THE GOLDEN AGE IS NOW When we were very poor I took a part-time evening job behind a bar in a Tottenham pub. After three nights I resigned. Incompetence was the main reason but, also, for the first time I had to remain clear-eyed while others lapsed into crapulousness. Oh what a (badly put-together) piece of work is man.
These were pre-decimal days. To price “a brown and mild” I had to halve a pint of mild beer (at 1s 11d) and add it to a bottle of brown ale (1s. 3½d) – in my head. And there would be equal gymnastics concerning a gin and tonic or a port and lemon. When I resigned the landlord’s wife told me I wasn’t cut out for this work. In the words of Paul Simon “I took some comfort there”.
Nowadays bar-tending is a doddle. The cash register works it out and for the innumerate touch-key icons augment mere figures. If I were wiped out financially I could present myself for duty at The Dog and Duck, confident that technology would be my crutch. But being able to watch bright-eyed, shouty young men wheedling drinks out of the local second-hand car dealer (a roll of tenners in his back pocket) would be another matter.
WRITING: CRAFT NOT ART
Eclogue 46: English is a plum pudding of different words.
Example: Cyrano: So, insult me. Intellectually inadequate aristocrat: You have… a big nose. Cyrano: Ah, what could you have said? When it bleeds… a river (steps over imaginary river). When it’s blown, a hurricane. Etc, etc.
These were pre-decimal days. To price “a brown and mild” I had to halve a pint of mild beer (at 1s 11d) and add it to a bottle of brown ale (1s. 3½d) – in my head. And there would be equal gymnastics concerning a gin and tonic or a port and lemon. When I resigned the landlord’s wife told me I wasn’t cut out for this work. In the words of Paul Simon “I took some comfort there”.
Nowadays bar-tending is a doddle. The cash register works it out and for the innumerate touch-key icons augment mere figures. If I were wiped out financially I could present myself for duty at The Dog and Duck, confident that technology would be my crutch. But being able to watch bright-eyed, shouty young men wheedling drinks out of the local second-hand car dealer (a roll of tenners in his back pocket) would be another matter.
WRITING: CRAFT NOT ART
Eclogue 46: English is a plum pudding of different words.
Example: Cyrano: So, insult me. Intellectually inadequate aristocrat: You have… a big nose. Cyrano: Ah, what could you have said? When it bleeds… a river (steps over imaginary river). When it’s blown, a hurricane. Etc, etc.
Caution: Go out there and delight in “jejune” and “mellifluous” while simultaneously exploring the one short step into pretentiousness.
