At the pub, July 1982

I've been staggering out of bed at the ungodly hour of 6am to write 'morning pages' for over a month now. I'd heard that it's a way of tapping into the unconscious, to spark creativity, before the ego wakes up and demands control. So worth doing, I thought. The results have been interesting, there are a lot of ideas and fragments that I can build upon. Sometimes I write about a dream, more often I take a line of poetry as a prompt and freewrite from there. And then, occasionally a memory pops in to my head, a scene I didn't know I remembered. Like this one, a moment from July 1982.

I walk into the pub. It's seems a simple thing to do but at 17 years old it’s not easy to just walk into the pub without being terribly conscious that you’re actually 'walking into the pub'. So I walk into the pub, looking all around for the group from the office where I've been working for the summer. The first proper summer job I've ever had. The place reeks of cigarettes and stale beer, but there aren’t many people here this early on a Wednesday evening. Still it’s hard to see anyone, the pub twists around on itself in nooks and corners, providing lots of places where you can hide from view. I'm unsure of the layout, it seems wilfully mysterious, like the pub is mocking me. After a moment of panic about the place and time we’d arranged, I finally see them, off to my right in a dim corner. Just the girls. I‘m the first guy to arrive. They’re all lined up on the bench along the wall so I sit on the stool on the other side of the table. It wobbles, and I list dangerously to one side before catching my balance to a ripple of giggles. I’m sweating, and, I’m sure, glowing bright red. A waitress comes over to take my order, it’s one of those fancy pubs where you don't have to elbow your way to the bar. Another first.

    'A pint of Guinness' I squeak, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. 

    'Oooooh!' goes the Greek chorus of female office workers in front of me. I'm going to need reinforcements, and quickly.

Whatever happened next is completely gone from my memory, so I guess it was much less emotionally scarring.