MORNING SERIAL
FROM the tables on the outer rim of the room, and a step up behind the railing of uprights, there was the beginning of the buzz of early evening, post-work drinkers.
Local government officers, some business people, the newly retired, a collar-and-tie brigade that would have discouraged your Tommys and Lionels from entering as much as the chemical sniff coming off pints of filtered and resurrected lager would have disgusted them.
An aftersmell of lunchtime’s industrial vinegar combined with the dead pasteurised beer created an atmosphere akin to a formaldehyde gag.
I could have done with the devil-may-care rapture of tobacco smoke to remind me that death usually came after life.
The cigarette smokers were in the purgatory for exiled puffers outside the main lobby.
I chose a table at the back near the door and further from the bar.
There was waitress service if you waited long enough. I was happy to wait.
I inhaled the forlorn cinemagoer’s memory of Jeyes cleaning fluid that came my way every time the toilet door opened and closed.
I was beaten-up, tired, emotional, and sober for once. What more could you want? I was beginning to wonder. A wine list, perhaps.
When my turn came I asked for a glass of red wine, anything I said that had never been in contact with Antipodean soil or been inside the staves of an oak barrel.
I made myself understood by simplifying it to “Nothing from Australia”. Customer service was delivered – to an extent.
The wine came in a glass that could have doubled as a small bucket.
I tasted more pampas than eucalyptus.
A Malbec to put a twist in a gaucho’s boleros.
I decided sipping would be an effete pastime with this drink, so I just drank.
I ordered another, with peanuts on the side.
The waitress seemed to approve of this as a gesture to the normality of the local culture.
> The Crossing by Dai Smith is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com