Low life | 18 August 2012

Cider was her drink. Pint of. She was a reserved, deliberate, thoughtful woman, aged about 40. She went out hardly at all these days, she said, because she was raising a toddler. On the rare occasion when she did go out, nobody seemed to be having fun any longer. It wasn’t like the old days.  What’s happened to everybody in this town, she said? It used to be a party town full of interesting characters having fun. Where did they all go? 

Then she saw me at that party, she said, and she thought, well, at least there’s one person left having fun, keeping the spirit alive, which is why she’d made a note of my details and then called. ‘Another one?’ I said. ‘No, I’m fine with this one, thank you,’ she said, slightly horrified at the rapidity with which I’d sunk mine.

When they rang the bell for last orders, I went to the bar and ordered a carry-out. While the barman was organising it, I saw Blaze at the other end of the bar and trotted over to have a word. Blaze is an unreconstructed hippie of the old school: hair down to his waist, spangly waistcoat, absurdly voluminous embroidered trousers, and he calls everybody ‘man’. Blaze once lived in a bender in the woods for an entire year. Gathering firewood was so horribly time-consuming, he says, he was left with no time to play the guitar. Now he lives in a house.  

Three weeks ago the warm-hearted Blaze acted as a Good Samaritan to my friend Tom. Tom needed somewhere to stay and Blaze spontaneously offered him his living-room floor. ‘Is Tom still staying at yours?’ I said.