A rock and a hard place

Lately I’ve been making a concerted effort to get to the Lorne quiz every Wednesday that I can.  There have been occasions in the past when it’s been tempting to withdraw from the team because it starts too late, or there’s something on at the weekend and I can’t do two social activities so close to one another, or my feet got wet earlier in the day and I haven’t gotten over it yet.  But now that we’re in a heated race for bar vouchers with not only Quiznae Me but the Plant Doctor’s squad too, every point gained is vital.  The only quiz I missed recently was to attend the trustees’ meeting at the Argyll Wellbeing Hub on the same night, and it turned out to be the first quiz that has made it into the pages of the regional newspaper the Press & Journal.

When I was first sent the link to the article, I wondered if we were witnessing the beginning of an interest in the outcome of the Lorne quiz that would stretch from Oban to Fort William, to Inverness and Aberdeen and beyond.  However, upon opening the link, the story was reporting on an incident which occurred before the last quiz when the barmaid saved the life of a man who was choking on his dinner.  It made a change from every other Wednesday this year when it has been the Unlikely Bawbags who were the ones choking at the quiz.

It was a story of selfless quick-thinking and fast-action, one which highlighted all of the best qualities of the young woman involved. Yet I couldn’t get past some of the detail in the article. It was mesmerising to read it disclosed that the victim was shorter than the barmaid, who is 5ft 7”, and that the food was easy to dislodge since it was chicken and haggis. Then there was the paragraph that simply stated: “The 23-year-old said the man – who has not been named – had initially tried to solve the problem himself by drinking a pint of Tennent’s.” This could have been any man in Scotland. It could just as easily have been me. There isn’t a problem I have encountered where my first thought hasn’t been “can this be solved by drinking Tennent’s Lager?”

I was unaware of the dramatic night at the quiz when I was taking my walk home after work the following evening.  It was the last day of traditional Oban weather before the season finally splashed some colour across the town’s sodden canvas and people could stow away their winter jackets.  For a while anyway.  I had grown fond of my winter jacket and wasn’t sure I was ready to part from it yet.  It wasn’t anything special, just something I’d picked up from Peacocks on a whim, but I had worn it in Stockholm and the cigarette smoke from Sarajevo still clings to the fabric.  The pockets are fluffy and deeper than anything I’ve ever put my hands into – which come to think of it is probably partly why I struggle to acknowledge people who see me on the street.  By the time they have passed, I’m still wrestling my hand from my pocket to wave.  To any passer-by I imagine it looks like one of those videos that have been doing the rounds on Twitter recently where unusual items that large snakes have swallowed are prised from the reptile’s stomach.

At the parking machine opposite the War and Peace Museum, a man was performing his civic duty by purchasing a ticket for his vehicle as I approached.  A gust of wind caught hold of the slip of paper and picked it up from the slot before the man could snatch it.  What followed was a scene that until then I felt certain only occurred in TV sitcoms.  The parking ticket was blown along the length of the pavement as the helpless driver went chasing after it.  With every other stride the man tried to stop the ticket’s progress by stamping his foot over the top of it, but each time the wind just took it a little bit further from him.  It must have taken him at least three attempts to trap the thing under his shoe.  

When he reached down to pick the parking ticket up from the ground before turning back to walk towards his car, I didn’t know where to look.  Immediately I turned my gaze to the pavement, as though there was suddenly something captivating about my shoes beyond their ability to take in rainwater.  I couldn’t face making eye contact with the ticket chaser and preferred to act as if I had never seen the entire thing, as ridiculous as that was given our proximity to one another.  When I thought about it later, I couldn’t say whether I looked away to stop him from feeling embarrassed or if it was for myself.

Later that night, the popular Information Oban Facebook page was abuzz with a different incident on the Esplanade. One poster reported that a paving slab had collapsed across the road from the Alexandra Hotel leaving an ominous gap in the pavement. An accompanying picture showed the pavement with a square hole where the slab used to be surrounded by a circle of rocks that had been placed to alert pedestrians of the danger, although it could just as easily have been a Pagan ritual. Curiosity had me looking forward to seeing the hole for myself when I was next down that way. After all, it isn’t every day that a slab just disappears into the earth. However, it was just my luck that the entire section of the pavement had been fenced off, forcing you to step out onto the road to walk around it. I couldn’t help but think it was a typical Oban reaction to a problem. You just block it off and leave it for another time.

For more than a week I’ve been walking up and down the Esplanade wondering if I’ll ever see the hole, each day registering another digit on the thermometer.  Spring has brought the annual influx of visitors to the town, and the better weather of late has seen a change of mood about the place.  It’s true that everything looks better with a bit of sunlight.  I was leaving work for another of those evening walks this week when I was stopped outside the Day To-day Express.  As I crossed the road to walk towards Station Square, I noticed a black car sitting outside the corner shop with the passenger side window rolled down.  There was nothing I could do about it.  I’d already made eye contact with the woman whose head was poking out of the open window.  She was older, in her fifties I guessed, and her hair curled like a nest of noodles.  I took my ear pods out and felt them vibrate in my hand.  I’d been listening to the new Pearl Jam album.

“Can you tell us where the train station car park is?”  The woman spoke with an American accent.  My heart sank the way a paving stone falls into the sea.  Of course I could tell her where the train station car park is – I was virtually looking at it from where I was standing.  But I had no idea how to describe how her husband could drive there.  “Can’t you just walk?” is what I felt like advising her.  It’s the same any time a tourist stops me for directions in Oban, but it’s worse when they’re driving.  I have never driven a car, save for a couple of terrifying lessons I took in my early twenties.  A driver asking me for directions is no different to someone coming to me for marriage advice.

“Just go down this road you’re on and turn left into the taxi rank,” I eventually mustered, before realising that because of the direction the car was facing they would need to drive out into Argyll Square and around the roundabout before coming back to the station, and that was going to cause all sorts of different problems. They seemed satisfied enough with my effort and I put my ear pods back in, but I’m rarely comfortable after one of these encounters. For hours after I have given directions I find myself worrying about the fate of the tourists. Did they survive the roundabout? Did they catch their train? Where are they now?

I had just about put the American couple out of my thoughts by the time the weekend arrived.  Nothing helps me refocus my mind like cooking an omelette on a Sunday morning.  It’s the only day of the week when I have the time to go all out and make something better than a bowl of overnight oats.  I would probably have stayed in bed for several hours more after being up late watching the NHL had it not been for me discovering a packet of bacon at the back of the freezer on Saturday.  As far as breakfast goes, unexpected bacon is as joyous as reaching into the pocket of your spring jacket and finding a ten pound note.

When preparing an omelette it is easy to get lost in whisking the eggs until they’re at the cherished light and fluffy consistency, trying to get the heating right, and scraping the cooked egg in from the side of the pan.  By the time I’ve made a crude attempt at folding the omelette I’m usually so frustrated by my inability to make it look like it does on the recipes that I’ve forgotten whatever it is I was thinking about.  This time it was an anxious shopping trip to Lidl the day before that had me breaking the eggs.  From the moment I walked through the automatic doors I recognised someone I was once involved with practically a lifetime ago.  It was typical of my luck that I would have to see her before I was planning to go for a haircut.

My intention was to head straight for the in-store bakery section to pick up a maple pecan plait that had 15% off with a coupon on the Lidl Plus App, but I was worried that she might see me and presume that I’d let myself go.  All I could do was abandon the notion of pastry and sneak off to the bread aisle instead.  I was a mess.  Every step I took was as though I was walking across a flimsy rope bridge, my palms had developed their own microclimate, and my heart thumped like a pair of ear pods.  Even if I wanted to talk to this person I used to know it would have been nothing but gibberish.  

I clutched a Post-it note shopping list consisting of items such as blueberries, broccoli, apples, and grapes, but she was lingering in the fresh produce aisle and I was too much of a coward to risk going near it.  If I had a can of Tennent’s Lager I would have opened it there and then, but in the absence of alcohol I did the only thing I could.  I developed a sudden fascination with the smorgasbord of items on sale in the ‘middle of Lidl’, studying each one intently.  Who knows if £16.99 is a good price for a telescopic tree pruner or if I’d ever have a use for glow in the dark pebbles.  For what could have been an eternity, I stood practising the look of a man who could have bought them all.  It was the equivalent of raising a fence around a loose paving slab and taking the long route to avoid the problem, only in this instance I would have welcomed the ground opening up before me.

Thursday watch the walls instead

No sooner was the downpipe fully reattached to the front of our block of flats than another problem had arisen.  It was a Tuesday night and I was in the kitchen reducing Lidl’s Marvellous Tomatoes for a pasta sauce.  The halved fruits were sweating it out in the pan the same way I had been on my yoga mat a few minutes earlier as I finished a gruelling practice.  My overgrown hair was sticking up in all different directions, and I was dressed in the fashion a man adopts when he knows he’s home for the night and won’t have to see another person.

I was dusting the bubbling mixture with mixed herbs with the indiscriminate shake of a person who is not following any particular recipe and whose rhythm is dictated by a banging song which has come on the Spotify playlist when there was a knock at the door.  The knock was unfamiliar, not that there are ever enough of them for me to keep track of knuckle variance.  Most recently I believe it was a takeaway delivery driver who had the wrong address, and before that, a police officer looking to speak to the occupant of the flat across from mine.  This wasn’t long after the Press & Journal had reported about a police raid on the Lochavullin Bar up the street with a picture of our building, and for days I was worried about how this would look.

Briefly I considered ignoring the intrusion, but the volume of my music and the waft of onions would surely have given me up. I left my sauce simmering on a low heat and went to answer the door. It was my upstairs neighbour, who had come to tell me that he had noticed a couple of loose tiles on the roof of our block and he’s been seeking quotes to have them repaired. I was too busy wondering how anyone can spot some loose tiles on the roof of a three-storey building when I struggle to see people I know passing me on the street to ask any further questions, so he continued to tell me that it would likely cost each occupant a couple of hundred pounds to replace them. I didn’t feel that I was in any position to quibble over the cost of the job when the five other households in the block had seemingly approved. It was just going to have to be a case of if I want the tiles fixed, I should be spending a night or two fewer on them.

It’s little wonder that there has been some damage done to properties around town after the weather we’ve seen so far this year.  Even the popular Dunollie Museum had to close for a couple of days as a result of the wind.  On the west coast of Scotland, it’s a good thing that we have long since learned that you needn’t wait for the finer weather to arrive to mark the beginning of spring.  Here we can tell that the season is underway when the first cruise liner appears in the bay and the walk from one end of George Street to the other suddenly takes a few minutes more.  Once the benches that have sat empty along the Esplanade since October begin to see some action and the seafront is filled with the fragrant vapour trail of chippies you know that it is finally spring.

Storm Kathleen was causing some bother when we gathered for our latest open mic night at Let’s Make A Scene.  A few regular attendees were stormbound, and with a few minutes until the event was scheduled to begin the theatre was almost half-empty.  We were growing concerned until a surge of people almost as great as the waves crashing against the sea wall turned up, ensuring the place was as full as it always is.  I usually like to arrive at the Corran Halls and prepare a topical joke to serve as an introduction to the written piece I am about to read from my notebook.  More often than not it’s the part of my performance I am most nervous about since it is ad-lib and done without the crutch of the notebook.  Anyone can take a seat and read aloud from a book, but the very thought of talking from the top of my head sometimes seems as bewildering as the idea of being able to see a couple of loose tiles from a distance; something other people can do, but it isn’t for me.  Nevertheless, I ambled onto the stage and thanked everybody for braving the conditions to join us for the evening before launching into the improvised line I had been going over in my head all night.

“As it happens, being a single person in Oban is a lot like a windy day. Your hair is a mess, you are kept up through the night from the howling, and everything gets wet.” I didn’t truly understand what the punchline meant, but it sounded clever in my head and got some laughs when I said it. It’s always a good feeling when something you think is stupid raises a chuckle from other people. If only that could be repeated across all aspects of life.

The night was a fantastic success.  It is always such a heartening thing to see the scope of the talent in Oban.  At Let’s Make A Scene you’re as likely to hear a poem about the rain being on again as you are a beautiful song performed in Gaelic or a piece of rock music.  On this occasion we had three new artists take to the stage, one of whom especially captured my attention.  She was a young English woman who had honey-coloured hair and a voice that was just as sweet.  It was her first time at Let’s Make A Scene, and despite not intending to perform, she came along with a piece of spoken word prose that she read from her phone.  If nothing else it was reassuring to learn that phones can be used for purposes other than disappointing Tinder matches.

Our new performer’s set was based on her impression of Scotland’s west coast from her time cycling around the area, a trip that she enjoyed so much that she decided to move here.  I was transfixed by the way that she described the landscape and how it affected her.  I have spent my entire life in Oban and often wish that I could write about the place with more insight than to say that the seafront carries the smell of a Norries’ fish supper.

At the end of the night she approached me as she was leaving the theatre.  She wanted to tell me that she found my reading funny, while in response I vomited a series of consonants and vowels.  I immediately found her to be engaging and earnest, the sort of person who when you’re talking to them you don’t notice things like the time passing or remembering to inhale and exhale.  There could have been a fire evacuation and it wouldn’t have mattered.  Just a few minutes spent talking to this woman was enough to turn me into a lepidopterist.  

She invited me to walk along to the Oban Inn with her group.  This sort of thing never happens to me.  I had to tell her that I was waiting on some friends who were finishing up clearing the room but that we intended to go to the Oban Inn.  When we eventually arrived after what felt like an interminable passage of time, the bar was its usual Saturday night riot of bodies, broken glass, and rivers of beer.  It was impossible to get close enough to talk to her again.  This was much more like the type of thing that frequently happens to me.

It was tempting to think that I would likely never have the chance to talk to the eloquent English writer again, until a rare instance of me recognising someone as I was walking to work on Wednesday morning gave me that very opportunity.  She was carrying a camping mat and a bike helmet but had no bicycle, but I made an effort not to dwell on that.  It had just started to rain lightly as we had our stop-and-chat, like a scene from a romantic comedy.  Only instead of saying something charming and insightful like Matthew McConaughey would, I attempted to pass comment on her statement that Thursday is her favourite day of the week by pointing out that nobody writes any songs about a Thursday.  “Not like Friday and that song…”  My mind cycled way ahead of my words and I couldn’t recall the hit song Friday I’m In Love by The Cure.  I should have taken the song’s advice for a Wednesday.

Despite my lack of coherent thought, the bicycle-less cyclist was on her way to find a gluten-free bacon roll and asked if I would like to join her. I blurted out that I had already eaten, which while true was not the entire reason that I didn’t go with her. I was more concerned with fulfilling the nine part of my 9-5. I spent the rest of the day kicking myself. The bitter taste of regret was most profound when I reached into my backpack for my apple. Usually that’s the best part of my morning, but how could it be when I could have been eating a bacon roll instead? Never has a Royal Gala been so underwhelming as when I passed up the opportunity to spend a few minutes more with a pink lady.

One of the other sure signs that it is officially spring in Oban is when the Lorne pub quiz moves back into its traditional 9pm slot.  For as long as I can remember, Quiznae Me have been the main nemesis of The Unlikely Bawbags; the Gozer the Gozerian to our Ghostbusters.  For the last five weeks we have had a new contender to deal with in the form of the Plant Doctor and his alliance of Aulay’s pint dwellers.  They just showed up one week, my brother and Geordie Dave amongst them, and came within a point of winning the thing.  The following week they won it.  It had taken them two attempts to do something we haven’t achieved since October.  Their win coincided with the first night of the nine o’clock quizzes and some kind of issue with chilling the draft beers which meant the taps were out of order.  When I arrived there were three of us who were stood at the bar with no idea what to do next.  I imagined it was like having your hands placed in casts and being forced to figure out how to use a set of chopsticks.  We had a lousy performance that night, finishing sixth out of nine teams, but while I was keen to put it down to the absence of a good pint, the truth is we’ve been struggling at the quiz for a while.

In an effort to arrest our slump, we brought out the heavy artillery for the most recent quiz and went six strong.  It was the first time we’d managed a full quota of players in a long time, even managing to bring along a pharmacist who was once a regular member of The Unlikely Lads before she moved to Australia.  A strong opening couple of rounds had us feeling good about our prospects, as if we had finally found the cure for our quiz ills.  Things rapidly began to fall apart for us in the round on springtime, where each of the answers began with a letter from the word ‘springtime’ with each character being used only once.  We scored a wounding 7 points in that one, although the silver-haired host awarded us 8.  Being experienced quiz players we knew that it was only right to confess that our round had been wrongly marked, especially when the contest was so close, but it still smarted to give up that point.  It’s not that we were wanting rose petals thrown at our feet for our honesty, but something more than polite applause from the rest of the bar would have made it worthwhile.  A standing ovation, having our names chanted in unison, or some sympathy points when we’d crossed out a correct answer for a wrong one or inadvertently identified Paul Young as being Paul Simon.

As it was, our performance continued its downward turn in the next round where the questions were based on the four main points on a compass. I knew right away that the city of Charlotte is the state capital of North Carolina and said it with an authority that I don’t usually display. However, the more I kept repeating the options in my internal monologue I started to believe that the answer could be South Carolina. Sitting on either side of me, two cartoon devils on my shoulders, the nut tax man and the pharmacist were doing their best to convince me that South Carolina sounded right to them, too. Eventually I relented and changed our answer from North to South. It was yet another terrible decision I’d made that Wednesday. Although in the final standings we’d gotten the better of the Plant Doctor’s Aulay’s alliance and Quiznae Me, we still only managed to finish third. Despite winning the bonus bottle of wine for the second week running, we couldn’t help but feel disappointed that the real prize of quiz supremacy remained out of our reach.

Me and the pharmacist took to Aulay’s to pick at the scabs of another defeat.  We arrived to find that we had almost the entire pub to choose where we would sit.  If I had walked in with the Plant Doctor or alone, as is usually the case, you can be sure that the place would have been busy.  But when I walk in with a beautiful woman there is almost nobody there to see it.  It has always been this way.  We took the stools at the end of the bar, where the pharmacist marvelled at the full-length panoramic painting of Oban Bay that stretches from one end of the wall to the other.  She had never noticed it before.  It often takes a few visits for folk to appreciate the artwork since usually you tend to spend your time in the bar with your back to it or you are too drunk to notice.

Last orders had just been called when we bought our drinks, so there wasn’t much time to enjoy them.  We discussed the differences in the culture between Scotland and Australia:  how there is so much more peer pressure in this country to be involved in a relationship; the attitudes to drinking; and the cost of drugs through the health service.  Upon recognising who the barmaid was, the pharmacist reminisced over when she was 12-years-old and everyone would spend their time after school hanging around the cafe in Tesco.  It wasn’t a story I could relate to since I was terrible at socialising at that age.  The barmaid was working there at the time, presumably pouring coffee rather than pints, and the pharmacist recalled how it would be her modus operandi to ask the schoolkids if they were buying anything.  Those who responded that they weren’t would be asked to leave, with the pharmacist usually being one who would have to leave her friends behind.  There’s just no way that would be allowed to happen these days, we agreed.

With last orders long gone and the time approaching midnight, the bar staff were busy clearing up and naturally keen to finish their shifts for the night.  The barmaid peered over the top of the gleaming taps and asked the pharmacist if she had finished her drink, “because it’s time to go home.”  The timing was so exquisite that I couldn’t help but wonder if she had heard us talking.  We gulped down the last mouthful of our drinks and went on our separate ways.  By the time I reached home a few minutes later, it was already Thursday morning.  The week wasn’t finished yet and I’d inadvertently declined the opportunity to hang out with an engaging woman – twice – lost the pub quiz again, and been told that I’d likely need to pay a couple of hundred pounds to replace some tiles on my roof.  This seemed like a good day to watch the walls instead.