Pub Night Quotes

Some seek the comfort of their therapist's office, other head to the corner pub and dive into a pint, but I chose running as my therapy.

Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I'm bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers. And if this is it, if this is all there is- just me and the trees and the sky and the seas- I know now that that's enough.

In an hour, every person in America will be able to look at a screen and see their First Son and his boyfriend. And, across the Atlantic, almost as many will look up over a beer at a pub or dinner with their family or a quiet night in and see their youngest prince, the most beautiful one, Prince Charming. This is it. October 2, 2020, and the whole world watched, and history remembered.

Another thing that no one tells you about drinking as you get older is that it isn’t the hangovers that become crippling, but rather the acute paranoia and dread in the sober hours of the following day that became a common feature of my mid-twenties. The gap between who you were on a Saturday night, commandeering an entire pub garden by shouting obnoxiously about how you’ve always felt you had at least three prime-time sitcom scripts in you, and who you are on a Sunday afternoon, thinking about death and worrying if the postman likes you or not, becomes too capacious.

Once upon a time there was a woman who was just like all women. And she married a man who was just like all men. And they had some children who were just like all children. And it rained all day. The woman had to skewer the hole in the kitchen sink, when it was blocked up. The man went to the pub every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The other nights he mended his broken bicycle, did the pool coupons, and longed for money and power. The woman read love stories and longed for things to be different. The children fought and yelled and played and had scabs on their knees. In the end they all died.

I regained consciousness after a big night at the Cock and Bull Inn, or it could’ve been The Weasel’s Way or The Badger’s Breath, who knows with these weird English pub names. Anyway, it was somewhere near The Pig and Whistle. Not far up from the Scotsman’s Kilt.

It was as if Tutankhamen or Miss Havisham had wandered into the pub one night and started bitching about the head on the pints.

Two opposing things can be equally true. Counting the days till Christmas doesn't mean we hate Halloween. I go to church on Sundays, and still hold the same faith at the pub on Saturday night. I shamelessly play a steady stream of eighties pop music and likewise have an undying devotion to Chopin. And perhaps most significantly: I love to travel and I love my home.

He took her hand again, enjoying the spark of fire that lit through his bloodstream and led her through the fog toward River Street. Seeing the usually bustling area empty was equally beautiful and haunting. It brought back memories of earlier days. Centuries before cell phones and email. Back when his crew would drop anchor in the cloak of night and shanghai new crew members out of the pubs. Lifetimes ago.

Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I'm bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy heard on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers. And if this is it, if this is all there is- just me and the trees and the sky and the seas- I know now that that's enough.

At the pub my dad was waiting for me, a black-as-night beer and his open laptop on the table in front of him. I sat down and swiped his beer before he'd had the chance to even look up from typing. 'Oh, my sweet lord,' I sputtered, chocking down a mouthful, 'what is this? Fermented motor oil?' 'Just about,' he said, laughing.

I don’t need to change my shape to make myself worthy of someone’s love. I don’t need any words or looks or comments from a man to believe I’m visible; to believe I am here. (...) Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and sentences twisting around my mind are enough. My early morning walks and light night baths are enough. My singing in the shower, my double jointed toes and my loud laugh in the pub is enough. I am my own universe. I am the warm up act, the main event and the backing singers. And if this is it, if this is all there is - just me, the trees, the sky and the sea- I know now that that’s enough. I am whole. I am complete. I will never run out.

Group friendships are products of the right time—the chemistry of season, activity, emotion, and random occurrence. They coalesced over a series of long nights at the pub, in rehearsal spaces, cafés, and bedrooms.

The first time they’d met, in this very pub, he’d hit on her using so little finesse, she’d been forced to ask if he was kidding. Granted, they’d both had a few too many drinks that night, but nothing excused the line, “I’m not drunk, I’m just intoxicated by you.” Nothing.

This is so much like the old days. And, again, I have mixed feelings. In some ways it's good and comfortable to be fitting straight back in like I've never been away, but, on the other hand, I'm getting this constrictive feeling as well. It's the same places - like the bars and pubs on Friday night - the same people, the same conversations, the same arguments and the same attitudes. Five years away and not much seems to have changed. I can't decide if this is good or bad.

She is more memory than reality. She belongs to a time of teenage crushes, first kisses, crowded lecture halls and smoky pubs. Even if she had lived, we might have had nothing in common except the past.

An Irishman walks into a pub,” she begins and the bar went silent. “The bartender asks him, ‘What'll you have?’” Her Irish accent was spot on. “The man says, ‘Give me three pints of Guinness, please.’ The bartender brings him three pints and the man proceeds to alternately sip one, then the other, then the third until they're gone. He then orders three more. “The bartender says, ‘Sir, no need to order as many at a time. I’ll keep an eye on it and when you get low, I'll bring you a fresh one.’ The man replies, ‘You don't understand. I have two brothers, one in Australia and one in the States. We made a vow to each other that every Saturday night we'd still drink together. So right now, me brothers have three Guinness stouts too, and we're drinking together.’ “The bartender thought this a wonderful tradition and every week the man came in and ordered three beers.” January’s playing and voice became more solemn, dramatic. “But one week, he ordered only two.” The crowd oohed and ahhed. “He slowly drank them,” she continued darkly, “and then ordered two more. The bartender looked at him sadly. ‘Sir, I know your tradition, and, agh, I'd just like to say that I'm sorry for your loss.’ “The man looked on him strangely before it finally dawned on him. ‘Oh, me brothers are fine - I just quit drinking.

Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I’m bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers. And if this is it, if this is all there is—just me and the trees and the sky and the seas—I know now that that’s enough.

On evenings like this, when the streets below were filled with couples strolling, and laughing people spilled out of pubs, already planning meals, nights out, trips to clubs, something ached inside me, something primal telling me that I was in the wrong place, that I was missing something. These were the moments when I felt most left behind.

Some seek the comfort of their therapist’s office, others head for the corner pub and dive into a pint, but I choose running as my therapy. It was the best source of renewal there was. I couldn’t recall a single time that I felt worse after a run than before. What drug could compete? As Lily Tomlin said, “Exercise is for people who can’t handle drugs and alcohol.” I’d also come to recognize that the simplicity of running was quite liberating. Modern man has virtually everything one could desire, but too often we’re still not fulfilled. “Things” don’t bring happiness. Some of my finest moments came while running down the open road, little more than a pair of shoes and shorts to my name. A runner doesn’t need much. Thoreau once said that a man’s riches are based on what he can do without. Perhaps in needing less, you’re actually getting more.

They sat at a table in the corner of a pub as night grew through the window behind them. The sounds around were generous and soothing. Men chattered, glasses clinked, jokes coasted and a fire crackled, and now and then someone let out an almighty laugh and it was catching and circled the room like a kid playing tag.

I’m not entirely sure the Scots realize they lost that one,” I interrupted, sitting up and trying to subdue my hair. “I distinctly heard the barman at that pub last night refer to us as Sassenachs.” “Well, why not?” said Frank equably. “It only means ‘Englishman,’ after all, or at worst, ‘outlander,’ and we’re all of that.

My, you do like to dominate

Drop by Bell’s for an Irish Kiss anytime. The best in England

Screw pride, anyway. At least for another day or two, give me a protective Alpha male that smells like sex in the woods and wants to make me dinner.

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.

You’ll win her with ya Irish charm and green eyes, so ya will. Now drink up ya coffee and stop whining like a baby. This girl’s gonna have a fantastic night tomorrow. She’s gonna worship da ground ya c**k drags on.

We sat on the top deck and spent the journey sharing stories from the places we passed. Pubs where I'd died at open mic nights, bars where she'd gone on bad dates. Every road offered another destination of a bad past date.

I volunteer as tribute. Or born again virgin sacrifice. Does Zeus like virgins? What about younger men who are ready, willing and able to worship at his shrine? Or bend over and call him daddy. Whatever he’s into. I’m easy.

I pinned him against the wall, here in the shit-stinking, piss-coated alleyway where he had been stalking young women in the pub across the street. I wasn‘t the young woman he wanted, but I was certainly the one he deserved.

The woman behind the bar called out: ‘Why do you stand like hypnotized fish? Did you come to drink beer or to eat food?’ ‘Be patient,’ said Gersen. ‘We are making our decision.’ The remark annoyed the woman. Her voice took on a coarse edge. “Be patient,’ you say? All night I pour beer for crapulous men; isn’t that patience enough? Come over here, backwards; I’ll put this spigot somewhere amazing, at full gush, and then we’ll discover who calls for patience!

Few people have to watch their country die,” Hannah said, her lyrical voice all the more captivating because she spoke softly. Althea found herself leaning toward her, and she imagined the rest of the audience was no different. “I have had that dubious privilege, and I can tell you that it comes not as a rebel shout but as a sly whisper. The cracks creep in, insidious as anything I’ve ever seen. It can start with rumblings about an unreliable press and rumors about political enemies that will threaten your family, your children. It can deepen with each disdainful remark about science and art and literature in a pub on a Friday night. It comes cloaked in patriotism and love of country, and uses that as armor against any criticism.

We look at a couple of lads as they walk into the pub, Jim Barnes from Slough and someone I don't recognise. A tall bloke with a silver earring who looks knackered with a bruised right eye and cuts along his knuckles. Must've had a good Friday night.

Two guys in an English pub, one says ‘From your accent I guess you are Irish’. Second guy says, ‘Yes, from Dublin’. ‘Me too!’ first guy says. ‘I was raised in Drimnagh, went to St. Mary’s school’. ‘Drimnagh? St. Mary’s?’ Second guy can’t believe it. ‘I graduated from St. Mary’s in 1982’. First guy slaps his forehead. ‘Faith and begorah. I graduated from St. Mary’s in 1982 also!’ Bartender says,” Jones paused for breath, “he says to himself ‘This is going to be a long night. The Murphy twins are drunk again’.

In the cooling summer night, they walked along the riverbank toward the pub. Unusually peaceful, the river sighed with small movements. She liked it when night laid its palm over the day and erased color. The gray shadows made her feel snug, safe, and unexposed

Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I'm bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers.

He said, "We’ll get the knitting club onto it." "I beg your pardon?" "We've got a dozen vampires with not enough to do, who can go out at night. They can eavesdrop on conversations, get talking to people in pubs late at night. Think of them as your Baker Street irregulars.

It was pub quiz night and the old wooden floors had meant he was able to take part from his bed, doing well on movie themes and rivers of the world, increasing frustrated during the picture rounds. Should he give up on sleep, go and offer his services to the Four Quizeteers?

Bullshit,” says Viv. “Did you have your eyes open the other night in the pub? Mabe, I’ve never, ever seen him so happy and the way he was looking at you made even me melt. He’s in love with you.” “No, he isn’t.” “Yes, he is. It’s just unfortunate that he’s a fuckwit as well.

One night, having spent a few days in peaceful solitude with my thoughts, I walked under the stars and along the cobbled streets and an idea crept all over me like arresting, vibrant blooms of wisteria. I don’t need a dazzlingly charismatic musician to write a line about me in a song. I don’t need a guru to tell me things about myself I think I don’t know. I don’t need to cut all my hair off because a boy told me it would suit me. I don’t need to change my shape to make myself worthy of someone’s love. I don’t need any words or looks or comments from a man to believe I’m visible; to believe I’m here. I don’t need to run away from discomfort and into a male eyeline. That’s not where I come alive. Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I’m bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event and the backing singers. And if this is it, if this is all there is – just me and the trees and the sky and the seas – I know now that that’s enough. I am enough. I am enough.

Dave and Serge...played the Fiddler's Elbow as if it were Giants Stadium, and even though it was acoustic, they just about blew the place up. They were standing on chairs adn lying on the floor, they were funny, they charmed everyone in the pub apart from an old drunk ditting next to the drum kit...who put his fingers firmly in his ears during Serge's extended harmonica solo. It was utterly bizarre and very moving: most musicians wouldn't have bothered turning up, let alone almost killing themselves. And I was reminded...how rarely one feels included in a live show. Usually you watch, and listen, and drift off, and the band plays well or doesn't and it doesn't matter much either way. It can actually be a very lonely experience. But I felt a part of the music, and a part of the people I'd gone with, and, to cut this short before the encores, I didn't want to read for about a fortnight afterward. I wanted to write, but I didn't want to read no book. I was too itchy, too energized, and if young people feel like that every night of the week, then, yes, literature 's dead as a dodo. (Nick's thoughts after seeing Marah at a little pub called Fiddler's Elbow.)

The pub, like pubs all over the world, was a place for debate and discussion, for the exchange of views and opinions, for argument and for the working out of problems. It was a forum, a parliament, a fountain of wisdom and a cesspool of nonsense, it was a centre for the lost and the despairing, where cowards absorbed dutch courage out of small glasses and leaned against the shiny, scratched and polished mahogany counter for support against the crushing burdens of insignificant lives. Where the disillusioned gained temporary hope, where acts of kindness were considered and murders planned.

Louise was an urbanite, she preferred the gut-thrilling sound of an emergency siren slicing through the night to the noise of country birds at dawn. Pub brawls, rackety roadworks, mugged tourists, the badlands on a Saturday night - they all made sense, they were all part of the huge, dirty, torn social fabric. There was a war raging out there in the city and she was part of the fight, but the countryside unsettled her because she didn't know who the enemy was. She had always preferred North and South to Wuthering Heights. All that demented running around the moors, identifying yourself with the scenery, not a good role model for a woman.

He spends almost every night there, and during the day he sits in his rented flat or at the pub with a glass of wine and a journal and he writes about it. Pages and pages of observations, recounting his experiences, mostly so he will not forget them but also to capture something of the circus on paper, something he can hold on to.

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.

One beer too many, and a verbal dispute suddenly and unexpectedly explodes into a punching match. Such things happen every night in bars, pubs, and cafés all across the world, but the bloody noses and aching jaws that generally follow from these dustups in Canada, Norway, or France often turn out to be gunshot wounds in the United States.

You will never escape me,” Ione had said as we lay together on our last night. “I’m a siren and we both live in the Kingdom by the Sea. Every evening I will sit on the rocks at Greyhope Bay and sing you home to me.” “Every evening?” “Obviously I might have to work, or study, or go to the pub. But definitely Wednesdays and Sundays—minimum.

Suddenly I was in the middle of things. There were late nights staggering home from the pub, days of bumping into my friends in the street and going off for long afternoons of coffee and pool. Parties where I knew everyone. I was kissed up against walls, missed classes because I was in bed with a lanky, dreadlocked boy. We all had our noses pierced.

He had the perfect idea for explaining away every inexplicable weirdness about himself at a stroke, and he whistled as he pushed open the door which had so daunted him last night. “Arthur!!!!” He grinned cheerfully at the boggling eyes that stared at him from all corners of the pub, and told them all what a wonderful time he’d had in Southern California.

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

There was something very poetic about lying on the hay, beneath the polythene roof. This was how we had spent our first night, on the hay next to the bull in Harry Mann’s barn. During the 18 days in-between we had slept in a posh hotel, a canal boat, a student house, a pub, a tent in a car park, a hitman’s sitting room, an elderly lady’s spare bedroom, a hostel, a bunk house, a farm house, our own self-contained flat, our own house, and now we were back on the hay. We had gone full circle. Out of all of the different types of accommodation, our two nights on the hay were undoubtedly our most comfortable. Next time you hear the nativity story, don’t feel sorry for Mary and Joseph; they had it very lucky indeed.

Warm tingles trail under my skin, and I shiver. “Please,” he says, dropping my hands so he can tuck one of his into my hair and tilt my head up to him. “Come with me to the symposium. And then come with me to the pub and the museum, to the park, to the sunset, to the sky.” His cinnamon breath is warm on my lips, and I remember the night on the balcony under the stars when I wanted so badly for him to close the distance between us. “You speak like a poet,” I whisper. When he laughs, I feel the rumble of it where my hands rest against his chest, and my whole body trembles. “Just say yes!” Lucy cries from behind the curtain. “For Artist’s sake, Myra!” “Go to sleep!” I shout back, not taking my eyes from August.

All last fall in Workshop, they’d side-eye each other if he praised my stories. Because surely they’d seen me leave class with him, walked past us chatting together in the hall, observed us exchanging books and vinyl. Caught us sitting together in cafés or in the basement of the Irish pub, having a drink, another drink, one more for the road, why not? They’d noticed him walk over and talk to me at department functions, sit beside me at readings. Then, in the winter semester, they might have observed how quite suddenly all of this stopped—that he no longer sat next to me at readings or talked to me at parties or met me off campus. And then, of course, in spring, on the night of the end-of-year party, they definitely observed me drunk in the passenger seat of his Subaru.

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.

I wrote the bulk of this story while in Chicago, working out of various co-working offices; my favorite space was Ampersand in Logan Square. And a few of the ideas in this story were born after a night at The Burke’s Web Pub in Bucktown—what a fabulous place full of fabulous people. Thanks to those places for the creative spaces they provide; and a special thank you to Parliament Co-working.

The knot in Kim’s stomach hardens and she turns to Megs and she says, ‘What the fuck is the matter with you? Huh? I mean, what the fuck is the fucking matter with you? Our kids have been missing for three days. Three days! And all you can do is moan and tut and sigh and act like this is all some kind of massive inconvenience. Well, I’m so sorry to drag you out of the pub, out of your back garden, so sorry to keep you from getting on with your day.

A popular Chinese essay by an anonymous author carved out an archetype of the young white-collar class, the men and women who sip cappuccino, date online, have a DINK family, take subways and taxis, fly economy, stay in nice hotels, go to pubs, make long phone calls, listen to the blues, work overtime, go out at night, celebrate Christmas, have one-night-stands … keep The Great Gatsby and Pride and Prejudice on their nightstands. They live for love, manners, culture, art, and experience. In

Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I’m bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers.

Drunkenness was endemic, as an escape from cold mists and rains, brutalizing poverty, family warfare, political strains, philosophical despair; Pitt and Fox, otherwise so different, agreed in favoring this anesthesia. Taverns were allowed to remain open through Saturday night till 11 A.M. Sunday,47 for Saturday was pay day, and time had to be allowed the “pub” to get its prime cut of the weekly wage. The middle classes drank more moderately; the upper classes drank heavily, but had learned to carry their liquor steadily, like a leaking tub.

Yeah,’ I said. ‘A place of our own.’ That was what I wanted: a bed where Rosie and I could sleep through the night in each other’s arms, wake up in the morning wrapped together. I would have given anything, anything at all, just for that. Everything else the world had to offer was gravy. 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 on women in cafés 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.

don’t need to run away from discomfort and into a male eyeline. That’s not where I come alive. Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I’m bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers.

My mother was in charge of language. My father had never really learned to read - he could manage slowly, with his fingers on the line, but he had left school at twelve and gone to work at the Liverpool docks. Before he was twelve, no one had bothered to read to him. His own father had been a drunk who often took his small son to the pub with him, left him outside, staggered out hours later and walked home, and forgot my dad, asleep in a doorway. Dad loved Mrs Winterson reading out loud - and I did too. She always stood up while we two sat down, and it was intimate and impressive all at the same time. She read the Bible every night for half an hour, starting at the beginning, and making her way through all sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. When she got to her favourite bit, the Book of Revelation, and the Apocalypse, and everyone being exploded and the Devil in the bottomless pit, she gave us all a week off to think about things. Then she started again, Genesis Chapter One. 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...' It seemed to me to be a lot of work to make a whole planet, a whole universe, and blow it up, but that is one of the problems with the literal-minded versions of Christianity; why look after the planet when you know it is all going to end in pieces?

There were eight simple lessons in plain language anybody could understand, and I studied them just a few hours a night, then started practising on the wife. Soon found I could talk right up to the Super and get due credit for all the good work I did. They began to appreciate me and advance me fast, and say, old doggo, what do you think they're paying me now? $6,500 per year! And say, I find I can keep a big audience fascinated, speaking on any topic. As a friend, old boy, I advise you to send for circular (no obligation) and valuable free Art Picture to:— SHORTCUT EDUCATIONAL PUB. CO. Desk WA Sandpit, Iowa. ARE YOU A 100 PERCENTER OR A 10 PERCENTER?

Arianna simply wasn’t up to it. She had a pretty voice, she could carry a tune—that was never a problem. But she had no depth. She couldn’t interpret a song, place her stamp on it. Unlike Lesley, who fairly stomped on it! And that’s what you need in folk music. These are songs that have been around for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. They existed for centuries before any kind of recording was possible, even before people could write, for god’s sake! So the only way those songs lived and got passed on was by singers. The better singer you were, the more likely it was people were going to turn out to hear you and remember you—and remember the song—whether it was at a pub or wedding or ceilidh or just a knot of people seeking shelter under a tree during a storm. It’s a kind of time machine, really, the way you can trace a song from whoever’s singing it now back through the years—Dylan or Johnny Cash, Joanna Newsom or Vashti Bunyan—on through all those nameless folk who kept it alive a thousand years ago. People talk about carrying the torch, but I always think of that man they found in the ice up in the Alps. He’d been under the snow for 1,200 years, and when they discovered him, he was still wearing his clothes, a cloak of woven grass and a bearskin cap, and in his pocket they found a little bag of grass and tinder and a bit of dead coal. That was the live spark he’d been carrying, the bright ember he kept in his pocket to start a fire whenever he stopped. You’d have to be so careful, more careful than we can even imagine, to keep that one spark alive. Because that’s what kept you alive, in the cold and the dark. Folk music is like that. And by folk I mean whatever music it is that you love, whatever music it is that sustains you. It’s the spark that keeps us alive in the cold and night, the fire we all gather in front of so we know we’re not alone in the dark. And the longer I live, the colder and darker it gets. A song like “Windhover Morn” can keep your heart beating when the doctors can’t. You might laugh at that, but it’s true.

I’d never set foot on the AT, but I’d heard much about it from the guys at Kennedy Meadows. It was the PCT’s closest kin and yet also its opposite in many ways. About two thousand people set out to thru-hike the AT each summer, and though only a couple hundred of them made it all the way, that was far more than the hundred or so who set out on the PCT each year. Hikers on the AT spent most nights camping in or near group shelters that existed along the trail. On the AT, resupply stops were closer together, and more of them were in real towns, unlike those along the PCT, which often consisted of nothing but a post office and a bar or tiny store. I imagined the Australian honeymooners on the AT now, eating cheeseburgers and guzzling beer in a pub a couple of miles from the trail, sleeping by night under a wooden roof. They’d probably been given trail names by their fellow hikers, another practice that was far more common on the AT than on the PCT, though we had a way of naming people too. Half the time that Greg, Matt, and Albert had talked about Brent they’d referred to him as the Kid, though he was only a few years younger than me. Greg had been occasionally called the Statistician because he knew so many facts and figures about the trail and he worked as an accountant. Matt and Albert were the Eagle Scouts, and Doug and Tom the Preppies. I didn’t think I’d been dubbed anything, but I got the sinking feeling that if I had, I didn’t want to know what it was.

You know you’ve moved on when you find other people beautiful. when you don’t avert your eyes but keep them steady or when you stay the night, the last one at the party, and you don’t feel sorry. or empty. or guilty because whatever, where are you going anyway? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ i used to sit here, in this same pub in this same city 7 years ago, writing another book, like i am now again and i wrote myself out of heartbreak with that book like i am now i guess. in some ways maybe i’ve written myself into heartbreak this time but i’m coming out of it. at least i find other people beautiful again. they make me smile. maybe more than i have before and i have a good feeling about things. You know you’ve moved on when you find other people beautiful.

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.

Ron said nothing. He hadn’t mentioned Viktor Krum since the ball, but Harry had found a miniature arm under his bed on Boxing Day, which had looked very much as though it had been snapped off a small model figure wearing Bulgarian Quidditch robes. Harry kept his eyes skinned for a sign of Hagrid all the way down the slushy High Street, and suggested a visit to the Three Broomsticks once he had ascertained that Hagrid was not in any of the shops. The pub was as crowded as ever, but one quick look around at all the tables told Harry that Hagrid wasn’t there. Heart sinking, he went up to the bar with Ron and Hermione, ordered three butterbeers from Madam Rosmerta, and thought gloomily that he might just as well have stayed behind and listened to the egg wailing after all. “Doesn’t he ever go into the office?” Hermione whispered suddenly. “Look!” She pointed into the mirror behind the bar, and Harry saw Ludo Bagman reflected there, sitting in a shadowy corner with a bunch of goblins. Bagman was talking very fast in a low voice to the goblins, all of whom had their arms crossed and were looking rather menacing. It was indeed odd, Harry thought, that Bagman was here at the Three Broomsticks on a weekend when there was no Triwizard event, and therefore no judging to be done. He watched Bagman in the mirror. He was looking strained again, quite as strained as he had that night in the forest before the Dark Mark had appeared. But just then Bagman glanced over at the bar, saw Harry, and stood up. “In a moment, in a moment!” Harry heard him say brusquely to the goblins, and Bagman hurried through the pub toward Harry, his boyish grin back in place.

Where are you? Have you arrived yet?” she asked eagerly. “I have. I’m here and it’s great. I love it.” “I knew you would!” cried Hannah. “So are you coming down? Help me pull a pint or two?” “Yeah, sure. Give me half an hour or so, and I’ll be there.” “Brilliant. See you soon.” “Bye,” replied Layla, hanging up. No time for eating then, she’d better unpack the car, sort out the bedraggled mess that she was, and get down to the pub. Start learning the ropes. Hauling one of the bags upstairs, she went into her bedroom and plonked it on the bed. Before doing anything else, however, she couldn’t resist peering out of the window again, having to imagine Gull Rock this time as the deepening night had hidden it completely. A year, she thought. That’s all I’ve got, a year. Enough time to get over anyone, surely? Taking in a deep breath then letting it slowly out, she bloody hoped so.

Fleur listened thoughtfully with his flute in his lap, one hand stroking his German shepherd, when I think how you used to be, Fleur, I really got to wonder, but Mabel couldn’t divert the boy’s gaze from under that overhang of hair, and just as well he thought, so she doesn’t see the anger in his eyes, the rage shaking his body, furious with himself, and though it was a warm autumn and hot at noon, he was glad to retreat deep inside the hoodie that hid his chin but couldn’t stop the piercing words that went straight to the young musician’s heart, Mabel’s voice was like his own, what exactly have you done, Child Prodigy Fleur, not to be that flower crushed in the street, just a raggedy stuffed hoodie, what, what, geez you reek of alcohol, the cocktails your ma serves in the pub by the ocean when the illegal families come out to dance on the beach on Saturday nights and your ma gives them free drinks that knock them out right there, while ever since the divorce, your pa and grandpa stayed on the land, poor land back in Alabama, and haven’t they all just driven you backwards, shrunk you down to their own size, you could have gone to study in Vienna,

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.

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.

Meanwhile, Trucker and I, through all of this, had been renting that cottage together, on a country estate six miles outside of Bristol. We were paying a tiny rent, as the place was so rundown, with no heating or modern conveniences. But I loved it. The cottage overlooked a huge green valley on one side and had beautiful woodland on the other. We had friends around most nights, held live music parties, and burned wood from the dilapidated shed as heating for the solid-fuel stove. Our newly found army pay was spent on a bar tab in the local pub. We were probably the tenants from hell, as we let the garden fall into disrepair, and burned our way steadily through the wood of the various rotting sheds in the garden. But heh, the landlord was a miserable old sod with a terrible reputation, anyway! When the grass got too long we tried trimming it--but broke both our string trimmers. Instead we torched the garden. This worked a little too well, and we narrowly avoided burning down the whole cottage as the fire spread wildly. What was great about the place was that we could get in and out of Bristol on our 100 cc motorbikes, riding almost all the way on little footpaths through the woods--without ever having to go on any roads. I remember one night, after a fun evening out in town, Trucker and I were riding our motorbikes back home. My exhaust started to malfunction--glowing red, then white hot--before letting out one massive backfire and grinding to a halt. We found some old fence wire in the dark and Trucker towed me all the way home, both of us crying with laughter. From then on my bike would only start by rolling it down the farm track that ran down the steep valley next to our house. If the motorbike hadn’t jump-started by the bottom I would have to push the damn thing two hundred yards up the hill and try again. It was ridiculous, but kept me fit--and Trucker amused. Fun days.

Oh, ’ello, ’Arry,” said Mundungus Fletcher, with a most unconvincing stab at airiness. “Well, don’t let me keep ya.” And he began scrabbling on the ground to retrieve the contents of his suitcase with every appearance of a man eager to be gone. “Are you selling this stuff?” asked Harry, watching Mundungus grab an assortment of grubby-looking objects from the ground. “Oh, well, gotta scrape a living,” said Mundungus. “Gimme that!” Ron had stooped down and picked up something silver. “Hang on,” Ron said slowly. “This looks familiar —” “Thank you!” said Mundungus, snatching the goblet out of Ron’s hand and stuffing it back into the case. “Well, I’ll see you all — OUCH!” Harry had pinned Mundungus against the wall of the pub by the throat. Holding him fast with one hand, he pulled out his wand. “Harry!” squealed Hermione. “You took that from Sirius’s house,” said Harry, who was almost nose to nose with Mundungus and was breathing in an unpleasant smell of old tobacco and spirits. “That had the Black family crest on it.” “I — no — what — ?” spluttered Mundungus, who was slowly turning purple. “What did you do, go back the night he died and strip the place?” snarled Harry. “I — no —” “Give it to me!” “Harry, you mustn’t!” shrieked Hermione, as Mundungus started to turn blue. There was a bang, and Harry felt his hands fly off Mundungus’s throat. Gasping and spluttering, Mundungus seized his fallen case, then — CRACK — he Disapparated. Harry swore at the top of his voice, spinning on the spot to see where Mundungus had gone. “COME BACK, YOU THIEVING — !” “There’s no point, Harry.” Tonks had appeared out of nowhere, her mousy hair wet with sleet. “Mundungus will probably be in London by now. There’s no point yelling.” “He’s nicked Sirius’s stuff! Nicked it!” “Yes, but still,” said Tonks, who seemed perfectly untroubled by this piece of information. “You should get out of the cold.” She watched them go through the door of the Three Broomsticks. The moment he was inside, Harry burst out, “He was nicking Sirius’s stuff!” “I know, Harry, but please don’t shout, people are staring,” whispered Hermione.

need say was I need some time off. But she couldn’t do it. “The St. James house at half-past seven,” she repeated. “Got it, sir.” He rang off. Barbara hung up. She tried to plumb the depths of her feelings, to put a name to what was slowly washing through her veins. She wanted to call it shame. She knew it was liberation. She went to tell her father that they would need to reschedule his doctor’s appointment for another day. Kevin Whateley had not gone to the Royal Plantagenet, which was the pub next door to his cottage. Rather, he had walked along the embankment, past the triangular green where he and Matthew had once learned to operate their pair of remote-control planes, and had instead entered an older pub that stood on a spit of land reaching like a curled finger into the Thames. He’d chosen the Blue Dove deliberately. In the Royal Plantagenet—despite its proximity to his house—he might have forgotten for five minutes or so. But the Blue Dove would not allow him to do so. He sat at a table that overlooked the water. In spite of the night’s falling temperature, someone was out, night fishing from a boat, and lights bobbed periodically with the river’s movement. Kevin watched this, allowing his memory to fill with the image of Matthew running along that same dock, falling, damaging a knee, righting himself but not crying at all, even when the blood began to seep from the cut, even when the stitches were later put in. He was a brave little bloke, always had been. Kevin forced his eyes from the dock and fastened them on the mahogany table. Beer mats covered it, advertising Watney’s, Guinness, and Smith’s. Carefully, Kevin stacked them, restacked them, spread them out like cards, restacked them again. He felt how shallow his breathing was and knew that he needed to take in more air. But to breathe deeply was to lose his grip for an instant. He wouldn’t do that. For if he lost control, he didn’t know how he would get it back. So he did without air. He waited. He didn’t know if the man he sought would come into the pub this late on a Sunday night, mere minutes before closing. In fact, he didn’t even know if the man came here at all any longer. But years ago he’d been a regular customer, when Patsy worked long hours behind the bar, before she’d got her job in a South Kensington hotel. For Matthew’s sake, she had said when she’d taken on the

He turned away and began picking up the sheaf of papers he’d dumped on the desk earlier, shuffling them into some sort of order, and Helena watched him, her heart twisting suddenly. For all his bravado, he was definitely hurting. He’d fallen hard for Jasmine, a bright, ambitious medical registrar he’d met while interviewing a stabbing victim at Southmead Hospital, and who he’d been dating for the past year or so; he’d even, when Helena had joined him and some of the other detectives for a rare night in the pub a few months back, confided in her after several vodkas that he was considering proposing, once Jasmine had completed her training

The first night at university, someone told me everyone congregated in this one pub. I went down alone. Grating techno blared from the speakers, and the whole room smelled of perfume and sugar. But there was a thick sense of anticipation int eh air, a sense of the invisible membrane that separated us from our future selves. If you could just worm your way through it, a plentiful and rewarding existence awaited.

wandered through Stratford, waiting to hear back. The main downtown area was small and pedestrian, centered on the local tourist industry. Most of the buildings were in the half-timbered Tudor style, lending an air of Renaissance authenticity to the town. Quaint street signs helpfully funneled bumbling tourists toward the attractions: “Shakespeare’s Birthplace” or “Holy Trinity Church and Shakespeare’s Grave.” On High Street, I passed the Hathaway Tea Rooms and a pub called the Garrick Inn. Farther along, a greasy-looking cafe called the Food of Love, a cutesy name taken from Twelfth Night (“ If music be the food of love, play on”). The town was Elizabethan kitsch—plus souvenir shops, a Subway, a Starbucks, a cluster of high-end boutiques catering to moneyed out-of-towners, more souvenir shops. Shakespeare’s face was everywhere, staring down from signs and storefronts like a benevolent big brother. The entrance to the “Old Bank estab. 1810” was gilded ornately with an image of Shakespeare holding a quill, as though he functioned as a guarantee of the bank’s credibility. Confusingly, there were several Harry Potter–themed shops (House of Spells, the Creaky Cauldron, Magic Alley). You could almost feel the poor locals scheming how best to squeeze a few more dollars out of the tourists. Stratford and Hogwarts, quills and wands, poems and spells. Then again, maybe the confusion was apt: Wasn’t Shakespeare the quintessential boy wizard, magically endowed with inexplicable powers?

After the brutal gang rape of a pub employee by six men in Gurgaon in 2014, the police proposed a blanket curfew on working women after 8 p.m., under which no woman would be allowed out of the house without prior permission from the government labour department. The proposed ban was revoked after a public outcry. The police said they could not provide security for girls and women because the ones who are out, especially at night and especially in bars, invite rape. Women should stay at home if they want to be safe.

Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade that night; the whole village

Mother I need answers Is it a curse mother to be a female? Is it a taboo to be female? Don`t we have the same spirit like males? Don’t we have the same flesh like the male? Nights are harsh, nights are haunted hours gushing my tears on my hazel skin mother I‘m torn apart. Mother did my ancient mothers feel the same abuse? Mother did my ancient mothers carry the same burdens like the one I’m carrying? Mother remove your old breast, I want to suckle freedom, mother remove your breast I want some solace and protection from the screams of the world. He comes home smelling the pub, he comes with anger written on his forehead and his eyes magma henna. He opens the door and he starts to shout, vandalize the property and he wrestles me. Do I have some value under this hot sun? Mother I need The disk of the orb breaks down, seeds of tears are planted on the floor. He roughly and vigorously opens my legs and he enjoys the sex whilst I enjoy the pain. Blood flows on my legs, a pool of blood on the floor that needs to be mopped. He is snoring and he dreams of another battle where he is always victorious. Why do man abuse women? Mother I need answers.

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If she knew I went out again,' he said, 'I could get youth custody.' 'If she shopped you, you mean?' He nodded. 'But... sod it... to cut a foot off a horse...' Perhaps the better nature was somewhere there after all. Stealing cars was OK, maiming racehorses wasn't. He wouldn't have blinded those ponies: he wasn't that sort of lout. 'If I fix it with your aunt, will you tell me?' I asked. 'Make her promise not to tell Archie. He's worse.' 'Er,' I said, 'who is Archie?' 'My uncle. Aunt Betty's brother. He's Establishment, man. He's the flogging classes.' I made no promises. I said, 'Just spill the beans.' 'In three weeks I'll be sixteen.' He looked at me intently for reaction, but all he'd caused in me was puzzlement. I thought the cut-off age for crime to be considered 'juvenile' was two years older. He wouldn't be sent to an adult jail. Jonathan saw my lack of understanding. He said impatiently, 'You can't be underage for sex if you're a man, only if you're a girl.' 'Are you sure?' 'She says so.' 'Your Aunt Betty?' I felt lost. 'No, stupid. The woman in the village.' 'Oh... ah.' 'Her old man's a long-distance truck driver. He's away for nights on end. He'd kill me. Youth custody would be apple pie,' 'Difficult,' I said. 'She wants it, see? I'd never done it before. I bought her a gin in the pub.' Which, at fifteen, was definitely illegal to start with. 'So... um...,' I said, 'last night you were coming back from the village... When, exactly?' 'It was dark. Just before dawn. There had been more moon light earlier, but I'd left it late. I was running. She-Aunt Betty-she wakes with the cocks. She lets the dogs out before six.' His agitation, I thought, was producing what sounded like truth. I thought, and asked, 'Did you see any ramblers?' 'No. It was earlier than them.' I held my breath. I had to ask the next question, and dreaded the answer.

You know you’ve moved on when you find other people beautiful. When you don’t avert your eyes but keep them steady or when you stay the night, the last one at the party, and you don’t feel sorry. or empty. or guilty because whatever, where are you going anyway? i used to sit here, in this same pub in this same city 7 years ago, writing another book, like i am now again and i wrote myself out of heartbreak with that book like i am now i guess. in some ways maybe i’ve written myself into heartbreak this time but i’m coming out of it. at least i find other people beautiful again. they make me smile. maybe more than i have before and i have a good feeling about things. You know you’ve moved on when you find other people beautiful.

The rose bush I planted in the garden is your birthday present from me. To answer your question you asked me in the car last night; Whenever I walk past a pub, I will always think of spending the night with you under the stars by the open fire listening to the waves and talking together at Poteen Café. I will never forget dancing with you in the street outside the Old Lighthouse Bistro. Finally, I will always remember you standing in the hallway in that blue dress looking at me with those beautiful eyes of yours. Take care of yourself, please." Yours very truly, Brian

To be queer and Somali and neurodivergent is concentrated alchemy, and yet we constantly raid the cupboards of our souls like we are a people of lack. When you operate from a position of lack, you don’t realise you’re robbing yourself of everything worth preserving, and forgetting to toss away all the empty pursuits that lost their synthetic spell several generations ago. And suddenly, you’re wide awake in a new country, in a new decade, and you’re startled because you can’t remember how you got here or why you’re still feeling hunted by your own reflection. You can’t remember how or when or where or why you misplaced all your breezy dynamism—all that wildness of perception you used to project with such ferocity. Where did it all go? We have conveniently forgotten that we have always been fundamentally idiosyncratic and fantastic and fucking alive. Instead we feed ourselves and our children and our children’s children prosaic fuckery for what? Respectability politics? So that if we twist and try our damnedest to conform to standards that have never been coded into our collective DNA, that we’ll what? Somehow be less strange? Less weird and wonderful? That we’ll transcend the soul-snuffing snare that is the myth of the good immigrant? That if we mute all of our magic—everything that makes us some of the most innately interesting, individualistic and fun, funny beings in this boring, beige-as-fuck world—that we’ll win over whom? Folks who don’t season their food right or whose understanding of freedom is a shitty Friday night sloshfest at a shitty pub playing shitty music, chatting nonsense that no-one with a single iota of sense gives a fuck about? Is that who you are so deeply invested in trying to impress? If so, then go for it, but don’t fool yourself for a fucking second into thinking that trying desperately to shave off your elemental peculiarities through self-diminishment is salvation, because it simply isn’t, honey, and it never will be.

There was no bar on, and the other two pubs in town shut for the night when they heard about the punk gig, but a few lads broke into one of the pubs, turned the pumps on and started serving themselves! Obviously the cops were called, so they ran back to the gig, and when the police turned up, we all pelted them with snowballs. John Hall, of Society’s Victims, was grabbed and thrown in the back of a cop car, and when the copper went to use his radio, John reached over and ripped it out. He got a smack in the mouth for that. Vans soon arrived with dogs and chased us all over the place, and we kept chucking snowballs at them. About half of us were taken to the police station, and it made the front page of the Matlock Mercury: ‘Punk Rockers Run Riot’!

When Nick started the label, he put us in Pink Floyd’s studio in Britannia Row,” says Del incredulously. “It was massive, and when you went upstairs, they still had that big pink pig up there. It was phenomenally expensive, about £500 a day, maybe more, which was a lot of money in 1983. We had the studio block-booked for a month, and we never used to go. It was always empty; we’d be back in Brighton doing loads of mushrooms and acid! I’d be tripping all night, get up about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, go to the pub, and suddenly remember I should be in the studio doing guitars, and I’d just blow it out and go back to bed.

You mean to tell me that you—a human—come to this district almost every night, stab whatever poor vampire bastards you come across, become mysterious savior to the innocent human civilians, and yet, despite spending almost half your fucking life here, you've never interacted with these people? Never gone to a pub? Never said a quick hello to one of your rescuees? Nothing?" He said it like it was ridiculous, and that offended me.

What do I even say? Hi, Dad! Guess you’ve seen a video of me doing the rounds on social media by now. Yeah, I’m annihilated drunk. Yes, that is me giving a bloke a blow job outside a pub.

High up on the hill there is construction noise, down in the village, people go about their business. Dogs chase dogs, delivery vans unload. Letters are posted. The cold sun simply can't compete though. Coopers Chase is wearing death like chain mail. It is Thursday at eleven a.m., but nobody is in the Jigsaw Room. The Art History class have stacked their chairs away, as always, and that is where the chairs will remain until Conversational French comes in at noon. Motes of dust float in the air and settle. The Thursday Murder Club is nowhere to be seen today. Their absence echoes. Ron is texting Pauline, hoping beyond hope that she finally replies. Joyce has done some shopping for Elizabeth and dropped it outside her door. She rang, but no reply. Ibrahim sits in his flat, staring at a picture of a boat on his wall. Elizabeth? Well, she is no longer present in a time and a space for now. She isn't anywhere or anything. Bogdan has his eye on her. Joyce switches off the television - it has nothing for her. Alan lies at her feet and watches her cry. Ibrahim thinks that perhaps he should take a walk, but, instead, he keeps looking at the picture on the wall. Ron receives a text, but it is from his electricity provider. There is a murder still to be solved, but it won't be solved today. The timelines and the photographs and the theories and the plans will have to wait. Perhaps it will never be solved? Perhaps death has defeated them all with this latest trick? Who now has the heart for the battle? They still have each other, but not today. There will be laughing and teasing and arguing and loving again, but not today. Not this Thursday. As the waves of the world crash around them, this Thursday is for Stephen.

A toast — may you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live.” We each have a sip of our drinks and then Ben says, “I heard that the other night at a crazy little Irish pub.

So here’s me, working my-fucking-self to death, day in day out, never spend a penny on anything, not a fucking penny. Single-handedly trying to get us a place to live, and you’re just going to the pub with some slag called Keziah who I’ve never even fucking heard of.

Living in London, it’s easy to forget that people can talk to each other. I walk my dogs around Wapping past hundreds of people on pavements and in parks and it is very rare a smile is exchanged or the silence broken. I occasionally get ‘Are you Graham Norton?’ ‘Love the show’ or a simple ‘Faggot!’ but for most people making their way through the capital, you soon learn that people generally only speak to you when they are (a) crazy, (b) want money, or (c) both. We quickly learn the rules and for the most part they work. In Ireland it is impossible to imagine not saying hello or commenting on the weather. When I first started going back home again, it would always take me a day or two to stop thinking everyone I met was trying to sell me something or explaining why they needed £2 to get the train. I know this is true of rural communities the world over, but talking seems to be something we in Ireland are especially gifted at. There are nights in the pub when my friends look on in slack-jawed incomprehension as someone opens their mouth and a torrent of words tumble free. Usually they don’t have anything to say. Their gate fell down. Who put it there. The man who fixed it. The general state of gates in the area. I will then remember an ‘interesting’ fact about my own gate. They will know the man who owned the forge where they made it. Are they a relation of the man who delivers the stuff? And so it goes. A seamless gush of phrases and banter as traditional as a sing-song or drink-driving. It is talking for the pure pleasure of it and not to communicate a single thing. It is the human equivalent of barking or birdsong.

I nod. “Will the ambulance fee be added with that?” I don’t know how the French medical system works. Janet frowns. “There is no ambulance fee. Didn’t you know that?” I shake my head. “No, but I…” I blink as I wrack my brain. The pub isn’t even close to this hospital, so how… “He carried you,” Janet says, a hand to her chest, like that night was emotional, even for her. “You were in his arms when he reached the hospital doors. He arrived about ten minutes before anyone else from the riot.” Tears well, and I suppress them as best I can. My voice trembles. “He ran here?

In the El Raval district in Barcelona, this phenomenon plays out every evening. El Raval is a prostitution-dense, bohemian quarter that is both home to many immigrants and a destination for certain types of tourists. Some people who live there like to think that they live in the midst of a crowd, a carnivalesque melting pot, but the boundary is razor-sharp. On the narrow street Carrer d'en Robador, African women with tired eyes and fanny packs stand selling themselves while a sour-faced pimp hiding in a doorway supervises everything. This goes on all day and all night, with only a short break between seven and ten in the morning. In the pubs, 'alternative' people party. They love prostitution and filth, despise authorities and censorship, speak adoringly of the quarter's charming character and pretend that some of it has rubbed off on them. The existence of prostitution is important to them. But people never exchange places: the African women never go into the pubs, and the pub patrons never go out and prostitute themselves. They pass each other every day, but the crowd is only an illusion - there is no common, shared experience. Everyone has an established role and no one speaks to anyone else.

The gap between who you were on a Saturday night, commandeering an entire pub garden by shouting obnoxiously about how you’ve always felt you had at least three prime-time sitcom scripts in you, and who you are on a Sunday afternoon, thinking about death and worrying if the postman likes you or not, becomes too capacious.

Over the years, Roland had grown accustomed to the quiet atmosphere of Dr. Gray’s office. Despite being just off the main street, there wasn’t much commotion during the day. Some nights one might hear a few of drunks cackling outside as they wandered home from the pub, but aside from that the street remained undisturbed.

She was in the back of the pub, delivering another round to the guys playing pool at the table Hardy and Perry had left behind for a rousing game of darts, when a hush fell over the folks crowded around the bar and the front door to the place. A man’s deep, accented voice boomed through the sudden hush. “I was told I might find her here, mate,” the man was saying to someone. “Kerry? Kerry McCrae. Her uncle owns the place, yeah?” If Kerry’s heart had clutched in her chest before, it stopped functioning altogether the moment that voice reached her ears. This is why you don’t let yourself think about him, because then you won’t stop thinking about him. And now you’re hearing things. Even as she thought the words, knowing rationally that there was no way she’d heard his voice, not for real, some small part of her understood that the impossible had actually just happened. She looked up, a fierce expression on her face, one meant to forestall even the remotest possibility that he was indeed right there. In the pub. Her pub. Looking for her. It didn’t work, of course. Because he was there. And she thought her heart might beat right through her chest wall. So much for being fearless. Someone--she didn’t even notice who--took the badly wobbling tray of drinks from her hand as she went toward him, seemingly without even moving her feet. It was like a dream. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe this whole night had been a dream and she was in bed, right now, and would wake up any second and laugh at herself, then swear at herself, for letting him into her dreams. Again. But it sure didn’t feel like she was dreaming.

Edinburgh For those who like walking, Edinburgh reigns supreme. The Royal Mile runs through the centre of the tourist area connecting Edinburgh Castle with Holyrood Palace. It’s a little over a mile and, in addition to passing old Edinburgh historic sites, it is lined with independent shops, cafes and pubs along the way. For this is Edinburgh’s Old Town, all cobbled streets beneath the lofty castle. The New Town is less than ten minutes walk away and it’s far from new. Instead New Town is Georgian, built by the wealthy residents in the 18th century. Its wide streets and perfect proportions create a visual joy for walking. It’s tough to name Edinburgh’s main sites, but here goes: the castle, continuously occupied for more than 1000 years; Holyrood Palace, the Queen’s official residence in Scotland; Mary King’s Close, a preserved 18th century tenement on the Royal Mile and; the Grassmarket, a network of cobbled lanes with independent shops and cafes. I could go on. Edinburgh is particularly busy during the festival that takes place from August to early September. It began as a military tattoo, developed into a fairly high brow arts festival and has expanded to host off‐stage events from the clever to the bizarre. Edinburgh also hosts a massive Hogmanay, or New Year, celebration with music and dancing in the streets all through the night and often into the next day. The city is at its busiest during the August festival and again at New Year. Public transport by bus and tram is available from the airport to the city centre. Downside: It is an expensive place to visit at peak periods and it can be tough to find a place to stay. Your first visit should be at quieter times. To read: Edinburgh is a literary city and so many novels have