‘A pint of the usual?’
‘Cheers. Is John in?’
‘In the garden. Six-twenty. Card?’
‘Yeh.’
And the woman from the post office having a drink with a friend nods as I walk past, which is returned with a small smile.
In the garden John is pushing himself up from a picnic bench, empty glass in hand. He nods, the universal acknowledgment of the village, and says, ‘Just going for a pee and a fresh one. Back in a sec.’
And, five or six minutes later, he is back with a pint in each hand an splashes on the front of his trousers. The splashes could be from the temperamental tap in the toilets, but could as easily be John’s carelessness.
He eases back onto the bench, places one glass on the table, and sups from the other, drawing its level down to about the same level mine is now at.
‘How goes it?’ His tone is jolly, lubricated.
Our chat about the will won't happen today. This will be his third or fourth pint. His cheerful amenity will last until he feels the discussion closing in, making him think about things he’d much rather ignore.
‘Fine, John, fine.’ The decision to wait is already made by my subconscious.
As the hot sun slides behind a cloud John shucks a smoke from a fresh pack, lights, and inhales deeply with not a care in the world.
Poem by stuartcturnbull, picture from Alex_Svenson on Pixabay
This poem is one written over the summer of 2022. It is part of a suite of poems that considers UK history and life from roughly the end of the Second World War through to an unknown future.
The suite's title is from the opening line of the fourth stanza in William Blake's 1808 poem Jerusalem.