The Eejit

Chapter 16: All The Way From America

The pub lock – in is the holy grail of the regular drinker.

It's that haven of after - hours drinking and elicit stamina that sets drinkers apart. The predator can pounce from the undergrowth. The loner is revealed. The bore can corner you and leave you facing an impossible choice between being bored or not drinking. The wallflower has a chance to blossom. The trollop can put out, the sad man can dance and the pissed regular has a chance to pose for a new photo and fall over. It's a magical landscape of cheerful and unhealthy camaraderie and co - existence.

The last lock – in of note in the Prince had been during the summer, on the night of the June 1992 General Election. This had been a miserable night. John Major, the man who, when he wasn't shagging Edwina Curry (as it turned out), had taken us into the ERM and presided over the resulting balls up, the man who's catch phrase, 'if it isn't hurting it isn't working' became the byword for S&M lovers everywhere; the grey man whose only attribute was that he wasn't Thatcher had managed to beat the favourite Neil Kinnock. The Tories had won again. A gloriously sunny day that had promised a large Labour turn-out and the beginning of a new age had rebounded in the hours of darkness, fittingly, to plunge us all into another 4 years of Conservative government.

I had spent that night sitting next to the veteran left-winger and erstwhile chair of the Labour Party, big Sam McCluskey, who just cried his eyes out. Sam was a big bloke. He exuded an air of someone whose life had succeeded against the odds and who was profoundly ill-at-ease with this. He was a Glaswegian with a life term of service to the trade union movement. Ultimately his uncomfortably large frame had found itself at the presidency of the Seamans Union and since their office, Maritime House, was across the road from the Prince he could, in days like these, be found here too often, but who could begrudge him that. Years of sacrifice and struggle to make an unsafe job safer and better paid for hundreds of thousands of his members and their families, to get a decent family allowance and a health system that was the envy of the world. To see this all traded in for phoney shareholdings, unlimited tick and massive personal debt and the promise of ultimately unaffordable council houses must have broken his already weakening heart.

He couldn't understand it. What had gone wrong? Had it been the cringeworthy Sheffield Rally? Had it been that Sun headline? Had we all voted? He was inconsolable. Years of class struggle, years of fighting for change – why couldn't people see what was going on? Sam turned to Alex Gardiner as he left and said 'I'll no' see a labour government again' in his breathless and gravelly voice. I remember this so well. I joined the Labour Party aged 18 and my welcome letter had been signed by Sam. When someone whose lifelong hope you rely on, gives up, you always remember it. It was devastating.

Sam died 3 years later in 1995, 2 years short of the largest ever Labour majority government.

Maritime House is now luxury flats.

****

This particular night wasn't going to be anything like that. I was going to be inspired and I was going to do it. I was going to ask HER out.

I paced myself until the lock in. Fiona was there. I was there. We were both there. That was all it needed.

'Hey, listen Fiona, I've heard there's this great new bar opened up by Clapham Common tube station and just up the road is a music venue that I've been meaning to check out for a while. Would you come up there with me one night next week?'

Is what I should have said.

What I actually said was:

'Another pint please Fiona and would you.....(mumbling followed by silence).

Then something I hadn't counted on happened.

'Are you playing on New Years Eve at The Tea Rooms?'