Anarchy In The Pub

We were in a pub near London Bridge, at the going away do for a friend. We were upstairs in the function room. It was worn and subject to benign neglect, while the barmaid was fierce and unfriendly.

On the wall at the other end of the bar was a massive round oil portrait of a dead Monarch, starting soullessly with covetous beady eyes. Next to it someone had stuck up a four page Anarchist newspaper with a piece of bluetack.

If you pulled the rag open, you could open it up and read the pages inside. It preached self-relaince for the working classes, 'us and them', a simple morality play where the poor were virtuous and good and the rich were all villains.

But no one really listens - it's just a dangerous dance for some to flirt with and a cyclopic obsession for others to while away their lives with.

Yet that protrait of the monarch will still be there, staring with empty hungry eyes, long after the anarchist newspaper has faded and decayed and been thrown into a landfill. There is a lesson there, but what it is is debateable.

A friend of ours climbed on top of the pool table to toast our soon-to-departed contemporary. The barmaid roared at him to get down, but he didn't listen. She told everyone who was cheering him that they could all fuck off too. But he only got down when he was finished - she said, 'you can't have any more drinks!' And he said - 'good! They're overpriced anyway!' With that moment he said more than a whole army of anarchists ever could.