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.
Diaries of a single man 