Low life | 17 September 2011

The pub was taken over for a meeting. Every chair was occupied. The speaker’s words were being recorded by a sound engineer standing at a portable mixing console. The middle-aged audience was rapt, the atmosphere one of political and moral seriousness. Few were drinking. I mounted the only vacant bar stool and mouthed the word ‘Peroni’ at the young lad behind the bar as though he and I were involved in a dangerous conspiracy.