The Wedding Banquet

The Wedding Banquet - Part 1

This was shaping up to be the best job in the world.

Working metal in the shop, no. That was crap. That was where he had come from, and would probably be his âday jobâ for a while longer. But that was OK, because now he could see options, and if he worked this right, he could earn the same money, then maybe earn more money, doing something way more fun.

For it had turned out that Dave Weston wasn't bad behind a bar. A bar he'd drunk at quite a lot over the years, yes, but he was smart enough to know drinking wasn't usually a qualification for working in a pub, or the village of Chesley would have had a much lower unemployment rate.

There were six pubs in Chesley. Was that normal for England? Who knew? There were more popular ones, and less popular ones, of course. The costs of running a pub in rural areas weren't awful, and some survived on the clientele who didn't head to the theme pubs with their fancy menus of frozen food and kid's bouncy ball play-pits. Actually, some of them survived precisely because they weren't chain pubs. These were the places where people went because they were local, and so was the pub. Even if 'local' also meant 'decrepit.'

Chesley wasn't huge, and would not count as big, even for a village. But it still had distinct sections. There was definitely a centre, where a few shops made enough business to stay open on the main street. Two of the pubs were there, at opposite ends of the street. There was the north part of Chesley, still called the "new estate" despite having been thrown up the developers more than two decades before. It had a pub just outside the estate gates, and that was definitely the kind of place with "calamari" on the menu.

But there was also the east part of the village, the side with the council houses. That was the place where, back in the seventies, some well-meaning government idiots carved out a green area and tossed in some metal swings and a slide. Unused by day, its sole use was by dismal teenagers who smoked away their boring weekday nights lurking in the darkened greenery, or sat with their cans of cider on the rusted roundabout.

The Crown was right next to this vibrant hub of the community, and was where their parents went. It didn't have the clumsy separation of drinkers and diners, didn't have the faux-traditional, cheap, lightly-stained and obviously new âEnglishe Pubbeâ wooden fixtures. In fact, there was actually a bit of a plywood feel to the latest extension, with the single bowling lane and the three dart boards. Yet, that was a set up more honest to the locals.

And this was where Dave drank as soon as he was old enough, and had drunk ever since, weathering the various renovations with little interest. So what had changed? Well, mostly, he'd got older. When you're eighteen, nineteen, twenty and drinking in the same boozer, maybe you get counted a local. Hit your mid-twenties, and maybe someone about your own age is managing the place. And that's what had happened when two years ago, a younger couple took over the Crown, and with big brewer backing as well. Dave had forged a relationship with Tommy G. and his good lady wife Tina over a shared love of the alternative rock that you'd never find on the CD juke-boxes of the drinking establishments closer to the main roads. And then one day, the gift from heaven. Tommy G. delivers Dave's latest pint of Stella, leans forward on his elbows, and utters the beautiful words:

âHey, we can't work every night, you're a good guy, how about it?â

And there it was. The great prospect. They'd let him work a couple of nights, and let him stay in the company digs above the bar. Tommy G. and Tina had their own place, pretty nice too, and nearby, so they didn't use the rooms up on top of the pub. And shit, that worked well for Dave. Subsidised housing was more than worth giving up insobriety on 3 nights a week.

And actually, not even really giving up the drinking. Tommy G. and Tina were never too far away, and Dave was smart enough to keep the prices totted in his head, and keep any serious drinking till the bar closed. He'd just have a couple over the course of the evening, just enough to start the motor running and keep it purring along till last orders.