In the pub

At my own instigation, I went out for a drink after work, but after a few formalities I found myself washed away by a frothing torrent of gossip and sedition. I zoned out, and my phone rang. It was Nancy, asking me to buy turmeric on the way home. Taking this as my excuse to leave, I stood up and said “I’m off” or something to that effect, and was met by a chorus of disapproval. They didn’t want me to leave, because the colloquy had reached a new pinnacle of infamy. Or nadir. In any case I muscled my way out of the bar, for I was thoroughly fed up with it. I was fed up with the imaginary ships bobbing across the pink imaginary reputational sea, and the imaginary u-boats with merciless kapitans holing them surgically… It’s a vile thing to talk about work in the pub.

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