The stillness around

and the stillness within

It is a few minutes after midday in the Fat Cat in Kelham Island, Sheffield. Outside on a window ledge, a plastic pint glass with a third of a pint still remaining in it stands, presumably a survivor from the previous night and yet to be discovered by the staff. Inside, I turn right into the main bar, in which there is a three-sided serving booth that juts out into the room with a door at its back where the corridor runs. It is more spacious than the one at the Beacon Hotel in Sedgley, which I always think is slightly claustrophobic. I order a pint of Budvar and sit opposite the front of the booth, whose counter is lined with keg taps, including one for the lager I have just ordered. I am not the first person in the bar, there is another drinker to the right of me, sitting on a banquette against the wall, next to the fire burning in the grate, white wispy hair hoping to reach his shoulders, perhaps a memory of his youth as a rocker. His glass is half full, beer, amber and what he has drunk so far has left a playful trace of lacing on the glass. He is not reading, neither looking at his phone; he is just looking ahead, and doesn’t seem to have that eagerness on his face, a pushing forward of the upper part of his body, that might indicated that he wants to talk. He seems happy with the stillness of the bar, and like him I am also contented.

Given that I sit facing the front of the serving booth I fancifully think that it resembles some confessional booth I have seen in cathedrals on the European mainland, maybe one in Mechelen or Zagreb. It has a wooden gantry on all three sides, while the front gantry has a massive clock embedded in it; it doesn’t seem to be working and naturally I think of the line from Withnail & I about a stopped clock telling the right time twice a day. I sip my beer and write in my notebook, trying to define the stillness in the bar. There is no background music and the only sounds I can hear are the muffled voices of the two young female bar staff talking at the end of the corridor beyond the serving booth.

Silence in a pub can be a two-edged sword. At this time of the day, a few minutes after midday on a cold, grey Sunday, the stillness of the bar is pleasing and serene, a meditative start to a day that I know will involve several pub visits. It is a glorious silence, a prompt to thought, an encouragement to probe your feelings and discover what you like about what’s in the glass you have in front of you (for me, the Budvar avails itself of a crispness, a delicate bittersweetness and light grain and citrus). There is a pliant stillness about this silence, a stillness that settles on my mood, energising and yet also relaxing. I feel as if I am in a novel or a film, I am a character, a found soul for whom at this moment, time is standing still. It is also homely, reminiscent of the silence when you sit in your favourite armchair with a book in front of you (and sometimes accompanied by a glass of glorious beer).

However, if this was the same occasion around 5pm on the cusp of the evening, especially on a weekday, the silence would be oppressive, treacherous even. It would flatten the mood you would expect from a pub, where part of the appeal later in the day is the rush and rustle of voices as people celebrate the end of the working day with a drink on the way home.

The man to my right stands up with his empty glass and orders a pint of the same again and returns to his citadel and continues to stare into nothing after a couple of swigs of his amber-coloured beer. The young woman who served him vanishes into the corridor again and I hear the sound of the pub’s front door opening and three middle-aged people (two men and a woman, urban hikers perhaps from the look of their boots, waterproof trousers and backpacks), enter the bar. Is there any food asks one man and the young woman points to a list of rolls on the wall to his left. The other man puts on his glasses to peer at the hand pumps, presumably wondering what he should order and eventually orders a stout for himself, a half of bitter for his friend and another pint of stout for the woman, who I guess is his partner. Three organic chicken and mayo rolls are called for, alongside a couple of packets of cheese and onion crisps and trio sit down to my left.

Earlier on in my stillness I had noticed their table, a Victorian-style Dolphin Table with a cast iron pedestal and three clawed feet, with three stools grouped around it, a memory, I thought, of the night before, where perhaps friends had sat, pints and conversation being shared. The stillness was starting to change and there was now a growing sense of sound traversing through the air, not intrusive, but something on a level of a distant radio station from somewhere far away usually heard in the middle of a sleepless night, unknown and misunderstood but still part of the soundtrack of life. It was time to wend my weary way onto the next pub.