Ignorance is bliss with the Services and the Daily bigots Mail
One of the compensations of being single and male is that you can take off to a pub and and have a few beers by yourself, not worry what time you get home, get mildly or moderately pissed and just "hang out" by yourself. The problem is that you are likely to attract the attentions of one of the pub bores.
I drifted over to the "local" this afternoon to watch the the soccer results. . Sitting at the bar, I ordered a pint of Stella (Artois). I became aware of the presence of this guy, out of the corner of my eye, and said to myself, "I hope to Christ he stays where he is" ( sitting about 3 metres away).
No such luck! What does he do - but sit beside me at the bar.
Is it chicken or egg? What is it about soldiers and ex-soldiers that makes them so aggressive in conversation? He's of mixed parentage - Irish mother and English father - or is it the other way around?
Anyway - he wants to argue at every point. It's not the drink, he's perfectly sober. He makes a comment, such as the Chelsea team selection - he's a fan - I'm not. His point seems to be so laced with passion - no more than that - venom, that I just let him rant on. Then he goes on... and... on about various issues of Irish history, some of which I agree with, others I don't - the admission of which is a mistake. Then he says that he was accused of being a racist, by some LIBERAL (why do I hear the fucking Daily Mail voice here) in a the Crown Pub (Cricklewood), for using the word "darky" (about a black person), and that if he wants to use that word or "nigger", he can, and that he doesn't "necessarily" mean any offence to anybody. He then went on to criticise the EU, quoting the Daily shagging Mail.
Then he stopped, and said "you seem very quiet".
I was quiet because I was fuming, and told him that I was in full agreement with the "LIBERAL" who was offended by his truly rascist comments concerning black people. To a lesser extent I disagreed with his anti-European rant - saying that I thought he was still fighting WWII and that Europe had moved on - He was being misguided by The Mail and the rest of the fucking right-wing press, the proprietors of which had a different agenda to ordinary person and that Britain will be left behind in a great European renaissance - even Blair and Brown know this.
With that he started to climb down and said his "bark was worse than his bite".
I moved away, only to be engaged by another bore going on about West Ham United.
Maybe single is not all that wonderful....