Broadsword calling Danny Boy

I opened up my email this morning and read a message from Graeme which simply said: ‘There’s Salmon for you in the Taps.’

That’s it. No hello, hi, how are you, bye, see you soon, take care, regards, sincerely, hail hail, Celtic are the greatest team in the world. Just: There’s Salmon for you in the Taps.

Now this wasn’t some kind of coded secret Cold War like message which I needed to decode, but was literally to be taken as that Graeme had left Salmon for me in the Taps [Graeme’s dad is a fisherman, and he catches and smokes his own wild salmon – and every year Graeme brings some back from Scotland with him]. Which just goes to show what happens when you miss a night in Taps.

You see, for me at least, one of the main things which keeps me going back to Taps night after night is the fear that I’ll miss out on something. Now, that something might be as relatively mundane as Graeme’s annual line caught smoked wild salmon delivery, or as implausibly unprecedented as someone leaning back against the wall and inadvertently pushing down on a lever to reveal a secret passageway leading down into the cold dark stony earth. But that childish concern that I might miss out on something plays quite a large part in my decision making process whenever I get off the train from work and decide whether or not to go in that night.

As it happens, last night, tired and depressed after my first day back at work, and influenced by the vague thought that it might be a good idea to start cutting back on my drinking this year, I gave it a miss – and look what happened: I missed out on the Salmon.

I see the same thing in my nieces when I stay with my sister. It’s not that they particularly want to stay up (at least not past a certain point), it’s that they don’t want to go to bed in case they miss something exciting or interesting.

And that’s often part of my unconscious thought process in deciding whether or not to go in that night when I get off the train along with what kind of day I’ve had, whether I’m thirsty, whether I feel like company and so on.

That thought whether tonight will be the night that I miss out on the strange guy (who periodically comes in with some odd money making scheme or another) selling his shoe box of possessions because his sister kicked him out, or another strange guy looking for a hostel because his [apparently] coke head sister kicked him out (there’s obviously something about horrible sisters in Enfield Town – not that my sister would do such a thing), or the shoe box of possessions guy coming back another time with a bloodied knife he’d apparently found at a crime scene and thought that the pub would be the best place to hand it in. Or just a particularly difficult crossword, a particularly implausible Spurs comeback, or just a particularly good conversation.

And thinking about it, that’s really not that good of a reason, is it? It’s a default position rather than a positive driver. Which is to say that I should really only be going to the pub when I have a positive reason for doing so, rather than just from the default position that I should do so in case I miss out on something.

It’s certainly something to think about anyway.