Patrick Leigh-Pemberton: On an interrupting interlocutor

Last night I had one of my first, proper, real life authentic experiences that count as a cliché. It was quite remarkable. I went into a pub, which I rarely do on account of the huge amount of studying that befalls me. But there I was, in a pub, a truly rare occasion. In this pub I ordered a drink, and a man (yes, that is right, a man in a pub) realised that my accent was not one of someone born and bred in Fife. He must have been particularly perceptive. In a university town here was a young, non-native person ordering a drink in a pub? Well, you can imagine his shock. And shocked he was. Or drunk. One of the two.

Anyway, he engaged me in frankly hostile abuse, peppered occasionally with the obligatory “I’m only joking you” – which people seem to think renders all hostility acceptable in a pub. Finally I, and the friends with whom I had entered the pub, managed to shake him off. That’s right, I wasn’t alone in the pub. Well, I suppose no one is ever truly alone in a pub, except perhaps the barman at opening time, and I am not a barman, and it wasn’t ten am. We then retired to take a turn upon the terrace, and finding it well stocked with outdoors furniture, we sat and enjoyed the cool night air of St Andrews in November. It was very pleasant too, until we were re-joined by the interrupting interlocutor. And then it began: I walked into a cliché, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Within minutes, I found myself trying to persuade a grown man that the Americans had been to the moon. He pointed out that I was an idiot who would believe anything, and went on to mention solar flares, celestial bodies, geostationary orbits and all the other things that neither of us understood. It was a rollercoaster ride. I tried every angle at the problem, but he wouldn’t have any of it. Reader (I married him – no, that is too cheap) I hope you believe me when I say that he didn’t persuade me either, I really do. What an evening, I thought to myself after I left.

I am glad to say that whilst the argument became heated at many points, and there were many points to the argument, at no point did it ever come to blows. Which was probably a good thing, as he looked quite scrappy. But I wondered as I walked, whether this really was an authentic life experience. I wondered as I walked, whether in fact this man knew that we had shared a most clichéd pub conversation. Perhaps he only brought it up in order to give me a sense of truly being in a pub (perhaps he had sensed that I rarely spend time in them, so thought to really dowse me in pub culture, and saliva, through one silly argument). But if it was authentic, and the above two sentences are the ramblings of semi-paranoiac idiot, then I for one wish the Americans had never told anyone they had been to the moon. It is one of the dullest conversations I have had, and I pity all the other people who have been forced to take part in it just because others like a good conspiracy.