Expectation

I fancied a little romp of writing fun and so flicked through the ancient pages of the copy of Roget’s Thesaurus I always have next to my desk with the aim of picking a word and then writing something on it— and so as if by the kind of magic we once used to enjoy as part of our lives, expectation jumped out, a choice as easy and decisive as a lion immediately deciding that the biped in front of him was just right for supper. 

So here is expectation — and what I thought of was a trip to The Bridge Inn in Topsham before Christmas, where a brewer friend and I would be subjecting several pints to our benevolent gaze. This is one of my favourite pubs, a place where I feel at home, a place where I’ve never had a bad glass of cask and a place where I feel comfortable whether I’m sitting with a book or chatting away about nothing in particular (usually with other people, I don’t think I’d feel happy holding a noisy conversation with myself). 

So where does expectation fit in? Here goes: I was early, 10 minutes before the opening time of 6pm (the pub keeps old school hours). I stood in the darkened car park, looking out northwards, watching the light of an approaching plane to Exeter airport and then turned to the pub, which was still dark. 

Then, happily, lights began to appear, a figure moved behind the window, and all of a sudden I felt this sudden expectation of opening time, of how much I looked forward to the first pint of the evening, and of the comfort and wood-fire warmth of the parlour where I would drink my pint. What beers would be on? Let there be a beer as strong as the hammer arm of a blacksmith, as bitter as Vermouth and as dark as the reed beds and river that lay just beyond the pub. My expectations went into overdrive and my mood (it was midwinter and I was very much in a cocooning mood) suddenly changed — I was looking forward to the evening.

I always feel an expectation and anticipation of the first pint in a pub, especially in one such as the Bridge Inn. There is familiarity but there is also a sense of wonder in what the evening will bring, beyond the beers that you will drink. Who will you talk with, what stories will you hear, what feeling of warmth and belonging with be engendered? And how many pints will be sufficient unto the day thereof? That’s the meaning of expectation. 

A coaching inn in Topsham

Rat-a-tat. Ding-dong. Clip-clop. Here’s a train of horses sparking in the yard. Words that faded away at childhood’s end. Bow-wow, plip-plop, giddy-up. At the Globe, an old coaching inn in Topsham, in the small bar, on a beneficent Sunday lunchtime, while the rest of the place gets on with munching much of their Sunday lunch, I sit and return to a past I never knew in the company of a bottle of St Austell’s Big Job in my glass. Wooden floor, panelled bar, low-beamed ceiling, sound of coffee machine, hiss hiss, locals talking, laughter, the genteel gentility of an elderly couple with their wine at the end of my table (there’s a string quartet at 4 in the church across the road), dogs, chat, laughter once again, and a Gerry Adams lookalike with a Devon rogue to his language. It all reminds me of the Angel in Grantham in 1987 (or was it 1988?) when I first became aware of the lure of the coaching inn, as scrubbed up and polished an icon as it has become (especially the Angel). But here in the Globe I get a sense of what I first felt, a lapse into the past, a drop into history, not only mine but one that spans several centuries, whether imagined or real. There’s a mythic sense of a past that wasn’t probably that good — no money for starters, dreadful food, awful conversation — the honeyed tone of a theme park, Westworld, what-would-have-happened, alt-history, nostalgia, especially if it is Sunday, but still the lure of something that was once in this space makes me think and then I stop. And take another drink and bring myself back to now, which is where I want to live and the dog by the bar wags its tail and the elderly couple head off to their concert and I think it is time to have another beer (and is that the metallic sound of horses’ hooves in the courtyard? Probably not).