Walking into the pub the landlady moves away from the woman she is talking to and holds a glass in her hand, anticipating what I am going to ask for. I ask for what I always ask for and she then goes back to ignoring me, looking at the other woman while she fills the glass with Diet Coke. The landlady is probably in her late 50s...a big woman the way old women are. Not just fat (she is fat), but solid...sturdy. Jowlled, with hair like straw that has retired from taking any more colour. Over her bulging body is a sparkly gold top that just looks frumpy.

When my drink has finished being poured, I follow up with a request for a packet of crisps. She bends over to take them from a box on the bottom shelf and the belt around her beige corduroy trousers is almost snapping with the strain. Her top rides up to reveal a lower back of pasty white flesh. When I was in here on her birthday (I knew it was her birthday as people were talking about it), and she bent over for my crisps, her belt almost snapped with the strain and her top rode up to reveal the top of some purple silk knickers. I'm not sure if they were a birthday gift from her partner, or if they were just something she wears on such occasions to cheer herself up. To kid herself that she isn't just some past-it nobody serving losers like me in this shitty pub. At the end of the day she'll go to her bedroom, take off her clothes and see herself in the mirror...standing there in her purple underwear with folds of pasty white fat falling ugly from her body and she'll remember exactly what she is.

I'm already holding out the exact money while she does the mental arithmetic, then I take my goods to the table in the corner, where I always sit, and read my book. I've taken longer to finish my drink than usual because she's given me Normal Coke rather than Diet Coke, and it tastes like fucking shite. That's what happens when you don't pay attention when you're doing your job. A man walks in and he catches my eye because there are only ever the same 6 people in this pub. I'm not sure if they ever leave. Maybe at night the landlady just turns the lights off, goes upstairs to stare at her naked flesh in the mirror and wonders if any of the bar flies sitting downstairs in the dark would even want to fuck her. Even if she offered it on a plate. Even in her sexy purple underwear.

Seconds into the bar, the man smiles to one of the 6 and introduces himself. He says he is new in town, not been here long. He sits at an empty stool right at the bar itself. Right among the 6. I observe this all from my corner. I listen too. He has a very, very faint East-coast Scottish accent. An accent he is either too posh to have ever had stronger, or too ashamed of to carry around. But I heard it.

I put my book down and watch him closer. It's not often you get to see how a normal person integrates himself into society. I peck at the dregs of the treacle that's in my glass as he orders a "pint" and makes a quip to the person stood beside him. The landlady comes out and asks him about him wife in quite excited tones...he has obviously been in previously and spoken to her about it. She's never heard a word out of my mouth beyond "Diet", "Coke", "Cheese" and "Onion". Quips done with, the man beside him doesn't seem the talkative type and conversation soon runs dry. It is now literally too uncomfortable to watch. The man sits and looks around him, smiling, desperate for some form of social contact. Number 7 is drowning.

Is this what people do? Is this what they enjoy? Fuck this. I finish my drink, take my book and leave.