Notes from a Bar-Crawl

The following notes from the pub are a waste of my time and yours. Consider yourself warned.

If you think it’s a rhetorical question it isn’t, and vice versa; if you find it offensive, it’s meant as a joke; if it makes you go all tingly down below in your sexy parts then I have pornographic movies in my apartment, and lubricants, and amyl nitrite.

The first of the notebook scrawls that I don’t first need to run past my doctor. Ten points if you remember where you’ve heard that last bit before.

The next bit was me fleshing out a tweet prior to sending it – and thank fuck I had the good sense not to bother; women tend to err on the side of caution in regards to flirtation that contains cryptic ironic metaphor, especially ones threatening a stake through the heart. Why am I single?

I won’t repeat it. The words continued:

There is a relief to walking into a bar where sport is being shown. As long as you look at the screen and wince in the appropriate places then you’re usually left alone to nurse your pint or your writing pad. I’m one of the few left amongst the old school friends who hasn’t yet made their way over to supporting a team. I like to think, to convince myself even, that the reason they’re going back on a youth of skiving off games is to fit in, to find a place. Not consciously, not faking it or anything like that but because they realise that supporting a team is a great way of belonging.

But what do I know, I don’t really give a shit so I’m probably talking out of my arse. Give me robots any day of the week.

I’m in an Australian bar. Unless you followed a stray link here you’ll know that I’m living in Middlesbrough and to the best of my knowledge there is only one Aussie bar here; ergo, I am in Walkabout. The last time I saw an old friend was in one of these pubs; too bright and empty, these places; except for the one in Glasgow. That wasn’t.

So as I sit here pretending to be a sports journalist but instead appearing more like a rapist who writes poetry to get himself in the mood, I feel alright. Thanks for asking.

I’d planned on a dumb little blog series – 30+ Middlesbrough Pub Guide – but now I realise my target demographic is quite limited. People my age either have a family and friends or else they don’t require an online guide to socialising in a new town – just an untraceable white van, several rolls of duct tape and an air-tight alibi for last Monday.

I’ve been dressing a local tramp up in my cloths and sending him to lectures you see; the likeness is uncanny and I don’t speak to anybody anyway.

I also planned on some kind of food blog, recipes for youngsters who want to learn to cook good but that’s a little altruistic for my taste and what with the radio thing and all this damned reading and news, well, fuck it. Buy a Jamie Oliver book, he’s very good and infinitely more personable than myself. The cunt.

The scrawls continue for seven more pages, each more awful than the last; I can’t be arsed, now that I’ve started, but it’s good to talk, isn’t it?