The class of person you meet in a Wetherspoons after 10pm on a Saturday is on a sliding scale between cretin and lout (frequently there is some crossover). It’s a lacklustre corporate idea of what a pub should be, infested with down and outers who are after the silk glove of acceptance in the form of some misguided attempt at glamorous drinking. The wretchedness of their souls rendered any such attempt fruitless. I was one of them.
When she approached our table she was beyond drunk. I liked her immediately. I fully expected that one day, maybe soon, we’d decide to grow old together and move out to the countryside where she could raise free-range chickens, and I could take up painting or carpentry.
“Would you like to try some of my drink?” she asked us.
We looked at each other and then back at her.
“What’s in it?” Someone asked with all the cheery aplomb he could muster.
She started running off the list: “Guinness, vodka, Carlsberg, Baileys, wine. “She stopped and stood there for a while thinking and spinning about and then laid a finger on the rim of the glass. “And a dash of tequila,” she added, with a whimsical curtsey.
I admired her chutzpah. It takes balls to approach a table of strangers and ask them to taste such an obviously disastrous concoction.
The collective polite refusal rang out across the table. We’re ok, thanks.
Her obvious dismay was at once broken by one man, standing and placing his hands on his hips, thrusting his chest out and bellowing: I will try your drink!
To my surprise, I found that I was that man. I’ve had a lot of time to analyse this, and I think my reasoning was perfectly logical and correct. It went along the following lines: Fate is offering me a drink. We are all, for better or worse, in this pub together and have decided to give part of ourselves over to merriment.
This woman, who might be the future rearer of some chickens while I caress wood in a garage, had appeared and laid down a challenge.
What kind of a man would I be if I didn’t accept? Exactly, I’d be just like everyone else at that table, someone with a drink in their hand that they actually liked and wanted to drink.
Actually, none of that sounds perfectly logical and correct now that I’ve written it down. I’d had a few.
Anyway, I took the glass from her. There was a cigarette floating in it. To not have some now would not only seem discourteous, but would mean I would lose face in front of some people I didn’t really know or care about, so of course I had to have a go.
I feel as though I’ve been building towards something that is already a foregone conclusion, so I’ll just say it plainly: it tasted beyond terrible. It was so terrible that it was almost impressive. It was a completely unholy union of flavours carpet-bombing my palate, each one more unwelcome than the last.
I handed the glass back to her.
“Great,” I said. “That’s great. Thankyou.”
It wasn’t great. Sometimes you just have to chalk things up to being young and stupid. Now that I’m older and wiser, I have to chalk up the doing of stupid things as being forgetful or it being someone else’s fault.
She had continued spinning about in the manner of a whirling dervish, oblivious to the nearby punters who weren’t followers of Sufi mysticism. Only in Spoons, I thought. Only in Spoons.
When she stopped spinning she said: “I like you. I think you’re really neat.”
“Thankyou,” I replied.
Then she skipped off and I never saw her again.
