Blood Kit by Jon Tait

Old drunk in a beat blue suit with shiny elbows slicked back brylcreemed hair arguing with himself holding a blue five pound note with one hand the other trying to put it back in the silky lining of his inside chest pocket saying have another drink no save it for tomorrow at the end of the bar near the rear door where he always stands a stuffed toy camel stands beside the till & black leather tick book green neon St. Patrick’s Day shamrock glimmering against the optics wobbly glitterball turning shakily on the nicotine yellow ceiling bare wooden floorboards & old church pews a pool table & the flashing lights of a bandit & the joint is full of rough blokes in builders’ work clothes flecked in lime & cement dust the locals used to call it the Blood Kit while the old drunk is gesturing wildly to his invisible mate beside him & cursing & no-one pays much attention as his brother goes over head tipped back to peer down his nose through the dirty grey smeared lenses of black framed NHS specs with one leg broken off scruffy wild white beard & hair like a professor gone wrong brown pinstripe jacket fumbling in his pockets & they’re mumbling conspiratorially together & big Mick a six foot three farm labourer is pouring pints but he’s more at home chucking hay bales like they’re light as paper & carrying a sheep under each arm as casually as shopping bags but he’s equally happy to carry out any troublemakers in the same fashion & when he gives you a friendly punch on the arm it leaves you wincing in pain a mountain of a man & I swear they'll never invent a machine to replace Mick & two blokes are bar surfing like Hawaii-Five-O while a man with flushed red face dark glasses white moustache & black pork pie hat is nodding his head to the music like the Blues Brothers he’s got angina & gives us blasts of Hearty Boom Boom spray under our tongues in the toilets that reek of piss & we’re sipping the clear hooch that one of the lads in the Forces has brought back from the Banja Luca Metal Factory Bosnia & although it doesn’t actually smell that lethal when you lift up the bottle for closer inspection it leaves a perfect ring on the bar top as it strips the thick old layers of varnish clean down to the naked wood & the vapour makes your eyes water & it doesn't exactly fill you with confidence when you are warned not to spill any on your clothes as you raise the glass cautiously to your lips & you really shouldn’t drink anything poured out of an old Barr’s glass pop bottle that isn’t Irn Bru especially when it’s hidden in a brown paper bag under the table & my head is swimming & I nip out of the fire escape to throw up then back in & wash the acidic bile out of my mouth with whisky & as I’m wiping my saliva on the heavy red velvet curtains a dark haired girl who moved away to become a nurse comes over & introduces her boyfriend an Irish actor & singer from North Dublin with a skinhead & goatee beard & menacing eyes who appeared in a Roddy Doyle movie & shakes my hand firmly & says this is my kind of pub.