The Night We Won

The Lazy Lounge crowd are silent. They are still. Hands clutch pint glasses but mouths forget to drink. The match has just begun and who knows what will happen; the players might get naked, we might win; this is something we just can’t miss.

I say ‘we’; I’m worrying about Creatives. The Creatives I am on my way to meet. Who are they? What are they? Am I one? How do you know if you are or not? Are you poked awake one morning by the curving tip of a capital C?

The Creatives will be hanging near Pret. Or so I’m told. But when I reach that distinctive window plastered with a photo of a wholemeal baguette-shoe, accompanied by a smug little caption reminding me that all their bread is baked in Yorkshire, and I wonder what do they write about their bread in London, what do they write in Heathrow Airport, in Milton Keynes, who do I see but two people with so many important things to say that they are trying to say them at the same time. The creases in their (otherwise crease-free) foreheards suggest this is not an effective method of communication. I think they are going to punch each other but –

‘Take one.’ They smash a wad of leaflets into my chest and rush by.

The leaflet invites me to an Afta’s Partaaay!!!! This must be the wrong Pret.

When I reach the scary shoe-bread poster at the other Pret, my ear fills with voices. They drift from an unmarked gash between two shops: an empty space: what in London would be a pop-up bar with £15 cocktails sponsored by Nike or Sweaty Betty.

There are people. There are fairy lights. There is giant Jenga and Connect 4. There is no small number of jaunty hats. They all know each other, they all know they are Creatives and I am yet to grow my c into CAPS. This is what I’m thinking as Uruguay score their first goal: hairy legs are blurrily projected on the back wall.

Then someone says hello. I say hello back, and somehow I am talking and they are talking and then I am talking to someone else and someone else still, and within a few minutes I have ousted my true worst self: I don’t give a shit about the world cup.

We sip £2 drinks from plastic cups and look at the giant foamy Connect 4 counters and talk about art and how it should not be the final destination but a membrane which swifts you somewhere else. Or something like that. (It seemed Incredibly Important at the time but I can’t really remember right now). We also talk about the problem of money and about swimming pools and snot and peanut butter brownies and Wakefield. Then we pray to the Wifi-gods so we can find each other on Twitter and Facebook.

‘Everyone wins, really,’ are the last words to reach my ear. I can’t agree more: if we weren’t here, this space would be yet another Unit to Let, and I’d be yet another person squished into a bar or onto a sofa, feeling like a freak for not caring about these highly paid ball-kickers.

About a dozen pubs, including Yates and (both) Wetherspoons, lie between me and home: surely, the bad ending will get me now. Surely. I bow my head and pierce the red-raw score-sore swarm, and it’s easier than it looks; hands clenched, tongues out, they are blind to everything that has nothing to do with McDonald’s or Subway or Burger King.

Treasure-hunting for my fob, I catch my face in the glass: there’s a smile here. There’s a smile all over my face and no one is around to wipe it off.

The Incredibly Serious Sausage Dog

      The sun is shining all over the canal and the pavement and the bird poo on the pavement. Apart from the mild discomfort of wearing a duffel coat, I am happy. So, I think, looking at all the rolled-up shirt sleeves around me, is everyone else.

    Just as my duffel coat-related discomfort progresses from mild to moderate, I spot you: you are bending over and waggling your finger at your sausage dog.

    ‘Stop rolling in that muck!’ you are shouting.

    But the dog, being a dog, is still rolling in the ‘muck’ – which is actually a remarkably beer can-free strip of grass.

    ‘It’s not funny!’ you say.

    You are not talking to me but I cannot help laughing: really, why get a dog whose legs have been bred into near non-existence, a dog whose namesake is one of the more ridiculous foodstuffs, if you did not want to laugh?

    But who am I to tell you what to do? This moment is all I know of your life – I do not know, for example, whether you wanted to get out of bed this morning, whether there is anyone you look forward to seeing when you get home – and it’s almost over.

    Maybe you can tell me why, days later, as I’m sipping coffee on a stone boulder which is sun-covered on an afternoon that for once happens to fall on a weekend, as I watch a man take off all his clothes and jump right into that mucky water, as I laugh and sigh and shake my head along with all the other happy sunny people around me, part of me is thinking of you and your dog that you did not want to laugh.