Low life | 23 November 2017

The door to Trev’s flat was open so I walked in and found him on the sofa watching TV. He looked up and gave an ironic cheer. How long was it? We thought it must be at least a year since we’d last seen each other, maybe a year and a half. And how was Trev? He was fine, he said. He had plenty of work on — building work and delivering logs — and was generally taking care of himself.

We had arranged to go for a few scoops at the pub. While he got ready he told me what he’d been up to. The headline news was the closing down of the King Bill, about which I already knew. Trev went to the private closing-down party, he said. The departing landlord locked everyone inside the pub and told them to drink everything and smoke away. Trev attacked what he thought was a single-measure optic underneath the big house vodka bottle, learning only when he’d finished it that the optic gave a double measure. So he drank treble doubles all night without realising it, and on the way home he fell through a plate-glass shop window. Trev had no recollection or knowledge of this, but a week later a policeman appeared on his doorstep and told him that he had been seen climbing out of said window covered in shards of glass. The bill for a new window was £280 and, most irregularly, the copper said he would accept a cash payment right there and then. Trev paid him. The copper tore off a receipt and said the matter was now closed. Paying up without a murmur was more convenient, explained Trev, than having the constable come barging in, nicking him, subjecting his home to a thorough search, and then Trev having to stand up before the garden gate in some far-flung magistrates’ court.