Interlude for New Year 2010 - Duggie's Dreamy Pub night

People think I'm not a deep person [who said that, Duggie?]

But the truth is, I experience things in a strange way, but don't usually tell anyone. I'll give you an example...

[by the way, Duggie is sitting on the train as he writes this, directly on the blogger site, via his laptop. Train travel always trances him out. Duggie gazes at the crispy, icy, passing countryside, complete with frosted grass that sounds like crushed tinsel when you walk on it. He tends to let his imagination run a little, maybe you get to see the true Duggie Chop at times like this. He's certainly surreal, that's for sure.]

...from New Years Eve, a couple of days ago.

So, I was sitting in the pub. Bored. New Year's for kids isn't it? Best thing to do when ya bored in a pub, is watch people, try to suss them out.

I'm looking around the bar, some people are in fancy dress, others are twitching around, ready to nip out for a fag. The rest are boozing and some are looking bored like me.

There's a disco at the end of the bar, playing crap music. The kind of music they sell in supermarkets with tins of beans and magazines. One fifty-something saddo is jigging around, as if she was worth looking at [harsh Duggie, very harsh! You're no oil painting these days, you know.]

And a buffet, laden with pre-crimbo cold meats and pasta salads (the pub is a carvery the rest of the year), complete with food poisoning of all kinds and ready to be off-loaded on the unsuspecting, pissed, New Year crowd. A girl sitting near us had already sicked up a plate full of prawns. I mean, who'd eat seafood from a buffet like that!

You can tell the kind of mood I'm in. I'm starting to label the people I'm watching as different characters. I can just about tune into their conversations.

One woman is crying to her mate about her hubby and the way he treats her. A young lad, dressed as a woman, is kissing all the blokes who come into the bar. They all look like rugby players or something. There's alot of that (rugby) that goes on round here. My guess is confirmed later on when they all start singing bawdy songs.

Two really skinny girls, dressed as maids, are flirting away with all the guys and girls. It's gonna be a wild night for some. There's a few totally wrecked 16 year-old lads walking around, looking threatening, mouthy, after a punch-up. They actually look about 13, wearing the latest in sports clothing, but they could easily be 17. Difficult to judge the age of youngsters. I notice that they shut up when the landlord (a huge man, looks like a muscled up darts player) gives one of them a slap and shows him the door.

One lad arrives late. He's carrying a rucksack. Comes in and is accosted by the 'trannie' lad, but takes it in really good faith. I don't reckon he's a rugger type, looks more like the one they pick on. But you can tell he's no mug. I decide to call him: 'the force for good'

After a while observing the 'force for good', I'm drifting back in time, back to school. I remember other kids that were like 'force for good' - the kind of kids that never had a side to them, could handle social situations honestly, even though the other kids seemed to be taking the mickey out of them. At the time I didn't think much of it, but recently, I've realised just how important these people are. and how successful they seem to be in later life [bloody hell Duggie, you are being deep!]

'Force for good' changes into a Superman outfit, drinks some strange bottles of blue booze (I'll let him off, he's only about 18), then changes back into his 'normal' clothes about 20 minutes later.

Where I'm sitting it's like watching telly, seeing all the comings and goings in the pub. When I get up to buy a drink, I'm suddenly walking among these characters in my own telly show. It's like I've walked into the screen. Every one is here in 3D. I'm part of the drama. A drunken kid tries to talk to me and I retire to the bogs as the queue to the bar is too long.

In the bogs 'force for good' comes in to take a leak. And it's like I know him, but when I try to talk to him he doesn't react like a friend, more a confused and distant individual.

I think I've drunk too much.