A Sunday in July

Had there been anyone else other than me there, you might have said that the comment was intended for nobody in particular.

- Jeez, boy, it's awful quiet, isn’t it?

I look up towards Richmond Bridge from my spot near the slipway. The guy in the ice-cream van looks bored. It’s a Sunday evening in July and there are not a whole lot of people here at all.

- Could make a cameo at The Ship, I suggest.

Eddie’s already half way up Waterman’s Lane. He has that look in his eye. We don’t quite make it to the train station; he’s spotted one of his landlord buddies and the doorway is only very briefly darkened before he makes his presence felt inside.

- Alright Eddie! Bloody quiet, ain’t it?

- Ya! We were just down by the water. There’s nobody around at all.

He rubs his hands together and it's not long before he's in full flight. I get them in and don’t get involved.

I mind the gap as we’re getting off at Wandsworth Town. We negotiate the traffic and McDonald’s car park, sidle past the bus depot, hang a left down toward the cement works and wonder how the crowd at the end of Jews Row ever managed to find their way here in the first place. 

Someone has spread out a Persian rug on the tarmac in the middle of the roadway outside the pub. On it a couple of leather couches sit within Pimm’s pouring distance of each other. I turn to pass comment to Eddie, but I've been abandoned. I just manage to catch sight of his chrome dome disappearing into the pub. I follow him and make it inside in time to see him nip through the doorway into the main bar. By the time I make it through, he’s already chatting to Charlie and Phil.

- Howaryiz, lads, says Charlie. Jeez, it’s a bit quiet isn’t it?

I look around. There are a couple of tables left inside. Some kid in skinny jeans is in the process of moving one of them to replace it with a couple of guitar cases and an amp. Outside, it’s standing room only on the rug.

- Quiet for here, maybe, Charlie. I think you’ve got just about the entire London pub trade. What’s the story with the carpet?

- Ah, ya know. Thought it might be a laugh. Had a couple of lamps and a TV out there earlier but took them in because we thought it might rain.

I’m not sure if he’s serious. He scampers off behind the bar and starts polishing something, grins back in our direction. Phil tosses his hair and wafts off somewhere. Eddie’s beaming. He nods towards the bar.

- Pint bottle of cider. No ice.

It’s getting dark, now. The place is buzzing. I’m buzzing. Eddie’s being controversial about something and I’m pretty sure he’s winding me up. The band can’t decide between posing and rock-and-rolling until the guitarist starts the intro of Sex on Fire. Emma’s sitting on other side of Charlie’s exterior living room arrangement. She has beautiful brown eyes and she’s a writer. That doesn’t seem to do it justice though. Writeuse, maybe... I tell Eddie I’m going to the jacks and skip over to say hello. I don’t make the grand and witty entrance that I merit, though. Mind you, I never do. I’m back a few minutes later.

Oisin arrives for a late one. He’s amused at what his staff have been up to with the carpet and the couches. It seems everyone else is too, particularly the Brylcream and GHD couple who are sprawled out in full pizza-and-DVD mode. It starts when you get to the top of Jews Row and you realise you’ve stumbled upon the place where those red tour buses live. By the time you get to the bottom, it’s all a bit lively and you feel a bit like you’re doing something your headmaster wouldn’t have approved of.

It’s closing time, and I’ve almost a full pint left. No rush - nobody’s going to swipe it and tell me to go home and iron my shirt for the morning. I look across to the writeuse and I formulate the witty observation or bon mot that I’ll leave until too late to deliver.

A few days later the phone rings, and a few days after that I’m stepping out of an airport into a blast of hot air that makes me turn my face away. Utah. No footpaths. Off licenses run by the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Can I see your ID, sir? The locals don’t recognise my accent and politely ask me where I’m from.

- Ireland, I say.

- Iowa?

- No, Ireland.

- Oh! Yeah... Is it as hot there as it is here during the summer?

In these parts, they have greeters at the supermarket who offer you a mobility scooter with built-in basket to carry your Cheerios and tell you that they miss you already as you leave. There's a Mexican restaurant where the staff ring a brass bell and cheer when you ask for extra cheese on your burrito. They’re mannerly and courteous and I might as well be from Mars.

I couldn’t face the palaver tonight. I’m in my apartment drinking light beer from a can and watching the sun go down over some scrubby sun-burnt hills.

I could do with a pint. In a glass. In a pub.

That Rodeo Feeling

It's 10:45pm, but I've got that 2am feeling. I'm slugging from a bottle of Sam Adams that I bought in a State Liquor Store. Anywhere else, it's low-alcohol beer, so adopting a Liquor Store-based procurement policy is the only way you can be sure that the contents of your beer bottle aren't promising maudlin, Wednesday evening good times while surreptitiously trying to keep you sober enough to praise the Lord and love Uncle Sam. I had intended to have just one before bed, but then Spotify threw John Martyn and Jerry Douglas at me and now those bottles seem awfully small. Too tired to raise hell, but just lonely enough to try to pull heaven down by the tail to join me here on the couch in this little piece of the American Dream.

I went to a Rodeo this evening in all its dusty glory. Hot dogs and ten gallon hats and giant turkey drumsticks with honey sauce that they wrap up in tinfoil and let you eat like some sort of medieval lord. Skinny cowboys spit and mosey back to their gate whether they have an eighty-four or a no-score and mud on their chaps.

After the broncs come the bulls. No cowboy hats - they wear helmets for this one. They sit in their traps, seven, eight, nine men making unseen, arcane, vital adjusments while the cowboy hauls at something out of sight as if he were trying to start a lawnmower. Got to wait till the bull stands up, the barker says, and the cowboy's leaning back as if he's on a sun lounger. The trap opens and a tasseled, bechapped body is immediately rag-dolled into the dust, bashing his head off a horn on the way down. He sits up and, for a second, a very long second, he's face to face with the bull, noses inches apart. The clowns wave and jump, distracting the bull as the cowboy gets up and saunters back; moseys, even. Didn't manage to score, ladies and gents, but he sure put it up to that bull.

The cowgirls arrive and do a kind of slalom around tar barrels, sprinting from one end of the ground to the other, all long legs and denim, silky hair flowing out from under their Stetsons. Each one of them looks hand-picked to be willowy and talented and wholesome. The crowd is mostly families, munching away and keeping half an eye on their mini cowboys clambering over the bleachers and peering out from under wide brims. There's a hard core of locals standing over the corrals at the ends, one boot each up on the concrete ledge below the rail stanchions, all wearing blue jeans and boots and white, straw hats. From where I'm sitting, they're part silhouetted as the sun goes down behind them and I just know they wouldn't be much for talking.

I meet a girl from Kansas and tell her I don't think we're there anymore. She asks me where I'm from.

     'Iowa?', she asks.
     'Ireland', I reply.
     'Oh.'

She smiles politely, coquettishly, holds my gaze just longer than necessary before turning away.

It's Slack at the moment. That's the qualifying round. Nobody's too interested. Not in the show, anyway, though the food sellers are doing stiff business. The sun is going down over a sea of cars, mostly pickups, and the car park, the parking lot, is spattered with yellow pinpoints of stellar glass and chrome. Some of the Dodge trucks have wheels up to my waist and one of them, parked just below where I'm sitting, is painted with green flames stretching back along the side panels. The front windscreen has day-glo green lettering across the top: Michael Jackson 1958 - 2009.

There's a ten year old girl in full cowgirl regalia riding what may or may not be a Shetland pony at full speed to the delight of the crowd. Kansas is wandering back toward her seat with a giant blob of candy floss. I look down and notice that my cowboy boots are beginning to look broken in. We're not in Kansas anymore.