Edit: apologies for the many errors of all sorts, in some earlier, more drunken, versions of this post.
I'm in a pub in Blackpool, where I've been mystery shopping in two other boozers this afternoon. Paid hardly more than the minimum wage employees I observe, I send detailed notes about any departures from the behaviour that middle management think is what customers like, human interaction scored to the extent it resembles an assembly line.
I like a day away from Lancaster and getting a few free drinks and my tea. I like the dissembling and making myself anonymous; I'm in my own theatre for half an hour. I have to clock details of state of outdoor seating area; of hair, appearance and build, replies to my requests, state of toilet roll dispensers, and note if the curse of the upsell is missed. I always try to give them good marks. I overlook transgressions, I polish their sentences for them.
Middle daughter went to see Primal Scream in Liverpool on Sunday and was driven home by a strange man.
There being no connection to Lancaster from the last train from Liverpool to Preston, Kirsty and I had forked out £45 for a taxi for her last leg home.
"Dad, do you still have to pay for a taxi if you cancel it?"
"I suppose not, but what about getting back from Preston?"
"I've met a man on the train and he says he's dropping his son off at Uni and could drop me at home."
I ascertained that he had his son with him and his car at Preston; and that they were all sat round the same table. Kirsty and I liaised and decided it was alright, so we cancelled the taxi. Melanie ended up at her front door, driven there by a man she'd known for forty-five minutes. He just dropped her off, Melanie said her thanks, and without waiting for Kirsty's, he drove the ten miles back to his home in Garstang. What an excellent form of Lancashire behaviour. Can you imagine such a thing happening in London?
Intermission: I've just asked a young couple sat at a table not far from me if I'm anywhere near Blackpool South station. False eyelashes, carefully arranged white vest top to reveal the scalloped top of a black bra, on the one hand; number one haircut, baseball cap, jeans, on the other. They point the way but we carry on a chat. I am called into adjudicate in a black-blue colour differentiation argument. She lays her jet-shiny black nails against her coat. Her coat, which I've described as "black", now seems like a strong version of blue, and my argument is weakened.
She's having a few drinks before she goes to work. She's a lap dancer. "Blackpool's a shithole," he says, straight after she's told us her job. At the same time, I think, "if that's your instinctive sense of protectiveness towards her, wishing that there could be something better as a job for her, good for you, you proto-feminist;" and, "let her do it if she doesn't come to any harm. We all sell our labour at various degrees of degradation."
Saturday night, and to Bury Town Hall for an all-nighter. It's mainly a Northern night but they've recently opened an anteroom for those of us who like that other line, of disco > house > techno. We went in Olly's BMW, which, like its owner, is a fast mover which can get out of problems by quickly disappearing for a while.
I'm the only one at these nights who uses poppers. It makes me a cynosure of others' eyes for a while, which is irritating -- watching people wait for me to erupt into some kind of uncontrollable butyl nitrite-inspired Brownian motion after having the bottle at my nostril -- but whose advantage is being interpellated as someone who goes a bit too far.
I liked the half hour DJ rotation, although one DJ seemed to have a different understanding of the meaning of "half an hour", the overtime of which he used to treat us to some James Brown remixes, which I am always glad to hear again, only having sat through them 9,487 times before. Karen was dancing well in her grey heels, and it was an amusement to see men flick their eyes away from her as soon they noticed themselves noticed. A young, slender girl in a boob-tipping bustier was dancing well and uncaringly; another of a similar age was smiling through her e.
I went back downstairs to the Northern Room, aware that Olly's wife had "suggested" we wind it up at about half past four, a woman who cannot go out without patrolling hers and others' pleasure. I was inducted into a circle of people they know with meaningless but good-natured handshakes.
We got back to Lancaster surprisingly quickly. The speedo was holding at a steady 100-105, but as Olly is a scrupulously law-abiding man, and BMWs are made in Germany where they use kilometres, it must have meant we travelled home at around 65mph.
Coda: I've just been saying my goodbyes to the young couple. A guess the age game. Got her -- nineteen -- and overestimated him by three years -- he's twenty-nine. They met on a dating website and have become friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend. I said that I was on that one too. He said that his mum would like to meet someone "on the level" like me. There's a bit of a standing up, about-to-go body language, testing whether we're serious.
"Oh fuck this -- give her my number. What's the worst that can happen?" I rip a page out of my diary. I'm already open-eyed curious about his mum. I hope she rings me, on the back of her son's vouch.
