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You need a drink
Jan. 5th, 2014 01:27 amWe met in a Costa on Piccadilly. He was passing through; we were catching up.
His hairline had receded. I noticed that. Once I would have pointed it out, taken the piss.
There somehow seemed less of him now. The tics and traces that I had come to know as indicators of this man's happiness were missing.
As a friend, albeit an old one not frequently refreshed, I wanted to draw that out. But there wasn't time. You need a whole evening to get to that. You need a proper drink.
I now think the anecdote he told me then was a feint, a means of distracting me from a fundamental distress by focusing my attention on a small discontent. In this respect it worked. Though further from me than my friend's plight, it still troubles me now.
He told me that he'd been supermarket shopping earlier in the week. His girlfriend would be in her native Pomerania, so he was buying only for himself. He'd seen the local food bank were collecting, and decided to make a donation; he thought the most appropriate approach would be to buy for others what he'd buy for himself. He said:
What I did was, one for me, one for you, all the way along.
The food bank lady took the food he offered, but then there was a problem. They wouldn't take his drink. The diet Coke and the fruit juice weren't a problem, but the four cans of Grolsch and the bottle of red they refused. She said:
It wouldn't look right.
He told me he fair went into one: how could it not be right for people to have a drink at Christmas? But there was only so much he could say, and nothing he could do. He didn't want to be having a pop at the food bank volunteer, she'd only be following orders. He said to me:
So I walked off, left it there. They're not going to throw them away, are they? But I'm fuming about it. Now, still.
We wished each other a good new year as we parted. I'm a bit worried about him, but just for now that thought gets associated with and cut across by his experience with the food bank. So now I'm thinking how squalid things have become that we need food banks in the first place, and that for some petty puritan reason they can't or won't pass on a few cans of cheap Dutch lager or a bottle of supermarket plonk to people who can't afford them.
His hairline had receded. I noticed that. Once I would have pointed it out, taken the piss.
There somehow seemed less of him now. The tics and traces that I had come to know as indicators of this man's happiness were missing.
As a friend, albeit an old one not frequently refreshed, I wanted to draw that out. But there wasn't time. You need a whole evening to get to that. You need a proper drink.
I now think the anecdote he told me then was a feint, a means of distracting me from a fundamental distress by focusing my attention on a small discontent. In this respect it worked. Though further from me than my friend's plight, it still troubles me now.
He told me that he'd been supermarket shopping earlier in the week. His girlfriend would be in her native Pomerania, so he was buying only for himself. He'd seen the local food bank were collecting, and decided to make a donation; he thought the most appropriate approach would be to buy for others what he'd buy for himself. He said:
What I did was, one for me, one for you, all the way along.
The food bank lady took the food he offered, but then there was a problem. They wouldn't take his drink. The diet Coke and the fruit juice weren't a problem, but the four cans of Grolsch and the bottle of red they refused. She said:
It wouldn't look right.
He told me he fair went into one: how could it not be right for people to have a drink at Christmas? But there was only so much he could say, and nothing he could do. He didn't want to be having a pop at the food bank volunteer, she'd only be following orders. He said to me:
So I walked off, left it there. They're not going to throw them away, are they? But I'm fuming about it. Now, still.
We wished each other a good new year as we parted. I'm a bit worried about him, but just for now that thought gets associated with and cut across by his experience with the food bank. So now I'm thinking how squalid things have become that we need food banks in the first place, and that for some petty puritan reason they can't or won't pass on a few cans of cheap Dutch lager or a bottle of supermarket plonk to people who can't afford them.
