In the Pub

Max was in fine form.

“In my humblest of humble opinions, we are but pawns of our pasts. Our every action is in fact a reaction to what has just happened, to what we have just done. We are always playing catch up with ourselves, but we can never quite get there.”

They were in the pub, though it was still a bit shy of two o’clock in the afternoon. It was the logical place to be. There were worse places to be. Max could have been at work. Neil could have been at home in Jedburgh. Bob could have been ... anywhere. It wouldn't have made much difference. Instead they were in the pub, and they had been there for almost an hour already.

On the table in front of them lay the remains of a shared meal – plates of chips, mostly consumed, smears of blood and sauce that told the story of the lunch just eaten. Walling in the greasy plates were pint glasses, empty and half full. The boys were settling in for the day.

Max was in fine form. He had started orating about five minutes ago, taking as his topic destiny and doom, which was his usual theme. This time at least he had surprised them in two ways. First, the speed with which he had imposed his monotonous rambling on them. Secondly, by the fact that he had not mentioned God once yet. For a frequently avowed atheist, Max talked about God quite a lot.

Max would often talk about things in this style, long rambling monologues inflicted upon anyone as soon as he felt he had an audience. Most people learned to walk away, but the group gathered here today were innured to their friend’s raving. Besides, they had drink to drink and leaving Max would have entailed abandoning their booze.

The pub they were in was an establishment on a very fashionable street. This was the wrong end of the street, however, too far down the hill to be patronized by the clubbers and party crowd. Instead it was a down-at-heel sort of place that served a population of self consciously arty and vagabond types, mostly male, and a hard core of elderly drinkers of both sexes, who would coalesce in the early evening and sit at the bar glowering at the bright young men who had got there ealry and claimed the booths.

Max was in fine form, but his audience was ignoring him. There was football on the television set above the bar and they were focused on that. Even Max was following the action on screen as he talked.

Though the bar was almost empty, they had chosen a booth near the toilet, a strategic consideration from which they hoped to benefit as the night wore on. As the night wore on, they also hoped to build up a tolerance to the fetid stench emanating from the toilets. This might explain why they were drinking so fast.

They met at this pub because it was conveniently located for all of them except Max. Max lived far to the south, in Marchmont, but professed to enjoy the long walk across town. Neil, who was in town for a week, was staying with Max, and did not enjoy the walk, but did not say anything about this to anyone.

“We are haunted by our pasts” said Max, dramatically. On the television, a goal was scored and the camera showed muted scenes of celebration on the nearly empty terraces. “We spend, I calculate, thirty three per cent of our conscious time ruing what we did and thirty three per cent ruing what we did not, which only leaves one third of our faculties to think about what we should be doing just now. With this in mind, it is not surprising that what we do in every second leads to yet more pointless pondering in subsequent seconds. It is a cycle that it is hard to break. We spend our time ruing what we did or did not do, and as a result of this lack of concentration, commit yet more mistakes which in turn occupy our minds. So mistakes begat mistakes. Fleas have littler fleas upon their backs to bite 'em.”

Max paused to imbibe. “So we spend too much of our time thinking about how we stuffed up trying to chat up some wench last night, and while we are thinking about that another one slips through our fingers tonight. Then tomorrow, we make the same mistake again, thinking about the one we missed tonight.” Max hesitated a moment, looking confused. “We have to live in the moment. To Hell with the past. And to Hell with the future. If we can’t concentrate absolutely on what we are experiencing right now this second, we are doomed. Either we spend our energy flagellating ourselves for our past mistakes, or quivering with terror about what might happen.

“Because that is the other extreme, all too common, all too common. Ninety per cent of human beings spend all their time thinking about what went wrong in the past. The other ninety per cent spend all their time worrying about what might go wrong in the future, if they so much as dare to step out of the door. Someone once said: there are two things in life not worth worrying about, the past and the inevitable. Well, it seems to me that we spend all our time doing just that.

“And another wise one once said that history is doomed to repeat itself, the first time as farce, the second time as comedy. Well, we have to learn to laugh at the comedy of our lives. Whatever happens, we will inevitably die. Anything in between that might possibly go wrong, diminishes in the light of this one truth. Who cares about wenches missed, if in a few years there will be no more wenches ever again? But we must not worry about it, remember, because it is inevitable. And if death itself is not worth worrying about, then what is?”

Max’s speeches usually ended this way, as long as someone was quick enough to buy him whisky and stopper him with it before he had time to find his thread and start again. Neil obliged on this occasion, buying whiskies for all. One reason they liked this pub – and Max stated this loudly on almost every occasion when whisky was bought for him – was that they still served whisky in old measures, “Proper measures” declared Max approvingly when he say they glass in front of him. “It’s nice to get a proper dram. You can tell the difference between a proper dram and a … a … an improper dram” he continued, vaguely. “A proper dram wets the back of your throat. An improper dram barely wets the bottom of the glass. And mysteriously, in many pubs in this town, the improper dram served the day after the measure changed costs the same as the improper dram served there the day before. Did I get that right?”

“Shut up Max” said Bob, absently, watching the football. Max looked at him venomously and went to put some songs on the juke box.