Bargains Galore! and an Overdue Lesson in Humility

On Tuesday afternoon I met my good friend Nick F. at Dalston Junction station. We had planned a long afternoon of drinking and discussion and laughs. All of these elements were achieved. Dalston as usual was teeming with shoppers, workers, builders, kids, mothers, immigrants, locals, the burnt-out, the skinned and the scored; the whole panoply of life going on all around. The noise was wonderful; the constantly drifting horde remarkable.

We found ourselves in a pub close to the station, our intention being to start as we meant to continue. Beer was collected. Around the door and windows there were many laminated sheets of A4 paper with signs printed loudly on them. Some said that anyone caught selling drugs on the premises would be handed to the police. Some said that on Saturday night only people over 25 would be allowed to set foot inside.

Nick and I began our discussion by tying up loose ends from last time: Rauschenberg; Warhol; Gilbert & George’s state of the art studio and printing equipment etc. Within half an hour a pretty young Chinese girl entered the pub and came to our table. She dragged a wheeled shopping trolley behind her.

    “You want? I got lots here… dvd. You want?” She opened the flap of her trolley to reveal her contraband.

   “Well, it’s a wonderful cliché that you are offering”, said Nick, “but no, thank you”. The girl wandered off to try and sell her pirated goods to the nuggety old geezers at the far end of the bar. We continued our conversation about art. 

    More beer was collected and brought to the table. We had noticed that next to the Gents there were two large paintings on cardboard, framed. These were both dark and menacing - in a good, Baconesque way - and they revealed that the artist, although unknown, had a large degree of ability. Nick and I agreed that there was “something very good going on there”.

The pub door opened and an older Chinese woman entered. She was also dragging a wheeled trolley behind her.

   “I have. You want?” she pulled out a handful of pirated dvds which were each enclosed in a soft polythene wrap. Bleary without my spectacles and no doubt from the many drinks we had already imbibed, I couldn’t make out any of the titles. We declined her generous offer. At this, the woman reached into her coat and pulled out a small white cardboard box; clearly of medical origin.

   “I have, as well”, she said. We must have both looked non-plussed so she pulled out one of the flat silver-foil trays from inside the box and held it in front of me. I immediately recognised Pfizer’s famous light blue, lozenge-shaped pills.

   “£10 for four”, she said.

Nick and I looked at each other and smiled. Then Nick said, “He doesn’t need them, love, he’s alright, thanks. But thanks for your consideration.” The woman hastily tucked the Viagra beneath her coat and went over to the old codgers at the bar, where she could be seen having more luck with sales.

Our conversation continued: National Insurance numbers; body language, and how serial killers are able to read it and choose their victims accordingly; the possible age of certain wood-paneling around us in the pub (Nick’s specialty area); whether the burnt umber ceiling was the result of slipshod, streaky paint work or many decades of nicotine. More beer was collected and brought to the table. Half an hour later, the first Chinese girl reentered the pub, dragging her now familiar trolley. She smiled broadly at us, realising that we were the same ones who had declined earlier and she trundled by happily past us. 

More beer was collected and brought to the table. And now we had reached that familiar point of our drinking days where Nick began to humorously chide me, quite rightly, for my grand, supercilious pronouncements (a consequence, no doubt, of having spent thirty-five years lecturing students). Naturally, having by now drunk many, many pints of beer, whatever authoritative insights I thought I might have been offering were severely damaged by my stumbling, drooling, incoherent delivery. Nick seized on this and began writing my every utterance down on beer coasters. One such coaster, torn in half and much spattered with ale, Nick made me keep so that I could refer to it later. I did so. The next day I pulled the tattered thing out of my bag, and there was the record of my pomposity in all its horror: “I’m think I’m CLEAR on this point” [sic]. (Duly noted, Nick – I hang my head in shame!)

After another half hour of this debauch, the older Chinese woman entered the pub. More tenacious than her young counterpart, she again approached out table. Nick waved her away, but I wanted to enter into the whole spirit of the Dalston dive so I handed her a £10 note and was handed a sheet of four tablets. When in Rome, I thought.

We left the pub in the early evening to venture next door to the beautiful, Victorian-era, Pie & Mash shop – now the Shanghai Restaurant – for dim sum and crispy, peppery deep-fried baby octopus. And thence to another pub, where we finished the evening, and where I undoubtedly delivered enough arrogant pontifications to bubble the varnish off the bar.