On loneliness part II

And the redemptive nature of the pub

No one likes to admit that they are lonely, especially me. I always imagine myself as granite-hard and implacable whenever overcome by solitude, the lone figure on the horizon, the man with no name, carrying a poncho of resolution while being redemptive in my approach to life. However, last weekend I gave up, surrendered and admitted that I was feeling lonely. So I went to the pub to fight this loneliness off.

Scenes from the pub I… three middle-aged males laughing and drinking pints of beer and cider on an adjoining table, t-shirts branded Patagonia, Orkney Brewery and the third plain white; on the table next to them, chewing on their rapidly vanishing pizzas ,with the intent of wild bears raiding a bees’ nest, there were three other men, older, in between mouthfuls seemingly talking seriously; to my right at the long table at the back of the bar a group of noisy 20somethings, students perhaps, laughter and exclamations of joy, got ready to leave, emboldened by lunchtime beers, voices rising to the rafters, I was the only person in the bar sitting on my own.

I came to the pub to be a small part of people’s lives, to strive off what I recognised was loneliness, which I know would pass but still needed to be dealt with. Earlier in the day, I’d walked the dog to a country pub just outside Exeter where a wedding group gathered at the back — sharp high street suits, ‘the groom said this and that’, ‘pint for me, champagne for Marian’, ‘I do love a wedding’, tattoos scrawled on bare arms, smart dresses, a thin, flimsy, gauze creature representing a hat on a well-coiffured head. They were all together, talking, laughing, joking, remembering, part of a group drawn to each other to celebrate, but I made sure that I sat as far as I could be away from them. I wanted to be lonely and out in the garden where I sat, there was the rumble of thunder, a sudden surprise, the gunmetal blue of clouds piling up like an elaborate cosmic hair-do to the east. 

So why was I lonely I asked myself? Would I be happy if there was someone special with me? I wasn’t sure and I wondered if the loneliness came from getting older and knowing that the shades were closing in, that there was little ahead but decline and atrophy (however, with that thought I mentally shook myself like a dog emerging from a river as if to get rid of the feelings). In my writing I can often give off a cheery, nonchalant, hard-edged, happy in my loneliness attitude but on this day of thunders and showers and celebrations I was happy to admit to myself that I was lonely but I also didn’t know what the answer to the issue was. 

So I went to the pub, two pubs in fact, to write and read and watch people and wonder what their lives were like. I went to remember as well and glancing at the wedding party I recalled an early doors pint prior to a wedding of a friend in Berkshire. I would like to say that the beer I enjoyed was Brakspear but notes on beers drunk were a few years in the future, though I think I enjoyed the silence of early doors, this first pint of the day, and also successfully avoiding dwelling on a recent split-up. This was 1989. In 2022 I had a pint before going to a church again, this time for my friend’s funeral service (his wife had died over a decade before). 

Scenes from the pub II… The young staff at the pub, tats and baseball hats, play paper cuts stone and dissolve into laughter; I write that contact with others in a pub is what keeps us human and even if we know no one in a busy pub the lonely can find solace by being with people. 

Why does time spent in the pub help alleviate a sense of loneliness? My belief is that you are around people, but not with them, and therefore free from any responsibility for them. You overhear conversations which, in my case as a writer, are a seam to be mined with the utmost vigour and energy. You are on the edge of gatherings, a spectator of family and friends getting together and the energy comes to you, though not in a vampiric way, but maybe it is like being at a gathering, a gig perhaps, or watching a TV drama in which you are incredibly engrossed and invested in. Energy shared.

Being in the pub also helps that you are drinking beer which is temporarily lifting your mood, though don’t let yourself become too dependant on it and get plastered as you’ll be even lonelier. Maybe sitting in a pub watching younger people laughing and chatting and discussing the possibilities ahead of them settles in a positive way on the psyche. So this is when the dynamic nature of a pub becomes an extension of the soul, though it could be said that restaurants, cafes and coffee shops can do the same but the pub is in the best position. Being on your own in a pub but still in the company of people is perhaps like an eagle soaring up in the sky looking down on the earth below. Beer and pubs can be a collective prism through which we look at life. Maybe pubs, when we are lonely, operate on a similar level to photos of those whom we have loved and are now far away in another life, photos that can lift and make our lives feel a little more complete and ample.

Scenes from a pub III… Patagonia, Orkney and plain white t-shirt get up and leave, cheers, hit the road, hands in jean pockets, see you outside, Up The Junction plays and I recall how songs like this would never be bought or analysed but would often be played on a pub jukebox (see also Airport, Cool for Cats, Sultans of Swing).

Somehow, without making much of a fuss of it, as I sit there with my notebook and a crisp life-enhancing pint of a Helles-style beer produced a few miles north of Exeter, I find my mood has lifted and there is a cheerfulness abroad in my soul, Jiminy Cricket whistling with gusto perhaps and some words of Larkin stumble into my mind, half-drunk in the middle of the night but still clear in their intention, about how what survives of us is love.