A Friday Night in Bristol

[rhythmaning]

After chatting a while to K, I went to meet G in a pub. In the thirty-odd years we have known each other, a fair proportion of our relationship has been played out in pubs. But I hadn’t been in a pub for a while, and the Shakespeare seemed pretty much like any other pub; smoky, with beer. There were the usual characters up by the bar – blowsy blondes, overweight men with loud voices who clearly thought they owned the place (and perhaps they did), blokes sitting by themselves doing soduko – that would be me, since I got there first.

We caught up over a couple of pints – jobs, relationships, friends. So that took a couple of minutes, and we settled into the usual pub-bonhomie. G wasn’t smoking – this was the first surprise of the weekend.

The pub was around the corner from K and G’s rather wonderful house – plenty of space for their three kids to tear around – but despite this, G had driven from work to the pub, rather than driving home first, meeting me there, leaving the car and us walking. That would have been much simpler; but it might also have meant interacting with children before making it to the pub, so maybe there was a plan…

Later, after some bickering over what kind of carry out to get for supper (settling for pizza; disturbingly, I ate all of mine whilst G left half of his; still, I had been driving all day), K, G and I went off to a birthday party for one of their friends. A moderate walk away, we wound our way through the streets which seemed to be filled with students on their way out. The party was held in the polish club – sorry, that isn’t polish, but Polish: not a convention of cleaners, but a national gathering place. Neither of the two hosts were Polish, and we couldn’t work out why this was actually the venue for the party; perhaps it was available.

The party was in the basement, and it felt a bit like a school disco: everyone hung around the walls, and the centre of the floor was empty. There were signs in Polish around the walls: one read “palerice wzbroine”*, which was “no smoking” – good thing G had given up, then. There were ads for Zywiec beer – which they were selling at the bar (not so much like a school disco, I guess). And Polish flags, together with Austro-Hapsburg double-headed eagles. Actually, rather than a school disco, perhaps it reminded me of a Hawkwind gig, c75. (Without the naked dancers, unfortunately.)

There was a band playing, too. They knew their market: they kicked off with “Let’s Stay Together” by Canned Heat (well, they made it famous, anyhow), and I think the most up-to-date tune they played was “Echo Beach” by Martha and the Muffins (they had an alto sax player who main job seemed to be to get the tune on Echo Beach); and everyone – let’s face it, we were all of an age – everyone knew all the tunes. Someone said that the band were all doctors – one of the hosts was a doctor. I found this a bit scary: the idea of these guys actually trying to cure someone, or fixing them, or giving them pills… Well, it didn’t seem quite right. Perhaps popping them themselves, but giving them to someone else?

Aside from G and K, I barely talked to anyone; a kind of ennui set in: I reckoned that I’d probably never see anyone there again (since most people there weren’t friends of K and G’s – but friends of friends – so they are mighty removed from my orbit), and the effort to make small chat meant I didn’t really bother. Years ago, I would have been working the floor, flirting – perhaps the desire to pick women up was once my main social driver? Probably.

An aside: everyone seems to be dieting at the moment. But I couldn’t help noticing that the most attractive women at this party with whom I wasn’t flirting, no were, well the more amply proportioned. Perhaps I just like curves.

We walked back to the house afterwards, and cracked open the bottle of Glenlivet that I had brought as a gift. Fortunately, we didn’t finish the bottle, so I didn’t have too bad a hangover the next day.

*Please, please don’t tell me if I got the spelling wrong.

Comments

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a pleasant, but ultimately slightly weird evening ...

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Which is the least I would have expected! G and I have had a wide variety of adventures over the years, including hitch-hiking from New York to San Francisco amongst other things.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Can I ask you nicely if you might post about that sometime? :)

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Try an stop me... some time. Actually, I was going to make it a novel. I thought "On the Road" would be a good title, but then someone told me that had already been taken...

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Yeah, apparently some upstart got there first. Sorry about that.

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

I've no idea how you spell no smoking in Polish. But you don't spell sudoku like that.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Yeah, thanks... xxx

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Most of my colleagues are incapable of pronouncing sudoku as it is spelled, such that they all pronounce it as rhythmaning is spelling it. I wonder if this is a problem with the way in which these vowels are usually ordered in English?

(Though, and this is a different rant entirely, I appear to be one of the few people in my department who can pronounce the names of things. You want to see our HoD going to pieces over students with names like Niamh, Matusiewicz, Sian, Gilfillan, and even more mundane ones like Baguley, which is pronounced BAG-ley but which he insists on pronouncing as Ba-GOOLY. And he's not alone. Anyway.)

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I think is is more an issue translating what would start as pictograms - Chinese and Japanese characters, for instance - into western alphabets.

Who knows who is right?!