bloody shit day! And we tried so hard.” One laugh. One defeated noise, “Huh.”
Tales of broken works of art and the forthcoming expected days needed to repair it. Concluded with the words, “I think everyone’s had a shit day today. Everyone except Angus.”
“What happened to Angus?” we ask.
”He had a good day.”
Natural pause in the proceedings. Let us collect ourselves in that background hum of the room’s activity and find the next direction.
“Why did you have a shit day?” one of them asks.
”A morning spent doing admin. Filling in tax forms. Tedious business.”
“Oh dear!”
“And then I went out busking, and I think I must have been a bore or something, because no one gave me any money. Except ten pound man.”
Who’s ten pound man?, they all seem to say.
“He’s this old guy who I see every now and then and comes grinning at me and puts a ten pound note in my hand. And every time he does, I stop and ask him what is his story and usually he doesn’t stop and just says mysterious things like, ‘it’s a long story and I don’t want to get into now’. But today, with the tenner, he hands me a white envelope containing a single piece of white A4 paper with some wonky but carefully scribed capital letters on it.”
”That’s amazing! What did it say?”
“I’ll read it:
IN VIEW OF THE FACT THAT I HAVE ENCOUNTERED YOU ON A NUMBER OF OCCASIONS, I THOUGHT THAT I HAD BETTER TRY TO EXPLAIN WHAT ALL THIS HAND OUT OF £10 NOTES IS ABOUT! - HERE, VERY BRIEFLY IS “MY STORY” AND I HOPE THAT IT WILL MAKE SOME SENSE TO YOU!
I RECENTLY TOOK AN EARLY RETIREMENT BECAUSE OF HEALTH PROBLEMS AFTER A LIFETIME SPENT IN DOING CHURCH WORK
AFTER RETIREMENT THE PACE OF MY LIFE SLOWED DOWN DRAMATICALLY. IN ONE WAY THIS WAS VERY FRUSTRATING AND YET IN ANOTHER WAY IT BEGAN TO OPEN UP NEW HORIZONS FOR ME. I FOUND MYSELF BEGINNING TO FOCUS ON ASPECTS OF LIFE WHICH HAD NEVER BEFORE COME WITHIN MY SCOPE OF VISION
THE VERY FACT OF HAVING TO SLOW DOWN HAS GRADUALLY MADE ME MORE AWARE OF PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS WHICH I PREVIOUSLY MISUNDERSTOOD OR NEGLECTED OR SIMPLY DISREGARDED
THUS IT IS THAT I NOW FIND MYSELF LOOKING FOR OPPORTUNITIES TO MAKE A SMALL CONTRIBUTION IN A NUMBER OF WAYS TO PEOPLE AND CAUSES I HAVE COME TO RECOGNISE AND RESPECT FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER
THIS IS REALLY WHAT MOTIVATES ME TO WARM TO SOMEONE LIKE YOURSELF – TRYING TO EARN A LITTLE MONEY BY MAKING THE CITY A HAPPIER PLACE WITH MUSIC.
I DO NOT POSSESS A LOT OF MONEY, BUT I DO FEEL A STRONG DESIRE TO SHARE WHATEVER SURPLUS RESOURCES I HAVE IN WAYS LIKE THIS. I HAVE ALSO FOUND THAT IN SHARING I HAVE NEVER WANTED FOR ANYTHING.
I HOPE YOU DO NOT THINK THIS IS PATRONISING BEHAVIOUR – IT IS CERTAINLY NOT INTENDED TO BE. I ALSO HOPE YOU DO NOT THINK THAT I AM COMPLETELY CRAZY!! – BECAUSE IT IS GIVING ME A GREAT DEAL OF JOY TRYING TO IDENTIFY WITH PEOPLE AND LIFE SITUATIONS I HAVE MISSED OUT ON OVER THE YEARS
And there it ends. Keith, his name. Not that he signed it.”
“Wow, that’s incredible!” The girls are impressed.
All parties realise that by our simple interaction we were feeling better about our days. Postures have improved and the desire to travel and to explore takes over.
Onwards and driftwards. We must leave this familiar of settings, with familiar girls. Let us find the world. Let’s eat.
Somewhere we’ve never been. Italian? Boring. Bangladeshi. Don’t feel like curry. Tapas? We find a there’s a large television screen in the place. Fuck it.
We walk until we are cruising the Bigg Market. Lebanese? That’ll do.
We sit, excited by the thought of humous and falafel. Naturally I reminisce about Israel and young Effie. Mountains and dead seas and camels. And my girl.
Adam makes over-polite with the staff. Clenched teeth smiles and schoolboy thankyous. The tone of voice usually reserved for parents of a new girlfriend. Despite his best efforts, they won’t serve us booze.
The food arrives, our table a spread of colour and nutrition. We tell each other that fried aubergines are healthy. That’s one portion, right?
The conversation remains in giggles and as the food makes it to our stomachs, our pace slows. The pools of olive oil, once rich decoration, now line our insides, making us heaving and slow.
Nothing for it, we must drift on before death (or sleep) lulls us to its black hole.
To the sea. Where are our passports anyway? Bad move.
On our way down gentle paved hills, I find an unwrapped Mars Bar on the street. My second chocolate bar of the evening. No doubt a sign. I do the only thing that occurs to my pattern-forming mind: I kick it.
Where’s the spontaneity in that? Where’s the invention, the crushing of cliché and boundary?
We find ourselves by the Bridge Hotel. I find myself feeling sorry for the place, immediately beside some neverending and tedious bridge repairs. All white plastic and red bollards and a slight sense of isolation.
I tip the barman a quid; it seemed like an important Karmic step on such a spiritual adventure, out in the drinking holes of Newcastle. I am a barman after all. Besides, he was quite young and seemed rather unconfident and had an endearing awkward adolescence about him. I suspected he probably wouldn’t get many tips.
We drank a half on the benches outside, with an overlook of The Tyne. Staring at the Sage and talking nonsense.
Next, down some wonderfully gothic steps to the Crown Posada, a wonderfully old fashioned pub. The male staff were middle aged Geordies who promptly dealt with our requests for ale halfs, and for kicks, whisky.
We remain in earnest conversation, gradually drifting into our own social bubble. The high ceiling of the pub with its space-expanding mirrors and repainted faded orange and greens propounds a sense of antiquity. And who are we, mate, to create the new?
Adam takes a piss (in the toilets – I think that’s what he was doing) and a drunkenly confident middle aged woman asks for a seat. I tell her we are about to leave and she begins to tell me that her friend is a hairdresser.
“What’s your point?”
She laughs and continues to speak in riddles.
“We can sit here right? Are you sure? Well if you’re going to leave, I suppose that’s alright isn’t it! I was just saying I’d like to sit down, actually. I’ve been on my feet all day. Ha ha ha! It’s nice to have a drink though isn’t it. My friend says she would cut your hair for free. Look at all that hair! Like a whole rabbit on there! Not a rabbit. A lion. No or a…well yes a lion. Tony here said – oh, this is Tony by the way. Have you two met?”
“Er, no actually. No we haven’t mate.”
“He’s my sister’s fiance. This is…”
She waited. I was feeling cooperative. I knew what was required.
“Danny. Hi mate. Danny. Tony right?”
The conversational direction prompted my imagination to conjure a hazy orange tiger. How else would I remember his name? Sweaty handshake by the way.
“It’s great to be out isn’t it. Out on the town! Yes, like a lion. A thin lion. Ha ha ha!”
As Adam returned from the toilet, I was trying to imagine what this woman would be like sober. When drunk, she was a fury of darting creativity, displaying the most fascinating of unlinear minds and some active limbs. Sober, I imagined my librarian from school. Deliberate, formal and well, less fun.
We left the pub and began texting friends. Surely someone would provide entertainment for us. Fuck the drunken idiot randoms. Let us find camaraderie among our phonebooks.
No one is answering. No one is available.
We walk through the recently realised collection of mass monument odes to modernity and hyperrealism.
The Quayside.
Enormous shining structures, curved glass and reflecting light sources. Changing neon glows, shimmering under a light black sky. Musical abominations spewing forth from bars and clubs and pubs across to the pedestrian walk ways. Inviting or revolting the passer by.
The Tyne Pub, that night, was playing host to Clara’s birthday party.
“Well, sort of. It’s actually not her birthday until next week, apparently. But she’s doing it now because she’s away next week. Or something.”
Was language really invented for such frivolous impartations?
Ordering our halves at the bar, a blonde gentle creature takes the beer pump into her soft hands. Caressing the hard wood with care as the frothy white beer crashes around the once empty glass, we gulp a breath and remember that we are in fact in public.
Entering the outside courtyard, a jumble of twenty somethings are smothered in drabs across park benches. Making conversation, nursing pints and vodkas and tripping over bikes.
Now we are faced with mass interaction. Action. Yes! The drift delivers what was asked for. At some point I find myself talking to Greek Laura. When I mention my Israeli girlfriend, the word Israel seems to press a mental switch in her mind. Before her inner word-associated filing cabinet, I can see her imagination produce newspaper headlines and televised footage of sandy streets and destroyed buildings; screaming children running from rubble and flags and people standing down by The Grey’s Monument in town with banners and political leaflets. I could see greasy long hair.
We had one of those conversations where I find myself patiently trying to convey the concept of scale. I have to suggest that the world is perhaps bigger than the stories we are told every day by the people with the money and the cameras, rooting for juicy blood. Israel is also a country with people, some of whom are not racist presidents. Some need reminding of this.
I imagine how Effie would look to a person’s mind who had never met her. An Israeli girlfriend. Picture it, o person before me! A white head scarf above her pale forehead with a black loose-fitting ensemble, riding a camel through a sand dune. With an assault rifle. And a giant blue star of David emblazoned on her jewbag.
Myself and Adam left this particular party, having hugged all the appropriate people and suitably made our conversations.
The drift is over. We’ve done all we can.
Perhaps an enormous failure. A brave, earnestly sought attempt to leave prescribed ways of living, of seeing, of travelling, and of being, becomes the most well-trodden of social rituals. A pub crawl. A drunken retreading of old steps. But with an eye on the stars.
Then Adam’s girlfriend, Jane, makes the booty call, and he is swept off to the (presumably) warm enclaves of a kind woman.
And I take the bus home on my own to the silence of my room. I eat a Penguin Bar.
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