Idle Chatter
And potholes
I wanted to leave the city for a couple of hours, get into the countryside and find a pub at the end of my journey. Within 25 minutes of closing my front door I was cycling along a country road, amid tranquil views of surrounding hills and plenty of patches of different shades of green wherever I looked. Past a big redbrick farmhouse I went, its stables and sheds now empty, the building looking so spick and span that I wondered if it could be an Airbnb. Meanwhile the soundtrack was a mixture of my bicycle types crunching on the fine gravel of the country road, the chatter of sparrows hidden away in hedges, the harsh crack of a magpie balancing on a telephone wire and a robin perhaps or another bird whose song I would never get to know soulful within the leafy bloom of a roadside tree.
Then there I was, at my ultimate destination, a village pub that is one of my favourites but which I don’t get out to as often as I would like. Inside the bar it was cool and slightly shadowy, a yin to the yang of the heat and light of outside. I ordered a 5.2% amber-coloured ale, which was brewed in the cellar below, and outside I went to the side of the pub, with the aim of reading my book and drinking my beer. In the glass it was lightly sweet and had hints of berries and a delightful earthiness that gave it heft and weight on the palate, with a noticeable bitterness finishing each swig. A man, mid 60s perhaps, red faced, wearing a baseball hat, cycling shorts, an Old Guys Rule top and big trainers, laces undone, a thing I’d thought had fallen from fashion in the 1990s, sat down a couple of tables away from me. He took a gulp from his pint and began to chat with a man and woman, who were sitting a couple of tables further from him.
‘I left out here 20 years ago, for France, somewhere outside Toulouse, lovely place, nowhere as expensive as here, a good glass of wine for five euros, here you pay the earth.’
He paused and I returned to my book then he began again. This time the potholes that pockmark the roads of Exeter now engaged his attention.
‘Not like that in France you know.’
The man at whom he was talking muttered in agreement. The conversation, or should I say monologue, now turned to the pubs of Exeter.
‘Is the Paper Makers still going?’
‘I don’t know.’
I want to say it’s been closed for ages but I stay silent, this is not my conversation.
‘I see the Port Royal has closed, what happened there, then there’s the Welcome Inn, been closed for years that, used to like the landlady, it’s a coffee shop now.’
It was for a while but Covid killed it and it’s now a private house, again I don’t say anything.
The conversation moves on as if on a carousel and potholes once more emerge as a subject of discussion and such is the frequency of moaning that I half expect the man to start blaming the potholes on migrants, but being one himself perhaps he would be aware of the irony of such a discussion.
A man emerges from the bar and lights a cigarette.
‘Good lord, look who is it,’ says the man who has been talking all the time.
‘How are you boy?’
The newcomer is in his late 60s I would guess, but boy seems to be a common address out in the Devon countryside.
‘All well sir,’ comes the reply.
‘What have you been doing with yourself?’
‘Oh I’ve just come back from Poland, I was just looking around, it’s cheaper than here and the best beer I had was a Czech one, Pilsner Urquell, served straight from the tank at this bar, it was delicious.’
‘What are the potholes like?’
‘Didn’t notice any.’
His voice could be described as rough posh or perhaps maybe something like the second hand car dealer in Surrey I once bought an Audi off. Frank was it, Ernie maybe?
Another man, I reckon in his 80s, joins them, slightly unsteady, holding a half pint. ‘All’s well that ends well,’ he says and they all laugh and then behind me in the road there is a growling sound and a line of vintage cars pass and park up around the front of the pub. I see a TR7, a Cortina and a Lotus among others. There is a kind of wake going on in the downstairs bar, which a few minutes later I pass through on my way to the toilets. A couple of men in orange overalls stand around alongside others in black ties, white shirts and jackets, the overalled men perhaps cosplaying a 1950s Grand Prix vibe. Maybe the deceased was a great vintage car fan, otherwise why would they be mingling with those in black?
‘Another pint, it’s easy to drink,’ I say to the man behind the bar, he agrees and we have a brief chat about the 6.5% beer the brewpub produces every Christmas. Back outside there are now four men sitting where there was just one and the conversation has merged and I no longer can pick up individual voices. Back to my book I go and leave the idle chatterers to their digressive conversations.
The pub can be home to the most idle or banal of conversations, which is perhaps about people wanting to exercise their larynxes, something I often do. There is an impulse to talk about nothing in particular, possibly lubricated by the gentle intoxication of a couple of pints. Maybe the irritation at the constant vocals by the return of the native was a Jungian shadow on how I can be just the same when I have had the joy of a couple of pints. I muttered to myself as I finished the beer and headed for my bicycle and, refreshed and reinvigorated by my brief spell in the countryside, started to cycle back to the city, whilst looking out for potholes.
