Two posts in as many days? i'm spoiling you lot

I have just got back from what people in the pub trade call an A.F.D.* and before I slip into a bath hotter than the sun, three or four cold beers and unconsciousness, wanted to address something that appears to become a reoccurring theme in my blog; Pubs.

Last night Clumsy Arse asked me why pubs were so important to me, and it wasn’t a thinly veiled attempt to address my growing alcohol hobby, so it didn’t justify the flippant answer “because that’s where they sell the booze”. People tend to ask me this a lot.

The real answer requires some thought and this post is documentation of that thought train. I suppose foremost is that in the pub I feel as if I am participating in life, no matter how much I enjoy and obsess over it (damn you ANTM) watching T.V will always seem like killing time, entertaining myself until I die. In a pub, even on my own, I feel like part of the story, granted, maybe the background character of someone else’s story, but still part of the grand narrative.

As an avid people watcher, the pub is better than any soap the Devils ThoughtBox has to offer. There are not many things that modesty will allow me to admit to being good at, writing (maybe), and People Hacking** being two. A large part of PH is reading body language, something I enjoy a great deal.

Bars are where people’s lives overlap and in that overlap is where the fun stuff happens; nefarious items are bought or sold or swapped, causes are recruited for, allegiances made and ended and relationships begun (or, indeed, ended).

The pub feels comfortable to me; I have worked in bars and pubs since I came of age a decade ago. I understand the grammar of drinking and the syntax of serving. Being in pubs feels like home but only because they ARE home to me.

Anyway how many cool stories start with “I was sitting in my house”?



*All Fucking Day, a split shift, 10 hours or more
**The science of understanding human behaviour and using that knowledge to manipulate situations to your advantage.