“I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.”--- Vince Lombardi
Now are Mr Lombardi’s famous sentiments[1], exaggerated and over-sentimentalised? Well, absolutely, but then of course exaggeration and cheap over-sentimentalisation are my stock in trade, and so here we go.
Last Friday evening, for various reasons mainly involving underestimating how busy it would be and Irena taking herself off to the George and Bar Form, Deon and Charlie were the only ones working – and it was busy.
Not super Friday busy, but more than busy enough.
And I was watching Deon and Charlie going flat out/non stop serving a packed bar for two hours and I was reminded of the above quote. Not of course that I’m equating serving a packed bar to fighting a battle – or even to a football game, but what it reminded me of is the camaraderie that you can only find through exhaustion and the shared experience of battling a circumstance or foe – and emerging, well, victorious.
And it struck me then, at that moment as I watched them[2], that the bar staff shared a common bond which the rest of us, no matter how often we might be in there or how well ensconced in the small little Taps family we might be, would never experience.
There’s something about putting up the good fight with a group of people – whether that fight be putting out four different sets of Committee papers in one day [oh, fuck off – just try it first before you scoff], climbing a mountain, playing an epic two hour game of football under a summer sun, or serving a bunch of drooling semi human feral scum on a Saturday night, that ties people together in a way which only they’ll ever be able to understand.
And actually, as I thought that, I realised that I was a little jealous. Not jealous that they get to serve the sweaty hordes of the Enfield illiterati on a Friday night, but that there was something about the pub which I’m – and always will be – excluded from. I think it’s that common endurance and suffering will always link people more than common enjoyment and pleasantness can. It’s just human nature.
As customers we’ll never know what it’s like to serve drooling semi human feral scum for seven hours straight, because we are the drooling semi human feral scum.
And as I watched Deon and Charlie I realised that we’ll never understand what they have.
It was like finding out that the pub was cheating on me.
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