My first novel, 'This is all I Know' is due for publication in 2007 with
Route.

Excerpt

The Benedinkt Hotel is situated directly opposite Nottingham train station. It is a glorious pub with a ceiling the colour of sick. There is always a young girl outside the entrance who begs for money. She has yellow teeth and has a blanket over her legs whether it is raining or hot. I like to think she has the most beautiful legs in the world and embarrassment forces her to cover them up. I never give her any money but I always roll her a fag and warn her of any coppers I may have seen walking the beat, because in Nottingham the local government can fine the homeless for utilising public space. She tells me that she can’t get a job because she hasn’t got a home address, yet can be fined and summoned to court. I want to tell her that life is unfair but telling her what she already knows wouldn’t help. Instead I kiss her on the forehead and go in for a pint.

The Benedinkt Hotel is full of characters with no respect for society and even less for themselves. It is the noblest institution I have encountered yet. The barmaids are always foreign and the rooms are let predominantly to the unemployed as the patron of the Benedinkt Hotel is happy to accept rent payments from the DHSS. None of the barmaids can pull a pint properly which mimetically reflects the environment.

The thing I like most about this pub is the freedom of its drinkers. None are constrained by the polite morality which deprives the world of life out on the street. Total strangers will talk together as if they have known each other all their lives because proximity, rather than familiarity, is all that counts.

When I inquire as to whether they serve vegetarian food the barmaid points a finger at some sweaty cellophaned rolls in a plastic tupperware container muttering “80 pence” as she walks away. She is not concerned with making a sale but her three syllables are enough for the man next to me to start up conversation.

“Vegetarian then?”

“Yep”

“What’s your definition of vegetarian?”

“Isn’t it self explanatory?”

“Not really. Some vegetarians eat fish.”

“Okay, I won’t eat anything with a nervous system”

“So you eat mussels then?”

“No”

“But they don’t have a nervous system?”

“I know, but I feel bad. I guess it’s just psychosomatic.”

“So you’re a vegetarian who doesn’t eat meat and things which aren’t meat, but look like meat?”

“I suppose so. Look I don’t see what the problem is. Why does everybody feel the need to quiz vegetarians on their principles?”

“Because it’s unnatural and stupid”

“Well it’s something that’s important to me. I don’t preach to anyone else but they get so offended when you tell them you’re a vegetarian”

“Maybe you shouldn’t tell people then?” He rocks his head forward and takes a swig from his drink.

“I don’t. It was you who asked.”

“How long have you been one of them for?”

“One of what?”

“A veggy”

“Ages, why?”

“I just wondered”

“Why?”

“Just wondering that’s all. I had a mate who turned veggy once, only lasted two weeks. He collapsed at work and nearly got the sack, hasn’t been the same since.”

Everybody knows someone who has been a vegetarian for a while, and all have similar horror stories. It’s due to this that part-time vegetarianism is to the life-long vegetarian what bi-sexuality is to the gay liberation front.

“He gave up meat because he thought it was wrong to eat something that’d lived, so I told him to just not think about things too much.”

“That’s why I’m a vegetarian.” I said, “I don’t believe we have the right to deprive something of life just because we can. Anything given the five senses has as much right to live as we do.”

“Ah, so that means you would eat a cow if it was blind?”

But before I can respond he has downed his pint and left the pub. At this point the barmaid returns.

“Do you want a cob or not?”

“Er…no thanks, although you can put another one in…”

But she has already walked away before I have time to finish my request.

I drink in this pub because I always miss my train to Manchester by one minute and it is the easiest way to pass the hour before the next one departs. If I’d never met my girlfriend I wouldn’t be getting trains and I wouldn’t have discovered this place. My contemplation is interrupted by a group of workmen who keep farting. This source of amusement leaves a few in virtual hysterics, each man taking it in turn to fart so that a melodic sequence is formed that is only disrupted when one guy fires a blank. They start punching him in the arm and calling him crap until he is forced to improvise by placing his right hand under his left armpit to create an artificial rasp. They are the English version of La Scala boys from Captain Correlli’s Mandolin.

When I eventually receive my drink I take a seat in the far corner where I am acknowledged with a nod from a black man who epitomises the complexity of British cultural identity. This master of bricolage is dressed in a suit and hat, yet opts for a Dundee United football top instead of a shirt. He is facing a couple who will do anything they can to avoid talking to each other; filling their mouths with fags, crisps and alcohol so conversation is reduced to a munch, slurp and exhale. As admirable as their contempt for one another is, I am distracted by a man coming through the bar door with a wooden curtain pole which he takes upstairs, presumably to his room. Within minutes he is back downstairs and ordering a pint and a chaser before settling down in the corner. I recognise this guy from drinking in here before and can’t help but wonder what a man who rents a room above a pub needs with a curtain pole. Surely each room comes with working curtains?

I am quite sure that he is not the type who can’t sleep at night because the plastic rail doesn’t match the wooden chest of drawers.

I’m torn between these characters all vying for my attention. This pub is like a natural kaleidoscope where instead of bright spinning colours there are faces and mannerisms to stimulate my intellect. The curtain-pole-man’s front three teeth are missing but he utilises this defect to his benefit. He clenches his jaw, lips parted in a grim half smile, reclines his neck and throws a peanut up in the air which as it falls, bounces off one of his remaining teeth and lands on the floor. Undeterred he starts again and this time when the peanut falls through the gap he applauds himself; jumping up from his seat, taking a bow, before repeating the game again. Only a man with missing teeth can understand the pleasure of such a trick. You can only begin to imagine what other feats he could perform if he had say, an artificial limb or was double jointed.

It takes him one hour and twenty minutes to finish the nuts and on completion he orders another packet from the bar to keep himself amused. The next packet takes him 53 minutes proving that practice makes perfect. By eleven tonight I reckon he will be able to do one in ten minutes and perhaps even two peanuts at a time. Or perhaps by then he will have progressed to Cashews although I doubt they sell fancy nuts in this bar.

After a while the barmaid decides it’s time to put some glasses back on the shelves; motivated by boredom now that she has extinguished all of her Lamberts. But she cannot reach the top shelf and as she balances precariously on tip- toe the peanut king with no teeth starts shouting at the top of his voice “O’il fookin do it. O’il fooking do it fa ya.” The barmaid tells him he is not allowed behind the bar but he doesn’t understand her illogical objections. “O’il do it fa ya. Yer too fookin small.” She continues to deny him but he is insistent, furrowing his eyebrows to convey his annoyance. He looks around the bar hoping that somebody will back him up but they aren’t interested and happily continue eating their crisps and farting respectfully. But as stubbornly as he declares he can help, she stubbornly ignores him. Instead he is forced to accept second best and stand opposite sharing each stretched muscle with her, placing his hands over his eyes dramatically when he senses something may fall.

This is possibly the most graceful act he has ever seen the human body perform and I sense that he is concerned as much about the strength of her toes as he is about the glass which may cut her soft skin. I feel angry at the barmaid because she has denied him a purpose, a reason to live. I don’t think she realises that to an alcoholic she, as barmaid, has transcended her mortal coil and is deified into the drinker’s personal God. When she has finished she places her hands on her hips and takes a good look at the man.

“Thank you for your offer William, but as I tell you every day, I’m okay.”

I don’t know why, but I am shocked to discover this guy has got a name. It doesn’t seem to be the kind of place where such personal details are exchanged. I imagine this is the only place in the world where he is spoken to using his first name, which makes me feel awfully sad. Fortunately William is not sad. “O’il ave some fookin nuts” he shouts across the bar as he rushes to find the relevant coins from his jeans. I am now wondering whether he deliberately removed his front teeth himself.

At this point the juke box fires up and S-Club Seven start singing one of their happy songs. William starts to clap his hand, giggling like a maniac and occasionally bouncing on his seat. He is most enthusiastic regardless of being completely off beat with the song. Next up is a track from Westlife which promotes the benefits of being in love. William continues clapping at exactly the same pace, which makes me think that by the fourth or fifth song pure chance will align the clapping and the beat perfectly. The barmaid shakes her head, the workmen continue farting and the couple who have nothing to say to each other finally recognise their respective existences by blowing smoke into the others face.

I get up to go to the toilet and trip over, breaking my watch face as I fall. “Be fookin careful” screams William, continuing to clap and throwing peanuts up in the air.

It is at this point that I realise I should be in Manchester . I realise I have been in the pub all day and there aren’t any more trains. Thankfully I have not wasted all my money on beer and still have some for the phone…

“Why aren’t you here?”

“Because I got distracted by a guy with his front three teeth missing”

“Pardon”

“He could catch peanuts in them”

“Eh”

“I reckon he could catch Cashews as well, but I don’t think he can afford them. Do you think I should buy him some?”

There is a lengthy pause.

“So you would rather sit and watch a man with his two front teeth missing than be with me?” Before I can correct her about it being three missing teeth or tell her about the farting workmen or the couple who have nothing to say, she hangs up the phone, selfishly turning circumstance into a deliberate gesture; personalising the world. And once more I am reminded of the perversity of life. The fact that I only discovered this pub because I had to catch a train to see my girlfriend, and now that I might no longer have a girlfriend I no longer need to come and wait in this pub.

'This is all I Know' is due for publication in 2007 with Route.

Back to the Top of the page.

Feel free to email me in connection with anything you've seen here... or even something you haven't seen.