Come on in, take a seat, drink deep by the roaring hearth and don’t worry about the time – there’s bound to be a lock-in. Such is the Christmas Eve pub scenario of our fantasies. It’s been a long trek back to our home town, most likely thanks to a ‘cow on the line’ or some such nonsense announced by Avanti somewhere between Milton Keynes and Rugby. But you’re finally home so what could be finer than heading down to your old local for a festive pint or three?
Well, quite a lot, actually. Like staying in and sticking hot pins into your retina. Yet out we go regardless, already drunk on the spirit of Christmas. But who will you be sharing bar space with this evening? Here’s a guide to the types that will, doubtless, be shoring up the three-deep counter queue with overly complicated orders to a soundtrack of Mariah Carey and Wham! on an endless loop:
The ‘back home from London and feeling smug about their career’ chap
Charlie was considered a bit of a show-off at school, but he compensated for his average academic ability by being good at tennis and having ‘supportive’ (i.e. they spoiled him) parents. After three years at the University of Northumbria he’s now nimbly ascending the grease-smeared ladder at Goldman Sachs, albeit only as a junior associate at the present time. Regardless, Charlie knows how to have a Good Time and will have put on his best Beaufort and Blake gilet for the evening. He will give all the men a metacarpals-crushing handshake and will make sure he gets close enough to the women that they’re in no doubt he’s wearing far too much Creed Aventus aftershave. Charlie is colossally over-confident and self-centred but will happily get a round in, as long as you don’t remind him about the time when he cried in PE after getting a cricket ball struck into his goolies.
Drink of choice: a glass of Veuve Monsigny which he will horribly mispronounce when ordering
The ‘back in my day…’ guy
Gary has always been steadfast in his view that pubs should never have more than three people in them, excluding the barmaid. So he despises what Christmas has done to his local. It’s packed and Gary has been forced to move from his usual position by the fruit machine to a new standpoint by the disabled loo.
Gary could be anywhere between 35 and 60 but he does not, as far as anybody knows, have a surname. There’s a rumour that he killed a man in another pub car park in the 1990s, but then again there’s also a rumour that he steals from Greggs for sustenance and is currently claiming to be 11 different people to get more benefits. Gary doesn’t want to talk to anyone in the pub about anything other than how things were better in the past. Attempt deeper conversation and you run the risk of a lecture on Gary’s latest online conspiracy theory which involves the links between Aldi checkout staff and jihad. Gary should be avoided.
Drink of choice: a can of Carling smuggled in his jacket and poured into someone else’s discarded pint glass
The unelected head of the community
Sandra moved to the village seven years ago with her husband Keith, who has his own laser screeding business. She’s already set up a ‘Clear the Canal’ work group, ran a short-lived salsa class at the parish hall (abandoned after a back injury resulted in one prospective dancer being carried out on a plank) and is a constant albeit wearisome volunteer presence at the food bank on the other side of town.
Sandra has come to the pub prepared. She has photocopied Christmas carol lyric sheets and is determined that everyone heads out to the village green at closing time to belt out a few lumpen verses of ‘God Rest Yet Merry Gentlemen’. Things will go awry when it becomes apparent that everyone is far too drunk to stand next to the war memorial for half an hour in the cold and simply wants to get home and put some pigs in blankets in the oven. Sandra will be seen, shortly before midnight, being comforted by two other women of similar age. Sandra’s words will be muffled by her M&S scarf but, through the tears and wool, some will hear her say ‘Why do I bother?’ and ‘I told Keith we should have stayed in Stowe’.
Drink of choice: weak gin and tonic
The one who lives through her kids
Helen was popular at school. She was pretty, determined and was one of the first girls in the year to date a man with facial hair. But Helen married too young. Not that Mike isn’t a good type. The pair have decent careers and a mock-Tudor semi. But Helen, deep down, knows she should have done more. Luckily, she can now live out her unfulfilled ambitions vicariously through Jack, 12, and Isla, nine. Helen seems to have an iPhone with the battery capacity of a Tesla plant; no matter how many pictures she shows you of her children, it stays at 100 per cent power.
How many pictures Helen shows you depends on your ability to work your way out of intolerably boring situations. Stating you need to go outside for a vape won’t deter Helen. She will follow you to the car park and ask for a puff, though she knows that it’s ‘a bit naughty of me’. Getting rid of Helen will be hard work tonight.
Drink of choice: prosecco
The annoying student back from their first three months at uni
Tabitha was tipped to do well at Durham University. She got straight As at A-level and was reading Jeanette Winterson when her classmates were still engrossed in Hogwarts. But on her first trip home since Fresher’s Week in September, Tabitha is looking distinctly peaky, mainly due to a diet that consists almost entirely of Lion bars and Red Bull.
Tabitha felt that she would meet her tribe at university. But she swiftly decided that the Drama Soc had a profoundly misogynistic attitude, proven by the fact that one fellow student told the group that he liked A Streetcar Named Desire. Tabitha has spent most of the first three months of higher education reading Andrea Dworkin in her room and writing disapproving comments underneath online Guardian features. Tabitha doesn’t really want to be in the pub at all tonight, but she’s keen to get a word in with the landlord and voice her concerns about the lack of gender-neutral toilets. Tabitha looks like she needs a hot meal and an even hotter shower.
Drink of choice: vodka, no mixer
The never-left-home ‘creative’
Steve had aspirations to be a professional musician. But, 13 years on from those debut pub gigs as drummer and sometime songwriter with his art-rock outfit (who have had many name changes but are currently sticking with ‘Trench Foot’), they have, somehow, failed to capture the attention of the music press or, indeed, anyone beyond family, friends and one fanzine editor in Bromley to whom they once sent a free T-shirt to in exchange for a review of their self-funded debut EP (currently stuck at 309 listens on Spotify).
Steve isn’t downhearted, though. He knows that a Wembley Stadium sell-out concert is purely a matter of when, not if. In the meantime, he’ll be in the pub handing out his particular brand of sneering faux-bonhomie to the returning hordes, while fooling himself into believing that there will be a future Christmas when his white stretch limo will drop him off at the same pub in the guise of ‘returning hero’ and everyone will forget the current epoch where he comes across as a delusional idiot who really should get rid of that ridiculous beard.
Drink of choice: one (warm) bottle of Becks
The utterly silent old bloke
Gerald has been propping up the bar every single evening since his divorce in 1997 and doesn’t like to be disturbed. Drinking pints of lager with a borderline fanatical commitment, Gerald is absolutely determined that the bellicosity and ludicrousness of Christmas Eve will not alter his schedule one iota – save for ensuring that he gets to the pub an hour earlier than normal so that he can claim his usual bar stool.
While all around him descends into festive degeneracy, Gerald will continue reading his copy of Metro, sipping his fourth pint and making eye contact with absolutely nobody at all. The landlord and landlady think Gerald’s miserable presence is a problem for the pub. But they can’t ask him to leave as their ten-day Tui package break in Gozo last year was entirely paid for by what he put into the till.
Drink of choice: pint of lager ad infinitum
The person you barely knew at school
Right at the end of the evening a man around your age embraces you and won’t let go. He hasn’t come home to see his parents for ten months so he wants to catch up on all the news. No matter how hard you try, you simply cannot remember his name. You’re not even sure if he was in your year. But this slightly corpulent, relentlessly jolly fellow seems to know everything about you and appears to possess a Rain Man-esque memory for every single event that happened in your school between Year 7 and A-levels.
You know that you’ll never remember who he is unless you find a third person and get him to reveal his name by means of generic introductions. Hey presto; you now know he’s called John and, yes, he was in your year. But you never, to your recollection, actually spoke to him. Quite why he is now so desperate to take a trip down amnesia lane is probably not worth thinking about too much. Put your arm around him, tell him they were ‘great days’, then say you need to go to the toilet and you’ll be back in a moment. This is your cue to go home immediately.
Drink of choice: whatever he was drinking in 2001. It will still be the same next Christmas too
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