It's very lonely sitting on your own in a pub. It's not something that I'd make a habit of. Pubs should be full of friends and noise and life but, last night, the Jolly Farmers pub in Lewisham was desolate. There was just 5 other punters sitting around the pub. Four sitting together speaking like they were secretly conspiring about a secret in a secret library, while another man was sitting alone with his beer. He wasn't reading or watching TV. The fucker wasn't even Twittering. He was just sitting there, all alone. Like me. Friendless, cold and isolated. No-one to turn to. It could have been worse, we could have talked to one another. What a nightmare that would have been. I would have talked endlessly about the stupidity of the entertainment industry, how David Tennant was right to leave Doctor Who, how I managed to upset David Mitchell's friend, Wispas, dog-walking, the King of Everything previews and how well my bad back was doing. And he would have talked about...er...his pint and how his trousers were both brown and purple at the same time. This was all the information I could get from a man sitting alone doing nothing.
As a fellow man sitting alone doing nothing, I was starting to get bored. The pub was depressingly quiet. You could have heard a pin drop if it wasn't for the fact that the pub insisted on playing crappy local radio. Radio that was proudly local. LEWISHAM! BROMLEY! CATFORD! it proudly exclaimed before playing an ocean of shit, shit music. I don't know when the last time that you heard "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off" was but I'm betting it wasn't long enough ago.
I sat in that pub alone for half an hour waiting on my stupid, late friends. Finally, one of the stupid, late bastards turned up. Then within the blink of an eye (a very slow eye) the pub was pretty full. Where were these fuckers when I was alone? It was almost as if all these people thought "Hmmm, the pub quiz starts at 8.30 so let's get there for about 8.15 so we can get a table for our team" and not the rational thought of "Hmmm, the pub quiz starts at 8.30 so let's get there at 6 so we can get pissed and lose". The rest of my friends turned up and the quiz began. We got all the questions right in the first round. This very much upset the table nearest us. It was the four secret men and they were taking this quiz extremely seriously.
We did OK in the second round which gave them a chance to catch up a bit. The other teams were all still well behind. In the next few rounds we started to slip more. It was getting pretty much neck and neck between Team Name (us) and Trev's Twisted Army (them). In the penultimate round we pretty much crushed them. Crushed them, I say! To be very honest, I didn't care that we were winning. It's not like I was answering that many questions anyway. But Trev's Twisted Army were visibly upset. And then audibly upset. We overheard them calling us annoying. Finally, in this quiet pub with it's serious atmosphere there was something to entertain me.
I spent the rest of the quiz talking very loudly about how annoying I was. The rest of the pub started looking over, the quiz hostess had to keep repeating questions because I was being annoying over them and, more annoying, we kept getting the answers to the final round right. I am nothing if not petty and childish and a bit of a prick.
The quiz was held in aid of a cancer trust fund and, I like to think most annoyingly of all, we gave our winning money to the charity. This was announced over the PA and we got a respectful golf clap from everyone. Nearly everyone. Trev's Twisted Army instead just finished their drinks very quickly, got their coats and left. They are nothing if not petty and childish and a bit of a prick. Army's do get like that when they lose though so that's fair enough.
Jongleurs Camden is fast asleep on my sofa right now. He looks like a little baby. I'm now going to see if I can write on him without waking him up. I am annoying.
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