Last Orders

Sundown sees me transform. As suited men enter pubs, the afternoon drinkers roll out saying “where now?”, while tourists analyse their guide maps for the nearest tube station. Homeless men with scruffy dogs clinging to soiled blankets beg wayfarers for spare change- a black cab is hailed, a mobile phone is answered. And somewhere amidst all this urban madness you’re probably hurrying into a bar or ordering a salad in a candle-lit restaurant.

Sundown sees me transform as my lips thirst for an early drink and some spirited conversation about cinema or sex. We roll like canon balls in search of a target, your germs alive and energetic in my blood. I sense your distant presence as a sign declares ‘standing room only’. It occurs to me that we intermittently plunge headlong into our own lives with clinical efficiency. And for a moment I am disconcerted.

Out of the street, through the doors and into a crowded capsule of deafening music and conversation, drinks are finally ordered. Your mind is wrought with rumours; a cesspool of idle conversation. You long for some certainty yet are consumed by the transient. It seems to swallow you as though you were its natural victim.

35 minutes, 3 drinks later the boys gesticulate: “Your round,” they demand. They appear adrenalised and electrically charged-a show of strength by the boys’ brigade. I re-live the Bay of Pigs, Watergate and speculate on Nixon’s expletives. I listen to Nixon speaking, entranced by his showmanship and absorb the ‘Checkers’ speech, breathing in his words like Alpine air- and I’m not even American.

German beer is the need of the hour while the names of films are thrown around the table like playing cards: “The French Connection”, “The Italian Job” dominate the conversation. United States of Europe and Churchillian sarcasm, Manchester United and lager-loutish spasms- it all dissolves into sound as someone takes a picture across the bar.

A bus whizzes past outside. You are probably drinking and chain-smoking, straining to conjure the illusion of permanence. Inside, you long for a dazzling magic trick, a sizzling miracle that would galvanise and transform you - stop you from breaking and halt the crumbling.

It’s last orders; both yours and mine. Choose what you want.