With the girls having met up during the day, the men (or at least those of us who weren't on Christmas piss-ups) were planning to meet at night in a local bar.
It's not one I've ever been in. I am not sophisticated when it comes to drinking establishments. I don't like self-consciously trendy places (not least because I can be self-conscious when I'm somewhere I don't know and I am most certainly not trendy). This place was immediately over the road from The Grand where I spend an almost inconceivable amount of time when I was younger. I hate to think how many pints I've quaffed in there over the years between 18 and my early 30s. And how much I've spent. But this wasn't the Grand, it was a newer place, with a trendier crowd.
I left the house slightly later than I should have to get to the bar on time, but despite this, I was the first one to arrive. I bought a pint of IPA and found somewhere to stand and try and appear invisible until one of the others arrived. If not for the wedding ring, I probably looked very much like someone being stood up. However, it wasn't long before M___ arrived and then W______.
I was a little apprehensive about spending a night in a bar with blokes I didn't know, largely because my experience is that an awful lot of the time, men use sport as a way to bond with other blokes they don't know. It's a common currency. Except with me.
But this was a paranoid demon on my shoulder. It's certain that we three (there was a fourth due to come along, but his wife arrived and said he was stuck in traffic) would be highly unlikely to have gone to a bar together under normal circumstances, but of course we did have a common currency - heavily pregnant wives - and though there was some talk of sport, none of it excluded me too much, and they even asked me a few questions about Marillion, though I think I detected a slight, merest smidgeon of a hint of a smirk on their faces...
The truth is we spent a lot of time talking about impending fatherhood, cracking bad jokes and drinking rather a lot in quite a short period of time. Fortunately, it wasn't so much that I wouldn't be fine the next day, but it was quite a lot in a short time.
It's not one I've ever been in. I am not sophisticated when it comes to drinking establishments. I don't like self-consciously trendy places (not least because I can be self-conscious when I'm somewhere I don't know and I am most certainly not trendy). This place was immediately over the road from The Grand where I spend an almost inconceivable amount of time when I was younger. I hate to think how many pints I've quaffed in there over the years between 18 and my early 30s. And how much I've spent. But this wasn't the Grand, it was a newer place, with a trendier crowd.
I left the house slightly later than I should have to get to the bar on time, but despite this, I was the first one to arrive. I bought a pint of IPA and found somewhere to stand and try and appear invisible until one of the others arrived. If not for the wedding ring, I probably looked very much like someone being stood up. However, it wasn't long before M___ arrived and then W______.
I was a little apprehensive about spending a night in a bar with blokes I didn't know, largely because my experience is that an awful lot of the time, men use sport as a way to bond with other blokes they don't know. It's a common currency. Except with me.
But this was a paranoid demon on my shoulder. It's certain that we three (there was a fourth due to come along, but his wife arrived and said he was stuck in traffic) would be highly unlikely to have gone to a bar together under normal circumstances, but of course we did have a common currency - heavily pregnant wives - and though there was some talk of sport, none of it excluded me too much, and they even asked me a few questions about Marillion, though I think I detected a slight, merest smidgeon of a hint of a smirk on their faces...
The truth is we spent a lot of time talking about impending fatherhood, cracking bad jokes and drinking rather a lot in quite a short period of time. Fortunately, it wasn't so much that I wouldn't be fine the next day, but it was quite a lot in a short time.
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