by James Birk
Chapter 4
It was with an irritating ease that Rob potted the black to win his third consecutive game of pool, increasing his overall win to loss ratio against me. It now stood at a hundred and seventeen to him and one to me. The lone statistic in my favour was the result of a particularly lucky game whereby an inebriated Rob had accidently managed to pot three of my balls during the contest. Even then it had gone down to the black ball but despite nearly snatching defeat from the jaws of almost certain victory, I was able to prevail and end my duck. It had been one-way traffic since then, and although I still held out hope of a follow up victory, it was clearly not going to be my night.
A couple of blokes appeared in our vicinity and, as dictated by pool etiquette, offered to play us for the table. I didn’t really feel like losing anymore so I conceded the coveted green baize without the need for further humiliation. Rob looked slightly put out. I think he had been relishing the chance to play in a slightly more competitive game, but with a rueful shrug he followed me to the bar where I purchased a pair of premium lagers for our consumption.
It had become a regular Wednesday night routine for Rob and me to meet in the ‘Goat and Fiddle’ on City Road. We had been friends for more years than I cared to remember. I had known of Rob since primary school, though it was probably more towards the middle of secondary school, around year nine, that along with Dave, we had really started to mix in the same circles. Rob had always been a bit cooler and more popular than me, and I’d always looked up to him. Indeed out of the three of us, it was definitely Rob who was the unofficial leader, although I possessed the one attribute that had established us as friends for life when we were fifteen. Although we had all carried the same unconvincing fake ID (the product of an entrepreneurial contemporary and his colour printer) I was the only one who looked plausibly old enough for the proprietor of our local off license to turn a blind eye. Consequently I was the main supplier of ill-gotten booze for those evenings during the school holidays when we used to hang around children’s play parks (at least the ones that hadn’t been commandeered by the ‘hard kids’) swigging cheap cider and putting the world to rights. We had remained friends and drinking buddies all through sixth form, eventually moving from the park to the local pub. We had then drunkenly supported each other as flatmates through countless epicurean nights during our university days. After graduation, we began to scale back the consumption of beer slightly, but we still managed to spend the majority of weekends propping up bars or strutting our uncoordinated ‘stuff’ on various dance floors throughout Cardiff.
Then things began to change. Dave moved away and, at around the same time, Rob met Nikki. Nikki was a charming girl, with an effervescent personality and a brilliant sense of humour. Rob was smitten and though he had been in a numerous relationships since our school days, it was clear that Nikki was special. Unfortunately that meant she was, to all intents and purposes, the Yoko Ono to our binge drinking glory days. Her introduction into Rob’s life had naturally meant a reduction in my role as his best friend. Initially our Saturday soirees continued, albeit maybe a little less frequently, but as time went on they became increasingly rare until it was really only special occasions such as birthdays and Christmas that we really reverted back to the hedonistic ways of old. We continued to meet for heavy drinking sessions on week nights for a while, usually in lively places that we remembered from our student days, but we soon began to feel a little bit out of place. As we hit our late twenties we realised that, as vibrant as those places were, they were a little bit too loud to have a decent conversation. They were certainly too busy to have even a one-sided game of pool without constant jostling and interruption. We tried a few quieter places and eventually settled on the ‘Goat and Fiddle’. Rob liked it because it was what he called a ‘proper pub’ meaning it had a decent selection of real ales, three pool tables, a well-priced menu and a big screen for watching sports, which was ideal during the football season. We soon settled on Wednesday nights because Nikki had her Pilates class that night. Rob pointed out that it was also the best night to catch Champions League fixtures. I didn’t have a huge interest in football and I couldn’t have cared less about Nikki’s class, but I never had any plans for any night of the week so Wednesdays was fine. Also the ‘Goat and Fiddle’ was really close to my flat so that suited me too.
‘So what’s up with you then mate?’ asked Rob as we secured a recently vacated table.
‘What do you mean?’ I replied.
‘Well you seem a bit down,’
‘Do I?’ I hadn’t realised, ‘Well I suppose I have been a bit down lately, I mean I’m nearly thirty, my job is a joke, and I don’t really have a love life to speak of.’
‘Yeah, but no offence mate, you’ve never had much of a love life.’
The preface of ‘no offence’ did nothing to render his comment less hurtful and I bristled slightly.
‘I’ve had my moments,’ I replied, although I couldn’t really think of any. “I suppose it’s really my job that’s getting me down at the moment. I just always assumed I’d be doing something a bit more worthwhile with my life by now.’
‘Well you could always actually apply for a job that you actually want, instead of moaning about it.’ said Rob, ‘I mean no-one is going to just phone you up and offer you a better job out of the blue are they?’
I was annoyed. It was all very well for Rob to criticise me, I thought, but what did he know? He was fine; he’d more or less walked out of university and into a decent job that he actually liked. Even if he didn’t earn as much money as someone like Dave, he still had a fair bit more disposable cash than me.
‘I don’t even know what it is that I want to do with my life.’ I grumbled, ‘I don’t even know what it is that I’m qualified for. It’s not like I’ve never applied for a better job, I just don’t seem to have any luck.’
‘In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve applied for one job that you actually wanted,’ replied Rob, ‘and you didn’t get it. So you just gave up. Do you know how many jobs I applied for before I got mine? Thirty-two. I spent more of my final year of uni filling in application forms than I did preparing for exams. Most of them didn’t even offer me an interview. But I kept plugging away and I got in on the ground floor. And after seven years of hard work, I’ve finally got to a position where I like my job, and I earn enough money to enjoy a nice lifestyle. You never even tried.’
Rob’s tough love speech was cutting a little close to the bone and it was a little bit out of character for him, so I suspected there was more to it than frustration at my lifestyle inertia. However I was becoming too defensive to enquire about the motivating rationale behind the assassination of my character.
‘I have tried,’ I protested, ‘but things aren’t that easy. You did a vocational degree course; you knew what you wanted to be. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with a lower second class degree in English Literature. Aside from becoming an English teacher.’
‘Well why don’t you do that?’ asked Rob, ‘It’s good enough for Nikki. The money’s ok. What’s stopping you?’
‘I don’t want to be a bloody teacher,’ I replied. ‘I never wanted to be a teacher. There has to be something else.’
‘Well as far as I can tell, you don’t like what you do now, so you might as well try something else. At least you’d be on some kind of career path.’
‘Just because I don’t like what I do now, doesn’t mean I should do something I would like even less.’ I replied, ‘And anyway, I’m not qualified, I’d have to go back to university.’
‘And that sounds like too much hard work does it?’
‘No, I mean I liked university the first time around, but I don’t want to be a teacher and I can’t afford to go back to university.’
‘Why not? There are all kinds of grants available for teacher training, you’d probably be better off than you are now.’
‘Why do you want me to be a teacher all of a sudden? I don’t like my job
; that’s my problem not yours. How about being a mate and coming up with solutions to help my ailing love life.’
‘Trust me, you’re better off as you are,’ sighed Rob meaningfully, before gearing up for his next assault on my fragile confidence, ‘but it’s the same thing isn’t it? You never actually make an effort to meet girls, apart from getting drunk, which is not exactly the best way to impress women mate. In fact you never really follow through with anything. You were going to enter the London Marathon last month!’
‘Yeah, well you didn’t exactly encourage me did you?’
‘But you shouldn’t care what I think. Either you’re going to do it or you’re not. That’s always been your problem. You talk about things all the time, but you never do anything!’
‘Yeah well, I’m still going to do it as a matter of fact.’ I retaliated.
‘I bet you don’t.’ Rob drained his pint and stood up. ‘I’m going to the bar, do you want another one?’
‘No thanks,’ I said, still smarting, ‘I think I’ll head off actually.’
‘Suit yourself,’ he shrugged.
‘Yeah, I’m going to go home now and enter the bloody marathon if you must know.’ I continued. ‘I’ll see you around mate.’
I stormed out of the pub and up the road to my flat. Well, I stormed out of the pub and up to the kebab shop, underneath my flat, and ordered a lamb doner. Armed with a pitta bread full of salad, ‘special sauce’ and what could only loosely be described as meat; I marched up the two flights of stairs that took me to the door of my dwelling.
It wasn’t a big flat. There were technically three separate rooms to my abode but the word ‘room’ was not, perhaps, the best description for the spaces therein. The largest was a kitchen cum living room area, which would in no way be a suitable venue for anyone who professed cat swinging to be their hobby of choice. The bedroom consisted of a single bed, bedside table and wardrobe crammed into a space that would make the cat swinger start to yearn for the open expanse of the previous room. And the bathroom managed to pack a toilet, a shower and a sink into an area that would make the cat swinger cry in the knowledge that, even downsizing from a feline to a malnourished dormouse, would not be a sufficient enough compromise for him to pursue his hobby. I fought my way through the discarded takeaway cartons in the kitchenette to the battered, antiquated fridge-freezer and grabbed myself one of the six cans of supermarket brand lager that were its sole contents.
I moved back into the living area and sat on the old striped armchair that had once been part of my parents’ living room set, and was currently the only decent piece of furniture that I possessed. The threadbare sofa that my landlord had provided was sturdy enough but, if it had ever been comfortable, then those days were long gone.
I began to ruminate about my life as I set about my doner with the skill of a seasoned pro. The kebab was glutinously satisfying, but in my drunken ponderings it also began to serve as a greasy reminder of all that was wrong with my approach to things. After all, it was hardly the most nutritious of meals but it was a quick and easy solution to my immediate needs that required no effort on my part. That was how I had lived my life to date. I always seemed to be taking the simple short-term solution. I had never really worked at anything. . The haze, created by drinking five pints of strong lager in the last three hours, may have been clouding my judgement but Rob’s words were ringing in my ears and they were riddled with ugly truths. I needed to stop talking about what I was going to do and actually see something through for once.
Feeling marginally more empowered, I cast aside my, now half eaten, Turkish sandwich and reached for my laptop (an out of date machine handed down to me by my much more successful brother) which was sleeping underneath an empty pizza box. It started up surprisingly promptly, perhaps invigorated by the fact that its primary purpose that evening was not a beer fuelled late-night search for pornography but rather a life affirming act of endeavour. I typed ‘London Marathon’ into the search engine and a few clicks later I was whisked straight to the home page of the event itself. The website contained a plethora of information about the event just gone, as well as helpful advice about training and nutrition in preparation for the next year’s event. There were links to various charities and organisations affiliated with the race, but I couldn’t initially see how to go about entering. Eventually I found a link entitled ‘Enter the Race’ hidden in one of the drop down boxes at the top of the screen and I clicked on it.
Whether it was the age of my computer or the vast number of people surfing the internet for X-rated material at that time of night I didn’t know, but my screen froze mid-way through opening the relevant page. Swearing in frustration I clicked on the ‘back’ button and tried the link again.
My mobile phone started to ring. I looked at the screen and Rob’s name flashed up. I answered in a far more cheerful voice than he was probably expecting given how we’d left things half an hour earlier.
‘Alright mate,’ I said, ‘how are you?’
‘Err... not bad,’ replied Rob with an audible tremor in his voice, ‘listen I’m sorry about earlier on. I was a bit out of order.’
‘Don’t worry about it mate,’ I responded, ‘I probably needed a good kick up the arse, I am my own worst enemy at times, in fact just at the moment...’
‘Listen mate,’ Rob interrupted, ‘it really wasn’t about you at all. I’m just in a bit of a state at the moment.’
‘What’s up?’ I asked, feeling a little hurt to be shot down in my moment of glory.
‘Well, it’s Nikki,’ Rob continued, ‘She’s...that is we think she’s...well I mean it’s not a hundred per cent certain so don’t go telling anyone...I mean I’m not even supposed to tell you, but it’s burning me up inside.’
‘Tell me what mate?’ I asked feeling a little frustrated and with half an eye on my laptop, which had frozen again.
‘Well we think she’s pregnant.’
Rob’s uncharacteristic petulance was explained in an instant.
‘So how do you feel about that?’ I asked with genuine concern.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied quietly.
‘Listen mate, I’ve got half a doner kebab and five and half cans of lager in my flat if you want to come and talk about it.’
‘Cheers,’ said Rob rebuffing my tempting offer, ‘but I need to get this sorted in my head and I don’t think more beer will help.’
‘Ok mate, well if there’s anything I can do...’ I offered with the knowledge that there was nothing at all I could do.
‘Thanks buddy,’ replied Rob, ‘I just wanted to apologise really; I mean you are a bit of a loser but you didn’t get my girlfriend pregnant did you?’
‘Trust me mate,’ I grimaced, ‘I’m guilty of a lot of things but unexpected fatherhood is not something I’m likely to be suffering from anytime soon.’
‘Well I’d better go,’ sighed Rob, ‘I don’t know how many more Wednesday night drinking sessions we’ll be having in the foreseeable, but I should still be on for next week if you’re up for it.’
‘Wouldn’t miss it mate,’ I enthused, our earlier argument now forgotten, because at the end of the day he was a friend and he didn’t need me to be an idiot now.
We both hung up and I returned to my laptop, keener than ever to make a life-changing commitment. I tried once again to get to the race entry page. Third time lucky and it slowly appeared on the screen. It was with genuine shock that I read the following statement:
We're sorry but the online ballot for the London Marathon is now closed. If you've already entered the ballot, we’ll let you know in early October whether you've been successful.
It may have been due to my inebriated state but I actually started to cry.