If I could have had anybody as my first drinking partner,

the first one for whom the tempting taste of

bitter

in a dimpled handled glass, offered over

with great ceremony from a woman with biceps

protruding, bursting out from underneath a starch filled blouse

more obscenely than an unsightly black tar mole covered in three curly grey hairs,

who suspected I was underage

but knew I could control the art of a pint without making a scene

in the Bicester darkness and in the company of pre-cancer darts players cussing

and swearing, calling foul as the pool cue ball hit them on the back of the calf

as it was hit with venom in a vain attempt to stay on the table for another

game and the underhand tenner passing between loser

and winner…

If I could sit and think of the pubs to come in New York, Hamilton,

Birmingham, Salisbury, London and in the short term as we debated

the merits of Manchester City’s latest mauling

or Tottenham’s crowning glory of Clive Allen

and the insensible loss to Coventry in which you could barely believe the day,

or the girls at school we fancied and I would secretly wonder just

how you managed to be so confident

in the face of women

whilst I remained like a lost child chasing after skirt, after skirt, after skirt

or even as moaned of our parents as the beer and lager, twice

a short and in your case a foul concoction named after a mythical monster

which snarled and retched in your mouth and I cheered as you

chundered and laughingly choked up the cigarette

you had recently put out on the broken down wall near your house,

then I would still…

If I could now go back for a week, an hour, a lost weekend

and go into our old haunts and drink with you once more

if all that came with Time was disallowed like Ricky Villa’s goal in 81

should have been,

and we could sit, music on, Brothers in Arms and thought,

Whitesnake, Status Quo, Marillion, Genesis,

and we could lose thought, sensibilities, childhood memories that crowd

and scream with joy as I finally beat you

into the ground at a game of darts, won on a double top,

fizzed up lager to take the bitterness down

to shake your hand with friendship and with belly’s full

of late night chips from the Chinese

by the best record shop in the world, where the steam of hot, thick gravy

would cloud thoughts on just which girl we both fancied

and the admiration I had in you…

then my friend

I would chose no-one else…

I’m glad my first drinking partner

was you.

Ian D. Hall 2014