A free gin, a cheeky joint: welcome back to the local

My first time back in the local for eight weeks. The manageress lifts the flap, comes around to my side of the bar and kisses me on the lips. We can’t hear ourselves speak as there is a ska DJ barricaded into a corner behind a waist-high wall of speakers and the bar is small and the ceiling low. She indicates that my gin and tonic is on the house. I take it outside and take a seat on one of the picnic benches on the patio. This hippie guy is prancing ecstatically around the tables with fluttering fingers.

A couple sit themselves down opposite me and the bloke starts rolling a single skin joint. I know them by sight but I don’t know either of their names. While he concentrates his energies on rolling the spliff, the woman reassures me with great earnestness and intensity that I look fantastic. You know how some people have that hollowed-out, cadaverous look, she says? I should take it from her that I do not have this look.

Then Trev arrives. He’s wearing his customary conservative cream shirt with collar. Most uncharacteristically, however, he’s puffing on one of those vaporiser cigarettes. I never thought I’d see the day. He puffs on it continuously, like a pipe. Blackcurrant and banana flavour, he says. I’m looking good, he says — for a mutant.

It’s only a tiny spliff, but when the bloke sparks it up, smoke pours from the end like a bonfire of wet leaves. And the smell is unbelievably pungent. We’re all flapping our hands disgustedly in front of our noses. He offers it to Trev. Trev sanctimoniously tells him he’s given up smoking. He offers it to me. I take a small puff on it just to be sociable and hand it back.