Streams From My Frontal Lobe
The pub, lost in the Dorset countryside has a thatched roof several rooms inside with a large stonework fireplace that was decorated on the hand hewn oak posts and mantles like most pubs with brass pieces that would start life in a stable on a saddle or on another wall of hewn dark wood and when it rained the place smelled of wet wool but I would sit in the corner in the snug or near the fire and consume a steak & kidney pie and a dark ale no cold beer here because no American tourists could really find the place but I knew where it was and I kept it a secret but not from the locals oh no not from them the locals the landlord knew me first as the 'yank' then by my name I was there the night of his birthday surprise party given by the regulars they had collected a pot of pounds and hired a strip-o-gram woman to come in take off her top and go behind the bar and pose for snaps she said she loved her work who wouldn't for thirty pounds sterling just to show your boobs and when she slips on her trench coat and leaves with her boy friend I would think of home or friends and lovers when months later I had a drink there with a potential lover who dropped me later for her driving instructor but we sat and watched the darts and laughed many many darts and joy within those sacred walls that melted away in the summer when I could sit outside with my ale and watch the cows across the road or dream of what may have happened here at a crossroads back in time that made someone want a pub on this very spot but now where the bees circled my head and tried to get to my ale but I held firm to the pint and held it to my chest that pounded with excitement one day and slowed for sadness the next longing for home but not wanting to leave this glorious Isle and the green hedges so close to the road it made two-laners into one-laners and I thought of the centuries this place stood and did it's duty countless fists gripping the pint glass and raised the drink to the parched lips of a long dead farmer a living room a church a school a lonely bench where all the parts this holy house played in a local drama of an unbroken chain of men and women going back to the day when someone said they wanted this plot to be a pub
The pub, lost in the Dorset countryside has a thatched roof several rooms inside with a large stonework fireplace that was decorated on the hand hewn oak posts and mantles like most pubs with brass pieces that would start life in a stable on a saddle or on another wall of hewn dark wood and when it rained the place smelled of wet wool but I would sit in the corner in the snug or near the fire and consume a steak & kidney pie and a dark ale no cold beer here because no American tourists could really find the place but I knew where it was and I kept it a secret but not from the locals oh no not from them the locals the landlord knew me first as the 'yank' then by my name I was there the night of his birthday surprise party given by the regulars they had collected a pot of pounds and hired a strip-o-gram woman to come in take off her top and go behind the bar and pose for snaps she said she loved her work who wouldn't for thirty pounds sterling just to show your boobs and when she slips on her trench coat and leaves with her boy friend I would think of home or friends and lovers when months later I had a drink there with a potential lover who dropped me later for her driving instructor but we sat and watched the darts and laughed many many darts and joy within those sacred walls that melted away in the summer when I could sit outside with my ale and watch the cows across the road or dream of what may have happened here at a crossroads back in time that made someone want a pub on this very spot but now where the bees circled my head and tried to get to my ale but I held firm to the pint and held it to my chest that pounded with excitement one day and slowed for sadness the next longing for home but not wanting to leave this glorious Isle and the green hedges so close to the road it made two-laners into one-laners and I thought of the centuries this place stood and did it's duty countless fists gripping the pint glass and raised the drink to the parched lips of a long dead farmer a living room a church a school a lonely bench where all the parts this holy house played in a local drama of an unbroken chain of men and women going back to the day when someone said they wanted this plot to be a pub