Bored witless, I go into town with no particular intention other than to get out of the house. I think about going to the pub but each one I look in is empty. The streets of the town are empty, the pubs are empty and I’m empty. The only place with any sign of life in it is the British Legion club. Through the first-floor window I can see people with pool cues moving around.
I press the buzzer and am let in. My friend Rick is in there. He’ll have a pint of mild, he says, but he can’t buy me one back. He’s a bit skint at the moment. I offer his friend one as well, but his friend says he’s OK for the moment. The beer is amazingly cheap.
I’ve not seen Rick for over a year and I’ve forgotten what a very great bore he is. Always when he sees me, he turns to whoever he’s with and says, ‘See him? He’s a whore of literature.’ Rick is sitting with an old bloke who is doing everything he can, dress and hair-wise, to look young. Because it’s what I do too, I take an instant dislike to him. ‘Tell me,’ says Rick’s friend. ‘What was the cornerstone of your desire to become a journalist?’ ‘Money,’ I say. ‘So tell me,’ he says primly, ‘why don’t you make a living selling drugs?’ And that is the extent of my conversation with him.
I turn from Rick’s intellectual friend and try Rick, to see if he’d changed his song at all since I last saw him. He hasn’t. He’s still going on about all these various women who are after him. I haven’t seen Rick for ages, but he doesn’t ask me anything about me, he just launches into his latest women problems.
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