After beholding the finest offload ever conceived from the not-so-cheap seats of Twickenham, the beautiful backhand flip by a demigod that broke a million Welsh hearts and very nearly caused me an aneurysm, it was time to walk to a pub.
It was time to watch rugby in a pub, laugh at Celtic insults in a pub, eat fish in a pub, wake up in a pub, start over in a pub, and tell you what I saw and liked in a pub in London.
There is something pleasing to the eye about a pub; I suppose there are architectural reasons for that. The red trim. The low ceilings. The Victorian primness.
The fittings gleam, the taps shine, and the murmur speaks of times gone by, songs sung and forgotten but still around, and the slow demise of a thousand aspirations in the muddy brew of the dark wooden bar.
Darts fly, too. Verbal jibes: “I’ll pull off yer arm, ya big bald bastard, and hit ya wif the soggy end.” But also actual darts.
So even if you are seven ales into your lament (or in my case, celebration of the offload that caused dozens of babies in the Hills not to be named Alex, and maybe even a few to be christened Duane), you must look out for darts.
This may be why many old punters in the London pub wear a hat; it’s a helmet.
A pub is quietly deafening. No-one is screaming, but an unsteady man with an accent best described as ‘Drinking’ asked for our attention, and then demanded a light, and when the zeitgeist of 2015 doomed his quest, he cursed all of us with great alacrity, as well as “Sweet Mary, not Joseph, and feckin’ Fart du Preez”.
A London barmaid far from the posh chambers is not transcendently pretty. But what is lost in looks is made up for in conversation, interest, and dare I say it? She cares. About all her lost sheep; these grizzled men, glazed and reddened, spreading their arms and their loss and their cured beefy smell into the enclosed rooms.
She can find you an aspirin, she can tell you something about everyone, and she can bring you three drinks instead of one.
Curried lamb and potatoes is one route to take, but also a glistening cod or haddock with more salt than the Dead Sea and a vinegar bottle all your own.
It’s a cheap meal, served by a maternal youngster, and it can make you feel grand and warm.
This flickering hearth is where great deeds are told: “and then you told the Welsh guy to lick you!” But also, here is where firm assertions are made, assessments logged and locked in: “Willie can’t play fullback if he won’t take that high ball.”
Boyos wobble over to the table, sizing us up. Elbows and shoulders are important in pubs, every head looks big, and the stools equal things out. But elbows can end a night.
It turns out these Taffies only want to tell us of their grief, about ‘daft cows’ and ‘gormless Gatland’ and ‘scrum muppets’ and that the ref was a ‘prat’ and a ‘twit’ and ‘didn’t you think Cuthbert was a lazy sod’ and then ask for us to buy their drinks while they threw up outside and returned chastened and smiling and ready for more.
Total strangers at a table, shouting and beaming at each other, aglow in the shared experience of following a team through defeats and victory.
That same pub the next day was emblazoned tartan, and don’t they love the way their lads are playing. The anger at each call was marvellous and had a savage loveliness. The rage at the referee built in the pub until the mood had a taste all its own and the pub was full of that taste of that mood and it felt wee mad, I’ll tell you.
“You’re all bum and parsley!” to the Aussies, and “Keep your heid!” to the Scots, but then a long and sustained series of oaths of indeterminate origin, ancient in their fury.
It was best to be quiet, to avoid any suspicion that Craig Joubert might have sympathisers in the pub. And then it fell quiet. The Scots fell quiet. And the pub was full of a pagan gloom, an existential sorrow.
It was time to leave, to walk the cold streets and feel air, and remember, it’s good to look up and around, too.
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