Pub Life Quotes

I hate solitude, but I'm afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.

The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.

I really like Matilda and that's not a clever book, is it? It's for children. But she's my favourite main character because she comes from an awful family and likes reading, like I do. Those special powers must've made her life a lot easier, though. She wouldn't be working in a pub at thirty-two.

Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is?

The prospect of his future life stretched before him like a sentence; not a prison sentence but a long-winded sentence with a lot of unnecessary subordinate clauses, as he was soon in the habit of quipping during Happy Hour pickup time at the local campus bars and pubs. He couldn’t say he was looking forward to it, this rest-of-his-life.

People only know what you tell them.And it was true.People gave out their whole life stories to anyone and everyone without a second's thought.Stand at a bus stop,sit in a strange pub,get banged up,and someone would always give you their life story.It was as if they were trying to prove they existed

Gavin had glared at Alastair Lowe and his brother from the back of the pub and wondered what it would be like to have someone in his life like that. Someone who knew him. Someone who saw him. Someone who would celebrate when, not if, he came home.

I carried my pint to a corner table and sat just looking at it for a moment: the head of foam, the tiny bubbles ascending through clear gold, the droplets condensing on the sides of the glass, then running down to form a wet circle on the beer mat. Reputations are ruined, marriages destroyed, lifes works forsaken for the beauty of such a sight. There are seven thousand pubs in London.

I like it! I liked it when man to man no matter whether he is boss or he is ordinary worker, but in meantime they go to the pub, they drink beer together and call by first name. I like that. After few years, I think that Queensland is the best place in Australia … I am Queenslander! – Alex Sucharsky, Ukranian

Do you ever wonder if this is all there is?” “What?” Richard gestured vaguely, taking in everything. “Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is?

Have you noticed, now, the way people talk so loudly in snackbars and cinemas, how the shelved back gardens shudder with prodigies of talentlessness, drummers, penny-whistlers, vying transistors, the way you see and hear the curses and sign-language of high sexual drama at the bus-stops under ghosts of clouds, how life has come out of doors? And in the soaked pubs the old-timers wince and weather the canned rock. We talk louder to make ourselves heard. We will all be screamers soon.

I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for a pub that stays open after 12.00.

I've never been thrown out of a pub, but I've fallen into quite a few

Orwell wrote easily and well about small humane pursuits, such as bird watching, gardening and cooking, and did not despise popular pleasures like pubs and vulgar seaside resorts. In many ways, his investigations into ordinary life and activity prefigure what we now call 'cultural studies.

Finished off and washed up before your time- But you will never run a pub. You will never own a shop- Instead, you will have your revenge- That is how you shall live- In place of a life, revenge.

The woman dies. She dies to provide a plot twist. She dies to develop the narrative. She dies for cathartic effect. She dies because no one could think of what else to do with her. Dies because there weren’t any better story ideas around. Dies because her death was the very best idea that anyone could come up with. ‘I’ve got it! Let’s kill her off!’ ‘Yes! Her death will solve everything!’ ‘Okay! Let’s hit the pub!’ And so, the woman dies. The woman dies so the man can be sad about it. The woman dies so the man can suffer. She dies to give him a destiny. Dies so he can fall to the dark side. Dies so he can lament her death. As he stands there, brimming with grief, brimming with life, the woman lies there in silence. The woman dies for him. We watch it happen. We read about it happening. We come to know it well.

Any pub will do?” “McPherson’s, I think. One with music that will alter my life forever, give me eternal happiness, and make me see God. You know. One like that.” “So you need the magical sound of Ireland and some information about an Abbeyglen native. Francine”—Beckett’s eyes danced in the streaming sunlight—“I’m about to solve your every problem.” Beckett stood up and gave my hair a light tug. “Prepare to worship and adore me.

Scapegrace: Back then, I was full of ideas, I was going to renovate the whole front of the pub,, and extend out to the west, maybe get in a music system a little dancefloor. In the end, I decided not to. Too expensive, you know. And, like, nobody wanted to dance so. Skulduggery: Vaurien, if you're trying to kill us, there are quicker ways than telling us your life story Valkryie: Less painful too.

I someties think I want to write a book of my life So that when I meet you - or anyone new - I can hand it over and you can read it Instead of trying to read me. You can take it away and decide whether it's worth giving me your time. You can think about if, the next time we are walking towards each other, you'll smile without slowing down Or cross the street and pretend you haven't seen me Or stop and put an arm round my shoulder, steer me into the nearest pub, and buy me a pint of stout. Because you'll know, having read the book, that stout is what I drink. You see elegance of my proposal. But every time I sit down to write the book, I hit a snag. I could tell so many stories. I could be a poet or a magician or a faild mathematician. I could be happy or soul-sore or lonely. I could start when I was born, when I was twelve, when I left university. And the book would be different for each story I choose. And the book would be true, and untrue, for each. Our pasts are as unfixed as our futures, if you think about it. And I like the freedom I have to tell a different story.

It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

/A weekend toward the end of September, the bell above the door rang and there he was in the shop. Same old feeling in my guts. I’ll go if you want me to, he said. I smiled, I was so fucking happy to see him. You’ve only just got here, you twat, I said. Now give us a hand with this, and he took the other end of the trestle table and moved it over to the wall. Pub? I said. He grinned. And before I could say anything else he put his arms around me. And everything he couldn’t say in our room in France was said in that moment. I know, I said. I know. I’d already accepted I wasn’t the key to unlock him. She’d come later. It took a while to acknowledge the repercussions of that time. How the numbness in my fingertips traveled to my heart and I never even knew it. I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I’d no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross. The psychiatrist liked that analogy. I watched him write it down. Chuckle, chuckle, his pen across the page.

I wanted you to kiss me, Jack," I say, bereft. It's not as if he isn't aware what I wanted back there; to be coy would be pointless. "I don't like myself for it." He strokes my hair, cups my chin, looks me in the eyes. "If I tell you something, do you promise to never tell another living soul, not even a goldfish?" I swallow, eye to eye with him as I nod, and he takes my face between both of his hands. Whatever he's about to say, I think it's something I'm going to remember forever. "I wanted to kiss you back there in the pub, Laurie, and I want to kiss you even more right now. You're one of the loveliest people I've ever met in my whole life." He looks away, down the length of the deserted street and then back at me again. "You're beautiful and kind, and you make me laugh, and when you look at me like that with your summer hedgerow eyes...only a fucking saint wouldn't kiss you." Then he leans me against the wall with the weight of his body, and because he isn't a fucking saint, he kisses me. Jack O'Mara dips his head and kisses me in the snow, his lips trembling and then hot and sure, and I'm crying and kissing him back, opening my mouth to let his tongue slide over mine as he makes this low, injured animal noise in his throat. I feel the relief of him in every follicle of my hair, and in every cell of my body, and in the blood in my veins. His breathing is as shallow as mine, and it's so much more than I've ever imagined, and trust me, I used to let my imagination run riot where Jack O'Mara was concerned. He holds my face as if I'm precious and then pushes his fingers into my hair, cupping my head in his hands when I tip it back. This is the only time we will ever kiss each other. He knows it, I know it, and it's so achingly melancholy-sexy that I feel tears threaten again.

...You know how you have real-life time versus story time, how stories leave out the boring bits and condense so much? A long-form RPG has some substance to it, leaves time to wander the desert or have a conversation or hang out in a pub. It might not be the closest thing to real life but pacing-wise it's closer than a movie or a TV show or a novel.

It was nearly eight before he returned to the office. This was the hour when he found London most lovable; the working day over, her pub windows were warm and jewel-like, her streets thrummed with life, and the indefatigable permanence of her aged buildings, softened by the street lights, became strangely reassuring. We have seen plenty like you, they seemed to murmur soothingly, as he limped along Oxford Street carrying a boxed-up camp bed. Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his. Walking wearily past closing shops, while the heavens turned indigo above him, Strike found solace in vastness and anonymity.

He staggered back into the pub, clutching his stomach, a wordless, crumpled husk of ever-growing regret.

The pub, after all, is where so much of theater life takes place.

I went to the pub to meet the young men. They never talk ideas, it is always people with them. The church is the vicar - that kind of thing. They seem, well, hemmed-in by the village itself.

To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen. When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought I should be able to get him to stop long. I used to sit down and look at him, as he sat on the rug and looked up at me, and think: “Oh, that dog will never live. He will be snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, that is what will happen to him.” But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had killed; and had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff of his neck, out of a hundred and fourteen street fights; and had had a dead cat brought round for my inspection by an irate female, who called me a murderer; and had been summoned by the man next door but one for having a ferocious dog at large, that had kept him pinned up in his own tool-shed, afraid to venture his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night; and had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty shillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I began to think that maybe they’d let him remain on earth for a bit longer, after all. To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most disreputable dogs to be found in the town, and lead them out to march round the slums to fight other disreputable dogs, is Montmorency’s idea of “life;” and so, as I before observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs., and hotels his most emphatic approbation.

I wanted to kiss you back there in the pub, Laurie, and I want to kiss you even more right now. You’re one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met in my whole life.” He looks away, down the length of the deserted street and then back at me again. “You’re beautiful and kind, and you make me laugh, and when you look at me like that with your summer hedgerow eyes…only a fucking saint wouldn’t kiss you.

Rea­sons Why I Loved Be­ing With Jen I love what a good friend you are. You’re re­ally en­gaged with the lives of the peo­ple you love. You or­ga­nize lovely ex­pe­ri­ences for them. You make an ef­fort with them, you’re pa­tient with them, even when they’re side­tracked by their chil­dren and can’t pri­or­i­tize you in the way you pri­or­i­tize them. You’ve got a gen­er­ous heart and it ex­tends to peo­ple you’ve never even met, whereas I think that ev­ery­one is out to get me. I used to say you were naive, but re­ally I was jeal­ous that you al­ways thought the best of peo­ple. You are a bit too anx­ious about be­ing seen to be a good per­son and you def­i­nitely go a bit over­board with your left-wing pol­i­tics to prove a point to ev­ery­one. But I know you re­ally do care. I know you’d sign pe­ti­tions and help peo­ple in need and vol­un­teer at the home­less shel­ter at Christ­mas even if no one knew about it. And that’s more than can be said for a lot of us. I love how quickly you read books and how ab­sorbed you get in a good story. I love watch­ing you lie on the sofa read­ing one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other gal­axy. I love that you’re al­ways try­ing to im­prove your­self. Whether it’s running marathons or set­ting your­self chal­lenges on an app to learn French or the fact you go to ther­apy ev­ery week. You work hard to be­come a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self. I think I prob­a­bly didn’t make my ad­mi­ra­tion for this known and in­stead it came off as ir­ri­ta­tion, which I don’t re­ally feel at all. I love how ded­i­cated you are to your fam­ily, even when they’re an­noy­ing you. Your loy­alty to them wound me up some­times, but it’s only be­cause I wish I came from a big fam­ily. I love that you al­ways know what to say in con­ver­sa­tion. You ask the right ques­tions and you know ex­actly when to talk and when to lis­ten. Ev­ery­one loves talk­ing to you be­cause you make ev­ery­one feel im­por­tant. I love your style. I know you think I prob­a­bly never no­ticed what you were wear­ing or how you did your hair, but I loved see­ing how you get ready, sit­ting in front of the full-length mir­ror in our bed­room while you did your make-up, even though there was a mir­ror on the dress­ing ta­ble. I love that you’re mad enough to swim in the English sea in No­vem­ber and that you’d pick up spi­ders in the bath with your bare hands. You’re brave in a way that I’m not. I love how free you are. You’re a very free per­son, and I never gave you the sat­is­fac­tion of say­ing it, which I should have done. No one knows it about you be­cause of your bor­ing, high-pres­sure job and your stuffy up­bring­ing, but I know what an ad­ven­turer you are un­der­neath all that. I love that you got drunk at Jack­son’s chris­ten­ing and you al­ways wanted to have one more drink at the pub and you never com­plained about get­ting up early to go to work with a hang­over. Other than Avi, you are the per­son I’ve had the most fun with in my life. And even though I gave you a hard time for al­ways try­ing to for al­ways try­ing to im­press your dad, I ac­tu­ally found it very adorable be­cause it made me see the child in you and the teenager in you, and if I could time-travel to any­where in his­tory, I swear, Jen, the only place I’d want to go is to the house where you grew up and hug you and tell you how beau­ti­ful and clever and funny you are. That you are spec­tac­u­lar even with­out all your sports trophies and mu­sic cer­tifi­cates and in­cred­i­ble grades and Ox­ford ac­cep­tance. I’m sorry that I loved you so much more than I liked my­self, that must have been a lot to carry. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you the way you took care of me. And I’m sorry I didn’t take care of my­self, ei­ther. I need to work on it. I’m pleased that our break-up taught me that. I’m sorry I went so mental. I love you. I always will. I'm glad we met.

If the case isn't plea bargained, dismissed or placed on the inactive docket for an indefinite period of time, if by some perverse twist of fate it becomes a trial by jury, you will then have the opportunity of sitting on the witness stand and reciting under oath the facts of the case-a brief moment in the sun that clouds over with the appearance of the aforementioned defense attorney who, at worst, will accuse you of perjuring yourself in a gross injustice or, at best, accuse you of conducting an investigation so incredibly slipshod that the real killer has been allowed to roam free. Once both sides have argued the facts of the case, a jury of twelve men and women picked from computer lists of registered voters in one of America's most undereducated cities will go to a room and begin shouting. If these happy people manage to overcome the natural impulse to avoid any act of collective judgement, they just may find one human being guilty of murdering another. Then you can go to Cher's Pub at Lexington and Guilford, where that selfsame assistant state's attorney, if possessed of any human qualities at all, will buy you a bottle of domestic beer. And you drink it. Because in a police department of about three thousand sworn souls, you are one of thirty-six investigators entrusted with the pursuit of that most extraordinary of crimes: the theft of a human life. You speak for the dead. You avenge those lost to the world. Your paycheck may come from fiscal services but, goddammit, after six beers you can pretty much convince yourself that you work for the Lord himself. If you are not as good as you should be, you'll be gone within a year or two, transferred to fugitive, or auto theft or check and fraud at the other end of the hall. If you are good enough, you will never do anything else as a cop that matters this much. Homicide is the major leagues, the center ring, the show. It always has been. When Cain threw a cap into Abel, you don't think The Big Guy told a couple of fresh uniforms to go down and work up the prosecution report. Hell no, he sent for a fucking detective. And it will always be that way, because the homicide unit of any urban police force has for generations been the natural habitat of that rarefied species, the thinking cop.

The only thing you can rely on in all towns, big and small alike, is that there will be broken people. It's nothing to do with the place, just life; it can beat us up. And if that happens, it's easy to find your way to a pub; bars can quickly become sad places. Someone who has nowhere else to go can grasp a glass a little too tightly; someone who's tired of falling can take refuge in the bottom of a bottle, seeing as you can't fall much further from there.

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging his own garden--that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.

Actually, using the Daleks would be a masterstroke. Everyone loves Doctor Who - who wouldn't be thrilled by the sight of a real-life Dalek squadron rolling down the high street, glinting in the sun? The sheer excitement would genuinely make the accompanying loss of liberty seem worthwhile. To liven things up even more, our rasping pepperpot overlords would be colour-coded. Blue Daleks would deal with minor infractions, and would spend most of their time issuing warnings and administering minor shocks - but they'd also be chummy and approachable, and willing to pose for photographs with your nephew. Red Daleks, on the other hand, would be emotionless killing machines. Imagine the atmosphere outside a pub on a hot summer's day: a Red Dalek trundles past, and the convivial hubbub suddenly fades to a whisper. Everyone stiffens. And then he turns the corner and a communal sigh of relief goes up, and the drinking continues and the jukebox plays louder and louder... community spirit lives again. Admit it: it'd be fantastic.

Pubs have always been the heart of Irish social life, but when the smoking ban came in, a lot of people moved to drinking at home. The ban doesn't bother me, although I'm confused by the idea that you shouldn't go into a pub and do anything that might be bad for you, but the level of obedience does. To the Irish, rules always used to count as challenges—see who can come up with the best way round this one—and this sudden switch to sheep mode makes me worry that we're turning into someone else, possibly Switzerland.

They began to amble off, under the streetlights. "Look, Gary," Richard began. "Do you ever wonder if this is all there is?" "What?" Richard gestured vaguely, taking in everything. " Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is?

But there were moments - when he saw groups of friends sitting in neat, symmetrical rows on pub benches, or couples holding hands in the street, where he felt a wave of embarrassment that he [...] hadn't exchanged so much as a cup of tea with an acquaintance or a flirtatious smile with someone on a train in years - that he scared himself with how intense the feeling of longing was. Because maybe, actually, he did want to find people to be close to, to make friends and perhaps even find someone to spend the rest of his life with.

When you see true evil, it changes you forever. It wants to make sure laughter and joy die a violent death, but the best it can manage is to put them on life support. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure they don’t stay there.”    -John Murphy, Bartender at Bulfinche’s Pub

But why have you dear English Jew whose forefathers fought to enter the country of Johnny Mill, the Stuart with a little heart, saunter in Haridwar, no pubs or fish and chips' counters here, only Ganga-Jal, -the holy ale- Quaff it for the spirit and carry it to the banks of Thames in a holy grail.

Recipe for Goodbye From the Kitchen of Lila Reyes Ingredients: One Cuban girl. One English boy. One English city. Preparation: Give Polly her kitchen back and share a genuine smile, from one legitimate baker to another. Ride through the countryside on a vintage Triumph Bonneville. Walk through Winchester, all through town and on the paths you ran. Drink vanilla black tea at Maxwell’s. Eat fish and chips and curry sauce at your friend’s pub. Sleep in fits and bits curled up together on St. Giles Hill. *Leave out future talk. Any form of the word tomorrow. Cooking temp: 200 degrees Celsius. You know the conversion by heart.

Life goes on much the same. In the face of terrifying dangers and golden political opportunities, people just keep-on keeping-on in a sort of twilight sleep in which they're conscious of nothing but the daily-round of work, family life, darts at the pub, exercising the dog, bringing home the supper, beer, etc, etc

To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most disreputable dogs to be found in the town, and lead them out to march round the slums to fight other disreputable dogs, is Montmorency’s idea of “life;” and so, as I before observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs., and hotels his most emphatic approbation.

I feel an itch, a creeping itch, for drink as we walk through Forest Gate. We can’t find a pub. The Interpreter keeps pointing out the odd shop with a dirty England flag. ‘This is Muslim land, man, there are no pubs here because there are no English. But if you wanna go into one of those gross last of the English pubs we can.

have always been fascinated by relationships. I grew up in Britain, where my dad ran a pub, and I spent a lot of time watching people meeting, talking, drinking, brawling, dancing, flirting. But the focal point of my young life was my parents’ marriage. I watched helplessly as they destroyed their marriage and themselves. Still, I knew they loved each other deeply. In my father’s last days, he wept raw tears for my mother although they had been separated for more than twenty years. My response to my parents’ pain was to vow never to get married. Romantic love was, I decided, an illusion and a trap. I was better off on my own, free and unfettered. But then, of course, I fell in love and married. Love pulled me in even as I pushed it away. What was this mysterious and powerful emotion that defeated my parents, complicated my own life, and seemed to be the central source of joy and suffering for so many of us? Was there a way through the maze to enduring love? I followed my fascination with love and connection into counseling and psychology. As part of my training, I studied this drama as described by poets and scientists. I taught disturbed children who had been denied love. I counseled adults who struggled with the loss of love. I worked with families where family members loved each other, but could not come together and could not live apart. Love remained a mystery. Then, in the final phase of getting my doctorate in counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, I started to work with couples. I was instantly mesmerized by the intensity of their struggles and the way they often spoke of their relationships in terms of life and death.

God is never impressed with the phony. He has no time or patience for the false; God deals only with truth. He says that to trust His Word as a plain statement of truth, ignoring all the mocking taunts of those who think they know better, will not be an easy path but it will be an absolutely sure one. That is what Hebrews 11 says to us.

This is one of the worst things about being a working mother. Oh, the work’s all right. You can make arrangements for the work. It’s all the other stuff. The drinks after work, the leaving dos, the Friday nights when someone suggests a curry. All the times, in fact, when the important bonding gets done. Ruth has to miss all that, and she’s lost count of the times when she’s been the last to hear about a dig because ‘we discussed it last night in the pub.’ Phil is a great one for networking, he’s always skulking off with a few cronies to plot over pasta but, then again, Phil is only a working father. Having children doesn’t seem to impinge on his professional life at all.

The prospect of his future life stretched before him like a sentence; not a prison sentence, but a long-winded sentence with a lot of unnecessary subordinate clauses, as he was soon in the habit of quipping during Happy Hour pickup time at the local campus bars and pubs. He couldn’t say he was looking forward to it, this rest-of-his-life.

I am silent in the Club, I am silent the pub, I am silent on a bally peak in Darien; For I stuff away for life Shoving peas in with a knife, Because I am heart a Vegetarian No more the milk of cows Shall pollute my private house Than the milk of the wild mares of the Barbarian I will stick to port and sherry, For they are so very, very, So very, very, very Vegetarian. - G. K. Chesterton

People everywhere, enjoying life, smiling, and just slowing down to let the world take care of itself for a few hours. The feeling was contagious. Especially when I stepped into McPherson's Pub to grab a bite of the special and listen to some traditional Irish music. The fiddle made me want to dance with myself, and many did. The drum beat like my very own heart. And some little flute that looked no wider than a pencil reminded me of the Aran Islands floating not too far from Abbeyglen. God was here tonight. In the strings of the guitar and the call of the singer's voice. I realize how often I overlook him back at home. And I know I don't want to do that anymore. The LORD will send His faithful love by day; His song will be with me in the night a prayer to the Gid of my life.

Imagine that the brain and the genitals are a couple of friends on vacation together, wandering down the street deciding where to have dinner. If they're women, it goes like this: The genitals notice any restaurant they pass, whether it's Thai food or pub grub, fast food or gourmet (while ignoring all the museums and shops),and say, "This is a restaurant. We could eat here." She has no strong opinion, she's just good at spotting restaurants. Meanwhile, the brain is assessing all the contextual factors [...] to decide whether she wants to try a place. "This place isn't delicious smelling enough," or "This place isn't clean enough," or "I'm not in the mood for pizza." The genitals might even notice a pet store and say, "There's pet food in here, I guess..." and the brain rolls her eyes and keeps walking. [...] Now, if the friends are men, it goes like this: The genitals notice only specific restaurants -- diners, say -- and don't notice any restaurants that aren't diners. Once they find a diner, the brain says, "A diner! I love diners," and the genitals agree, "This is a restaurant, we could eat here," unless there's some pretty compelling reason not to, like a bunch of drunks brawling outside.

They are taking away all the nice things there because they are impractical, as if that were reason enough – the red phone-boxes, the pound note, those open London buses that you can leap on and off. There is almost no experience in life that makes you look and feel more suave than jumping on or off a moving London bus. But they aren’t practical. They require two men (one to drive and one to stop thugs from kicking the crap out of the Pakistani gentleman at the back) and that is uneconomical, so they have to go. And before long there will be no more milk in bottles delivered to the doorstep or sleepy rural pubs and the countryside will be mostly shopping centres and theme parks. Forgive me. I don’t mean to get upset. But you are taking my world away from me, piece by little piece, and sometimes it just pisses me off. Sorry.

At least, man has always feared this 2x2=4 formula, and I still fear it. We may suppose a man may do nothing but search for such equations, crossing the oceans and dedicating his life to the quest; but succeeding, really finding them- I swear he will be afraid of that. Really, he will feel that if he finds them, he will have nothing left to search for. When workmen have finished work, they at least receive their money, they go and spend it in the pub, they get hauled off to the police- station- that's enough to occupy them for a week. But where can mankind go? To say the least, something uncomfortable is to be noticed to man on the achievement of similar goals. His likes progress towards the goal, but he does not altogether care for the achievement of it, and that, of course, is ridiculous. In short, mankind is comically constructed; all this plainly amounts to a joke.

As for Madelyne, she continued to ply her trade. But such a life takes a fast toll on a woman. It is easy to be a remote, untouchable beauty and stay that way for many, many years. And if a stunning tapestry is hung upon a wall, it remains unsullied and a work of art. However, if one drapes it across the floor of a pub and all manner of men tread upon it with their heavy boots, it's going to be worn rather thin, and rather quickly. Such was the case with my mother.

That’s the difference between a friend and a lover, Jane. A friend doesn’t need the whole of you. If you don’t want to tell me about your life before we met, I don’t give a toss—I’m in it for the Jane that’s here and now, aren’t I? I take you as you come. But if I loved you, I’d want everything. Wouldn’t I? Don’t you want all of him? All his secrets? All the versions of Joseph that exist out there, all the people he is when he’s at work and with his mother and with the lads at the pub?

Hiro and Chuck grab the closest thing they can find to a corner table. Hiro buttonholes a waiter and surreptitiously orders a pitcher of Pub Special, mixed half and half with nonalcoholic beer. This way, Chuck ought to remain awake a little longer than he would otherwise. It doesn't take much to make him open up. He's like one of these old guys from a disgraced presidential administration, forced out by scandal, who devotes the rest of his life to finding people who will listen to him.

The loneliness of the single woman. Too much time, not enough company. What was I gonna do? I had a sandwich and something to drink at a pub on the Worcester Road and in the afternoon I went for a walk along the hills. It calmed me, cleared my head. Perhaps I'm someone who only feels happy inside herself when she's halfway up a hill? Certainly I seem to have spent a lot of time these last few weeks climbing up to different vantage points. Maybe I'm at a point in my life where I need that Olympian perspective?

But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.

My interview was mostly conducted by Hugo Dyson, an Oxford ‘character’, known for his wit. I always found him alarming. He was like a hyperactive gnome, and stumped around on a walking stick which, when he was seized by one of his paroxysms of laughter, he would beat up and down as if trying to drive it through the floor. It brought to mind Rumpelstiltskin driving his leg into the ground in the fairy tale. He had been one of the ‘Inklings’ – the group of dons, including Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, who met during the 1930s in the Bird and Baby pub opposite St John’s. It was he and Tolkien who, one summer night in 1931, had converted Lewis to Christianity during a stroll along Addison’s Walk. So he was, at least in part, responsible for the Narnia books. I never asked him if he liked them. But it was well known that Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was not to his taste. Tolkien had been in the habit of favouring the Inklings with readings from it, but one day Dyson, driven to exasperation, interjected, ‘Oh not another fucking elf!’ and after that the readings stopped. On

Then you can go to Cher's Pub at Lexington and Guilford, where that selfsame assistant state's attorney, if possessed of any human qualities at all, will buy you a bottle of domestic beer. And you drink it. Because in a police department of about three thousand sworn souls, you are one of thirty-six investigators entrusted with the pursuit of that most extraordinary of crimes: the theft of a human life. You speak for the dead. You avenge those lost to the world. Your paycheck may come from fiscal services but, goddammit, after six beers you can pretty much convince yourself that you work for the Lord himself. If you are not as good as you should be, you'll be gone within a year or two, transferred to fugitive, or auto theft or check and fraud at the other end of the hall. If you are good enough, you will never do anything else as a cop that matters this much. Homicide is the major leagues, the center ring, the show. It always has been. When Cain threw a cap into Abel, you don't think The Big Guy told a couple of fresh uniforms to go down and work up the prosecution report. Hell no, he sent for a fucking detective.

About twilight we came to the whitewashed pub On a knuckle of land above the bay Where a log was riding and the slow Bird-winged breakers cast up spray. One of the drinkers round packing cases had The worn face of a kumara god, Or so it struck me. Later on Lying awake in the veranda bedroom In great dryness of mind I heard the voice of the sea Reverberating, and thought: As a man Grows older he does not want beer, bread, or the prancing flesh, But the arms of the eater of life, Hine-nui-te-po, With teeth of obsidian and hair like kelp Flashing and glimmering at the edge of the horizon.

Ex-Foreign Legionnaires in London, for instance, often use the same pubs, but more than that they all know where to contact each other if ever they’re threatened. If they’re ever in trouble - and by nature of the life they’ve led that’s highly probable - members of their tribe will immediately come from all over London to lend robust assistance. There are similar tribes in the underbelly of every city. I just happen to know about ex-Legionnaires because I’ve come across a couple, drank with them and listened to their stories. It’s like sitting with pirates, fortune-hunters, bank robbers and Gypsies

We almost began a perfect conversation, F. said as he turned on the six o'clock news. He turned the radio very loud and began to shout wildly against the voice of the commentator, who was reciting a list of disasters. Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, auto accidents, births, Berlin, cures for cancer! Listen, my friend, listen to the present, the right now, it's all around us, painted like a target, red, white, and blue. Sail into the target like a dart, a fluke bull's eye in a dirty pub. Empty your memory and listen to the fire around you. Don't forget your memory, let it exist somewhere precious in all the colors that it needs but somewhere else, hoist your memory on the Ship of State like a pirate's sail, and aim yourself at the tinkly present. Do you know how to do this? Do you know how to see the akropolis like the Indians did who never even had one? Fuck a saint, that's how, find a little saint and fuck her over and over in some pleasant part of heaven, get right into her plastic altar, dwell in her silver medal, fuck her until she tinkles like a souvenir music box, until the memorial lights go on for free, find a little saintly faker like Teresa or Catherine Tekakwitha or Lesbia, whom prick never knew but who lay around all day in a chocolate poem, find one of these quaint impossible cunts and fuck her for your life, coming all over the sky, fuck her on the moon with a steel hourglass up your hole, get tangled in her airy robes, suck her nothing juices, lap, lap, lap, a dog in the ether, then climb down to this fat earth and slouch around the fat earth in your stone shoes, get clobbered by a runaway target, take the senseless blows again and again, a right to the mind, piledriver on the heart, kick in the scrotum, help! help! it's my time, my second, my splinter of the shit glory tree, police, fire men! look at the traffic of happiness and crime, it's burning in crayon like the akropolis rose! And so on.

But afterwards in the pub, they had dreamed about the big stories and talked for hours of how they would never be satisfied with the conventional or the shallow but instead would always dig deep. They were young and ambitious and wanted it all, all at once. There were times when Levin missed that, not the salary, or the working hours, or even the easy life in the bars and the women, but the dreams—he missed the power in them. He sometimes longed for that throbbing urge to change society and journalism and to write so that the world would come to a standstill and the mighty powers bow down. Even a hotshot like himself wondered: Where did the dreams go?

...[W]hen's it all going to f***ing stop? I’m going to jump from rock to rock for the rest of my life until there aren’t any rocks left? I’m going to run each time I get itchy feet? Because I get them about once a quarter, along with the utilities bills. More than that, even… I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have s*** for brains. I know what's wrong with Laura. What's wrong with Laura is that I'll never see her for the first or second or third time again. I'll never spend two or three days in a sweat trying to remember what she looks like, never again will I get to a pub half an hour early to meet her staring at the same article in a magazine and looking at my watch every thirty seconds, never again will thinking about her set something off in me like "Let's Get it On" sets something off in me. And sure, I love her and like her and have good conversations, nice sex and intense rows with her, and she looks after me and worries about me and arranges the Groucho for me, but what does all that count for, when someone with bare arms, a nice smile, and a pair of Doc Martens comes into the shop and says she wants to interview me? Nothing, that's what, but maybe it should count for a bit more.

Old couples began to pair off and spin each other around, and the younger ones lined the walls, clapping and stomping their feet and swishing their drinks. In that little pub, on that little stage by the windows, Kevin was a life force, a star. With the aid of an instrument, he could spend four hours in a new country and fit in better than Maggie could after four months. He sang about drunk tanks and love and Christmas hopes, but in the spaces between the words of the song and in the cold shadows of his closed eyes rested all the things that he allowed to escape from himself only on the stage. Watching him, Maggie thought of their conversation earlier that day--how he had quit the band, quit his music, hadn't picked up a guitar in months. She could see the way he picked gingerly at the strings on his uncalloused fingers. His voice wasn't beautiful, but it had always contained a kind of arresting truth. Now too, Maggie detected a new quality--a desperation that had not been there before. Looking around the table at her family, she knew that Nanny Eli heard it, too. Her grandmother was leaning forward, holding her cigarette aloft while the ash grew longer and longer, and she was not listening to her son like the rest of them were but watching him, the movements of his long, skeletal fingers, the closed bruises of his eyes.

God is light and God is love, and when you put those two together you get fire. Fire is both light and warmth. As someone has well pointed out, fire will destroy what it cannot purify, but it purifies what it cannot destroy. That is the whole explanation of life in this present hour. We are passing through fire which is designed either to destroy that which can be destroyed, or to purify that which can never be destroyed. God is leading us through these trials and through the difficulties of our day, in order that we may learn to cry with old Job, back there in the oldest book of the Bible, He knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold (Job 23:10).

For a time it was highly fashionable to build a hermitage and install in it a live-in hermit. At Painshill in Surrey, one man signed a contract to live seven years in picturesque seclusion, observing a monastic silence, for £100 a year, but was fired after just three weeks when he was spotted drinking in the local pub. An estate owner in Lancashire promised £50 a year for life to anyone who would pass seven years in an underground dwelling on his estate without cutting his hair or toenails or talking to another person. Someone took up the offer and actually lasted four years before deciding he could take no more; whether he was given at least a partial pension for his efforts is sadly unknown.

She hadn’t spoken to him about life on the chill northern archipelago where she had grown up, but he didn’t doubt it was in all essentials similar to here. The same vast and icy ocean crashed in on them both. The same befuddled men, even more thin-skinned and peevish in the aftermath of WHAT HAPPENED than their smuggler and wrecker ancestors had been, roamed angrily from pub to pub, ready to raise a hand to any woman who dared to refuse or twit them. Thick head? They’d show her a thick fist if she wasn’t careful! Snog her first – the snog having become the most common expression of erotic irritation between men and women: an antidote to the bland ballads of love the console pumped out – snog her first and cuff her later. An unnecessary refinement in Kevern’s view, since a snog was itself an act of thuggery.

Like Dick Whittington, who set off with his possessions in a handkerchief and a surprisingly well-trained cat at his side, young ambitious people flock to cities to live a different life from the one they grew up with. They want the construct, just as much as those who dream of a bucolic ideal want theirs. City-dwellers have museums, restaurants, cinemas, theatres: they get everything when it’s new and they can decide whether they like it before anyone else does. They can see artists, hear musicians, buy groceries in the middle of the night and books on their way home from the pub. The city, for all its failings, so carefully enumerated by Juvenal, is still wonderful. So those of us who live in one should enjoy it for what is is, and always has been: a glorious, grubby, industrial, gastronomical, cultural, social mess.

I listen to the things people want out of love these days and they blow my mind. I go to the pub with the boys from the squad and listen while they explain, with minute precision, exactly what shape a woman should be, what bits she should shave how, what acts she should perform on which date and what she should always or never do or say or want; I eavesdrop of women in cafes while they reel off lists of which jobs a man is allowed, which cars, which labels, which flowers and restaurants and gemstones get the stamp of approval, and I want to shout, Are you people out of your tiny minds? I never once bought Rosie flowers—too hard for her to explain at home—and I never once wondered whether her ankles looked exactly the way they were supposed to. I wanted her, all mine, and I believed she wanted me. Till the day Holly was born, nothing in my life has ever been so simple.

We almost began a perfect conversation, F. said as he turned on the six o'clock news. He turned the radio very loud and began to shout wildly against the voice of the commentator, who was reciting a list of disasters. Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, auto accidents, births, Berlin, cures for cancer! Listen, my friend, listen to the present, the right now, it's all around us, painted like a target, red, white, and blue. Sail into the target like a dart, a fluke bull's eye in a dirty pub. Empty your memory and listen to the fire around you. Don't forget your memory, let it exist somewhere precious in all the colors that it needs but somewhere else, hoist your memory on the Ship of State like a pirate's sail, and aim yourself at the tinkly present. Do you know how to do this? Do you know how to see the akropolis like the Indians did who never even had one? Fuck a saint, that's how, find a little saint and fuck her over and over in some pleasant part of heaven, get right into her plastic altar, dwell in her silver medal, fuck her until she tinkles like a souvenir music box, until the memorial lights go on for free, find a little saintly faker like Teresa or Catherine Tekakwitha or Lesbia, whom prick never knew but who lay around all day in a chocolate poem, find one of these quaint impossible cunts and fuck her for your life, coming all over the sky, fuck her on the moon with a steel hourglass up your hole, get tangled in her airy robes, suck her nothing juices, lap, lap, lap, a dog in the ether, then climb down to this fat earth and slouch around the fat earth in your stone shoes, get clobbered by a runaway target, take the senseless blows again and again, a right to the mind, piledriver on the heart, kick in the scrotum, help! help! it's my time, my second, my splinter of the shit glory tree, police, fire men! look at the traffic of happiness and crime, it's burning in crayon like the akropolis rose! And so on.

Here are the world's first brothers, Abel and Cain, sons of Adam and Eve. They lived when the world was young, when everything was much different than it is today. It was before the days of income tax and smog and clogged highways and the terrible problems we struggle with. Yet, despite the fact that they enjoyed what we call "the simple life," they longed for something better, they hungered after God. For no matter how good life is, it is never good enough if you do not have God. Man is never satisfied without Him, and these boys hungered for God. Both had been told the way by which they could come to Him; this is implied in the account. But Cain chose to believe a lie, the lie that is still very evident today, that "one way is as good as another." He took the way that was easiest for him to work out and as a result he was rejected; for, of course, it is always a lie that one way is as good as another. That never works in anything- nature, life, or with God.

All of the fucking in “The Art of Joy” could put it in a class with “Story of O” or “The Sexual Life of Catherine M.” But Sapienza’s novel is about sex only insofar as an account of a woman’s artistic, intellectual, and political maturation must include her sexual career. Or, better, the discovery of pleasure initiates Modesta’s appetite more generally—for knowledge, for experience, for autonomy. It turns her outward, toward nonsexual things, by inwardly sustaining her. Her childish sadism is less sexual than it is basically libidinal: her erotic interest in her sister’s or St. Agatha’s pain, or the way in which her hatred of Leonora transmutes into arousal—these are signs of an exultant urge to live. “The real way of living is to answer to one’s wants,” D. H. Lawrence says in a letter (written, incidentally, from Italy). “I want that liberty, I want that woman, I want that pound of peaches, I want to go to sleep, I want to go to the pub and have a good time, I want to look abeastly swell today, I want to kiss that girl, I want to insult that man.

They just talk too much. They have problems, goals, desires that I can’t see in the same way as they do. Sometimes I sit with one of them in the little garden of the pub and try to get the point across that this is everything – just sitting in the quiet. Of course they understand, they agree, they think the same way, but it’s only talk, only talk, that’s the point – they do feel it, but always only with half of their being, a part of them is always thinking of something else. They are so fragmented, no one feels it with his whole life; anyway, it is impossible for me to put what I mean into proper words. When I take a look at them, in their rooms, in their offices, in their jobs, then I find it all irresistibly attractive, and I want to be part of it too, and forget the war. But at the same time it repulses me, it is so restricted, how can that fill a whole life, it deserves to be smashed to bits, how can things be like that when shrapnel is whizzing over the trenches out there and the Verey lights are going up, the wounded are being dragged back on tarpaulins and the lads are taking cover in the trenches? - Paul Baumer

Glenskehy is outside Dublin, tucked away in the Wicklow mountains near nothing very much. I'd lived half my life in Wicklow without getting any closer to it than the odd signpost. It turned out to be that kind of place: a scatter of houses getting old around a once-a-month church and a pub and a sell-everything shop, small and isolated enough to have been overlooked even by the desperate generation trawling the countryside for homes they can afford. Eight o'clock on a Thursday morning, and the main street - to use both words loosely - was postcard-perfect and empty, just one old woman pulling a shopping trolley past a worn granite monument to something or other, little sugared-almond houses lined up crookedly behind her, and the hills rising green and brown and indifferent over it all. I could imagine someone getting killed there, but a farmer in a generations-old fight over a boundary fence, a woman whose man had turned savage with drink and cabin fever, a man sharing a house with his brother forty years too long: deep-rooted, familiar crimes old as Ireland, nothing to make a detective as experienced as Sam sound like that.

A visiting pastor at our church in Plains once told a story about a priest from New Orleans. Father Flanagan’s parish lay in the central part of the city, close to many taverns. One night he was walking down the street and saw a drunk thrown out of a pub. The man landed in the gutter, and Father Flanagan quickly recognized him as one of his parishioners, a fellow named Mike. Father Flanagan shook the dazed man and said, “Mike!” Mike opened his eyes and Father Flanagan said, “You’re in trouble. If there is anything I can do for you, please tell me what it is.ℍ “Well, Father,” Mike replied, “I hope you’ll pray for me.” “Yes,” the priest answered, “I’ll pray for you right now.” He knelt down in the gutter and prayed, “Father, please have mercy on this drunken man.ℍ At this, a startled Mike woke up fully and said, “Father, please don’t tell God I’m drunk.ℍ Sometimes we don’t feel much of a personal relationship between God and ourselves, as though we have a secret life full of failures and sins that God knows nothing about. We want to involve God only when we plan to give thanks or when we’re in trouble and need help. But the rest of our lives, we’d rather keep to ourselves.

they’ll start.” “What are they going to do about the Elder Council?” “Meritorious was a good man and the most powerful Grand Mage we had seen in a long time. The other Councils in Europe are worried about who will fill the vacuum now that he’s gone. The Americans are offering their support, the Japanese are sending delegates to help us wrest back some control, but…” “It sounds like a lot of people are panicking.” “And they have a right to. Our systems of power, our systems of self-government, are delicate. If we topple, others will follow. We need a strong leader.” “Why don’t you do it?” He laughed. “Because I’m not well liked, and I’m not well trusted, and I already have a job. I’m a detective, remember?” She gave her own little shrug. “Vaguely.” Another snippet of pub music drifted by the window, and Stephanie thought about the world she’d grown up in, and how different it was from the world she’d been introduced to, and yet how similar. There was joy and happiness in both, just as there was heartbreak and horror. There was good and evil and everything in between, and these qualities seemed to be shared equally in the worlds of the magical and the mundane. It was her life now. She couldn’t imagine living without either one. “How are you?” Skulduggery asked, his voice gentle.

Bookish folk aren’t what they used to be. Introverted, reserved, studious. There was a time when bookish folk would steer clear of trendy bars, dinner occasions and gatherings. Any social or public encounters would be avoided at all costs because these activities were very un-bookish. Bookish people preferred to stay in, or to sit alone in a quiet pub, reading a good book, or getting some writing done. Writers, in fact, perhaps epitomised these bookish traits most strongly. At least, they used to. These days, bookish people, such as writers, are commonly found on stage, headlining festivals, or being interviewed on TV. Author events and performances have proliferated, becoming established parts of a writer’s role. It’s not that authors have suddenly become more extroverted – it’s more a case that their job description has changed. Of course, not all writers are bookish. Not in the traditional sense of the word anyway. Some are well suited for public life, particularly those from certain academic backgrounds where public speaking is encouraged and confidence in social situations is shaped and formed. These writers may even be termed ‘gregarious’, and are thus happy being offered up for speaking engagements, stage discussions and signings. Good for them. But the others – the timid, shy and mousy authors – they’re being thrust into the limelight too. That’s my lot. The social wipeouts. Unprepared and ill-equipped to face our reader audience. What’s most concerning is that no one is offering us any guidance or tips. We’re expected to hit the ground running, confident and ready, loaded with banter, quips and answers. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

She could envision Shakespeare's sister. But she imagined a violent, an apocalyptic end for Shakespeare's sister, whereas I know that isn't what happened. You see, it isn't necessary. I know that lots of Chinese women, given in marriage to men they abhorred and lives they despised, killed themselves by throwing themselves down the family well. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm only saying that isn't what usually happens. It it were, we wouldn't be having a population problem. And there are so much easier ways to destroy a woman. You don't have to rape or kill her; you don't even have to beat her. You can just marry her. You don't even have to do that. You can just let her work in your office for thirty-five dollars a week. Shakespeare's sister did...follow her brother to London, but she never got there. She was raped the first night out, and bleeding and inwardly wounded, she stumbled for shelter into the next village she found. Realizing before too long that she was pregnant, she sought a way to keep herself and her child safe. She found some guy with the hots for her, realized he was credulous, and screwed him. When she announced her pregnancy to him, a couple months later, he dutifully married her. The child, born a bit early, makes him suspicious: they fight, he beats her, but in the end he submits. Because there is something in the situation that pleases him: he has all the comforts of home including something Mother didn't provide, and if he has to put up with a screaming kid he isn't sure is his, he feels now like one of the boys down at the village pub, none of whom is sure they are the children of the fathers or the fathers of their children. But Shakespeare's sister has learned the lesson all women learn: men are the ultimate enemy. At the same time she knows she cannot get along in the world without one. So she uses her genius, the genius she might have used to make plays and poems with, in speaking, not writing. She handles the man with language: she carps, cajoles, teases, seduces, calculates, and controls this creature to whom God saw fit to give power over her, this hulking idiot whom she despises because he is dense and fears because he can do her harm. So much for the natural relation between the sexes. But you see, he doesn't have to beat her much, he surely doesn't have to kill her: if he did, he'd lose his maidservant. The pounds and pence by themselves are a great weapon. They matter to men, of course, but they matter more to women, although their labor is generally unpaid. Because women, even unmarried ones, are required to do the same kind of labor regardless of their training or inclinations, and they can't get away from it without those glittering pounds and pence. Years spent scraping shit out of diapers with a kitchen knife, finding places where string beans are two cents less a pound, intelligence in figuring the most efficient, least time-consuming way to iron men's white shirts or to wash and wax the kitchen floor or take care of the house and kids and work at the same time and save money, hiding it from the boozer so the kid can go to college -- these not only take energy and courage and mind, but they may constitute the very essence of a life. They may, you say wearily, but who's interested?...Truthfully, I hate these grimy details as much as you do....They are always there in the back ground, like Time's winged chariot. But grimy details are not in the background of the lives of most women; they are the entire surface.

Ken Wharfe Before Diana disappeared from sight, I called her on the radio. Her voice was bright and lively, and I knew instinctively that she was happy, and safe. I walked back to the car and drove slowly along the only road that runs adjacent to the bay, with heath land and then the sea to my left and the waters of Poole Harbour running up toward Wareham, a small market town, to my right. Within a matter of minutes, I was turning into the car park of the Bankes Arms, a fine old pub that overlooks the bay. I left the car and strolled down to the beach, where I sat on an old wall in the bright sunshine. The beach huts were locked, and there was no sign of life. To my right I could see the Old Harry Rocks--three tall pinnacles of chalk standing in the sea, all that remains, at the landward end, of a ridge that once ran due east to the Isle of Wight. Like the Princess, I, too, just wanted to carry on walking. Suddenly, my radio crackled into life: “Ken, it’s me--can you hear me?” I fumbled in the large pockets of my old jacket, grabbed the radio, and said, “Yes. How is it going?” “Ken, this is amazing, I can’t believe it,” she said, sounding truly happy. Genuinely pleased for her, I hesitated before replying, but before I could speak she called again, this time with that characteristic mischievous giggle in her voice. “You never told me about the nudist colony!” she yelled, and laughed raucously over the radio. I laughed, too--although what I actually thought was “Uh-oh!” But judging from her remarks, whatever she had seen had made her laugh. At this point, I decided to walk toward her, after a few minutes seeing her distinctive figure walking along the water’s edge toward me. Two dogs had joined her and she was throwing sticks into the sea for them to retrieve; there were no crowd barriers, no servants, no police, apart from me, and no overattentive officials. Not a single person had recognized her. For once, everything for the Princess was “normal.” During the seven years I had worked for her, this was an extraordinary moment, one I shall never forget.

In Christ, God declares me to be ‘righteous, washed, pure and set apart for him’. And yet there is nothing in my experience to suggest that these things could be so in and of myself. If I live by my own estimate of my life, I act accordingly. Alternatively, I can surrender my life to the lordship of Jesus and live by God’s assessment of my life. So whose word will I live by? I am glad to live by God’s word and the blessed release that it brings, looking by faith to him for who I am, looking in love to my brothers for what I do. By his word, I am directed outward, never inward.

And it was true. People gave out their whole life stories to anyone and everyone without a second’s thought. Stand at a bus stop, sit in a strange pub, get banged up, and someone would always give you their life story.

Advika was given a chance at coaching to speak on any topic she wishes, as it was their fun day. As she was a good speaker she drafted a poem for people like her who too were in the same level game of life, dealing with the same hell, just different devils - “If you like wearing short clothes, wear it, If you like makeup, do it, If you like going to pubs, go for it, If you love pretending fake, pretend it, If you like drinking, smoking, just do it, But If I like traditional clothes, let me wear it, If I don’t put makeup, let me be that way, If I don’t go to pubs, don’t force me to come along, If I stay real and hate pretending fake, deal with it, If I don’t want to drink, smoke, then don’t tag me as old-fashioned. If I do not go with the trend just let me breathe in my comfort zone do not try to steal oxygen to make me die someday just because I do not fit in your space. Great ones usually do not fit it, so it is okay! Everybody is unique so what if I am antique.

Advika was given a chance at coaching to speak on any topic she wishes, as it was their fun day. As she was a good speaker she drafted a poem for people like her who too were in the same level game of life, dealing with the same hell, just different devils - “If you like wearing short clothes, wear it, If you like makeup, do it, If you like going to pubs, go for it, If you love pretending fake, pretend it, If you like drinking, smoking, just do it, But If I like traditional clothes, let me wear it, If I don’t put makeup, let me be that way, If I don’t go to pubs, don’t force me to come along, If I stay real and hate pretending fake, deal with it, If I don’t want to drink, smoke, then don’t tag me as old-fashioned. If I do not go with the trend just let me breathe in my comfort zone do not try to steal oxygen to make me die someday just because I do not fit in your space. Great ones usually do not fit it, so it is okay! Everybody is unique so what if I am antique.

Although there are some conflicting stories regarding the discoveries of the mid-Atlantic islands, it is safe to assume that in 1501 João da Nova discovered Ascension Island. The desolate island remained deserted until it was rediscovered two years later on Ascension Day by Alfonso de Albuquerque. He was also the first European to discover the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The last time I was on Ascension Island I went to “The Pan American Club” which was the Island Pub. There were a few locals drinking at the bar but outside was a donkey looking for something to drink, which the locals gladly provided. It didn’t take much, and after a few bottles of beer the donkey fell down in a drunken stupor. It was the only time in my life that I actually saw a drunken ass! (True story!)

This was the hour when he found London most lovable; the working day over, her pub windows were warm and jewel-like, her streets thrummed with life, and the indefatigable permanence of her aged buildings, softened by the street lights, became strangely reassuring.

WILL emerges from the theatre into a street throbbing with nefarious life-whores, cutpurses, hawkers, urchins, tract-sellers, riffraff of all kinds in an area of stews (lowdown pubs), brothers and slums.

No man has become world's richest man because he wasted his time in the pub in the cinemas watching movies and sports.

I hunched under that table wondering how I got to this point. Wasn’t I supposed to be a writer, rubbing elbows at poetry conferences with Mary Ruefle and Kim Addonizio? Wasn’t I supposed to be spending these late spring months at retreats wearing woven island commune hippie clothes designed by women named Star? Having Evan changed all that. This was a direction I never expected. This is supposed to be the meantime—teaching in a public school so that I could make money, get my graduate degrees, and move on to my real calling. The one where I learn, create, and pub- lish. The one where I’m not huddled under standard issue cafeteria tables contemplating the best place to run when gunfire broke out. The one where somebody else is responsible for the welfare of these children surrounding me. The one where I don’t give a shit.

This was the hour when he found London most lovable; the working day over, her pub windows were warm and jewel-like, her streets thrummed with life, and the indefatigable permanence of her aged buildings, softened by the street lights, became strangely reassuring. We have seen plenty like you, they seemed to murmur soothingly, as he limped along Oxford Street carrying a boxed-up camp bed. Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his. Walking wearily past closing shops, while the heavens turned indigo above him, Strike found solace in vastness and anonymity." Cuckoo Calling by J.K. Rowling

I’ve been thinking about it all day, over and over. Being a partner at Carter Spink is the dream I’ve had all my adult life. The glittering prize. It’s everything I ever wanted … Except all the things I never knew I wanted. Things I had no idea about until a few weeks ago. Like fresh air. Like evenings off. Unburdened weekends. Making plans with friends. Sitting in the pub after my work is done, drinking cider, with nothing to do, nothing hanging over me.

This nanny state, the worst this country has known since the days of Cromwell,” and then went on to say that if the pub, that centre of social life in the village, closed down, then the village would lose its heart.

Elphaba had an okay voice. He saw the imaginary place she conjured up, a land where injustice and common cruelty and despotic rule and the beggaring fist of drought didn't work together to hold everyone by the neck. No he wasn't giving her credit: Elphaba had a good voice. It was controlled and feeling and not histrionic. He listened through to the end, and the song faded into the hush of a respectful pub. Later, he thought: The melody faded like a rainbow after a storm, or like winds calming down at last; and what was left was calm, and possibility, and relief. "You next, you promised," cried Elphaba, pointing at Fiyero, but nobody would sing again, because she had done so well. Nessarose nodded to Nanny to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye. "Elphaba says she's not religious but see how feelingly she sings of the afterlife," said Nessarose, and for once no one was inclined to argue.

What's striking about the city as a construct is how it functions as a prism through which we contemplate our own identity and goals. The pubs or places of worship we spend time in reflect our own internal architecture and one person's lived experience of a city can wildly oppose the next's. This makes conversations about coorie in the city all the more interesting. Coorie streets full of bustle might not always be beautiful but there is always the potential to polish what is there. Life in a Scottish city can feel like a constant grapple between what's best for us and what we desire.

Sardines have been considered a low-grade fish since the old days. Unlike sea bream, left-eyed flounder and sweetfish, they're never used in first-class restaurants. They've always been used as fertilizer in the fields or food for fish farms. People treat them as the lowest fish there is." "Hmm..." "Recently the size of the sardine catch has decreased, so people have begun to value them. But the chef here has been making sardine dishes since back when people thought of them as worthless. You could almost say the chef here... ... has staked his life on this fish. This place may seem shabby compared to a luxurious ryōtei that takes pride in using expensive ingredients... But the food here is sincere and earnest. This restaurant is far more attractive to me than the average first-class ryōtei. It may look shabby, but his spirit is noble. That's because the chef believed in himself and created this place from scratch by his own effort.

Try this smoked chicken with a dressing made from wine vinegar and herbs. Than the liver sashimi with just salt. Try the gizzard and chicken leg sashimi with salt and sesame oil. This one is from Nakagomi-san's Yorozuya brewery. It's a Shunnoten Junmaishu, 'Takazasu.' I've warmed it so that it'll be 108 degrees when poured into your sake cup." "108 degrees! Do you have to be that precise in warming the sake?!" "Of course. That's why the Okanban's job is so important. I've made it slighty lukewarm to stimulate your taste buds, It should be just the right warmth to enjoy the delicate differences of the various sashimi." "Wow. You really put a lot of thought into warming the sake." "Okay. Let's try the sake and food together." "The chicken leg is sweet! And the warm sake wraps that sweetness and enhances it in your mouth!" "The warm sake spreads out the aftertaste of the liver on your tongue!" "The more I chew on the gizzard, the richer the taste becomes!" "Man, it's totally different from cold sake! Its scent and flavor are so lively!" "Exactly. That's what's important. Warming the sake brings the flavor and scent to life, so they're much stronger than with cold sake. That's the reason you serve sake warm." "I see... I never knew there was a reason like that behind warming sake." "And now the main dish--- yakitori. Please start with the chicken fillet, heart and liver. This is a Shunnoten Junmai Daiginjo that has been aged a little longer than usual. It's made from Yamadanishiki rice that has been polished down to 45 percent and then dry-steamed to create a tough malt-rice... ... which is then carefully fermented in low temperatures to create the sake mash. Many people think I'm out of my mind to warm such a high-class Daiginjo. But when sake like this, which has been aged for a long time, is warmed to be 118 degrees when poured into the cup... you can clearly taste the deep flavor of the aged sake." "Wow!" "But 118 degrees is a little hot, isn't it?" "I wanted you to taste the succulent, savory chicken heart and other skewers... ...with a hot Daiginjo that has a rich yet refreshing flavor and can wash away the fat." "I think Junmai Ginjoshu tastes good when you warm it. People who claim that it's wrong to warm Junmai Ginjoshu don't know much about sake." "Aah... the sake tastes heavier since it's warmer than the last one!" "The flavor and scent of the sake fill my mouth and wash away the fat from the chicken too!" "This sake has such a rich, mature taste!

Book As performed by Nathan Avebury at the George and Dragon York, March 2016 I sometimes think I want to write a book of my life So that when I meet you - or anyone new I can hand it over and you can read it Instead of trying to read me. You can take it away and decide whether it's worth giving me your time. You can think about if, the next time we are walking towards each other, you'll smile without slowing down Or cross the street and pretend you haven't seen me Or stop and put an arm round my shoulder, steer me into the nearest pub, and buy me a pint of stout. Because you'll know, having read the book, that stout is what I drink. You see the elegance of my proposal. But every time I sit down to write the book, I hit a snag. I could tell so many stories. I could be a poet or a magician or a failed mathematician. I could be happy or soul-sore or lonely. I could start when I was born, when I was twelve, when I left university And the book would be different for each story I choose. And the book would be true, and untrue, for each. Our pasts are as unfixed as our futures, if you think about it. And I like the freedom I have to tell a different story.

The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.” ― Karl Marx, Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden - that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.

He was thinking about men like his Uncle Ted, a Cornishman to his bones, who lived and would die in St. Mawes, part of the fabric of the place, remembered as long as there were locals, beaming out of fading photographs of the Life Boat on pub walls. When Ted died—and Strike hoped it would be twenty, thirty years hence—they would mourn him as the unknown Barrovian Grammar boy was being mourned: with drink, with tears, but in celebration that he had been given to them. What had dark, hulking Brockbank, child rapist, and fox-haired Laing, wife-torturer, left behind in the towns of their birth? Shudders of relief that they had gone, fear that they had returned, a trail of broken people and bad memories.