Carefree Arms. Evening.
Late night discussions. Conversations we’ve had before, are comfortable with.
Same observations made but treated as revelatory as it is in all drinkers’ interest to remain entertained.
Jenks rails against the former kamikaze pilots you see interviewed on the History Channel.
“Can’t understand it, man. How can you be a ‘former’ kamikaze pilot?”
“You’d rather they’d flown into the side of a ship than gone on to be retired bank managers or something?”
“I just think they should be …ashamed!”
I was watching the Niall Ferguson programme where he said the Americans believed the Japanese were animals during the Pacific war and so the Japanese acted like animals.
Each side brutalised the other.
“Act like animals, treated like animals,” Jenks said defiantly, putting his glass to his mouth and spilling large amounts of lager down his chin.

Carefree Arms. Lunchtime yesterday.
I walk in the sunshine to meet my friend Tom (not his real name). I miss him. But Mr French, who Tom once introduced me to, is.
He has a bottle in front of him so I go inside and get a drink.
Mr French – not his real name either – is a fixture. As people pass, one-in-three say ‘hi’ or pass a comment.
I joke with him that it is lunchtime and they are jealous as they are only grasping a few minutes of freedom before heading back into the office.
It’s all friendly, though. None of the passers-by make that pretence at not seeing him, as they might with a busker or beggar.
He tells me a story about a boy and his uncle. The boy had been badly treated by his father as a child and had grown to love his uncle. They would go mountain climbing together; not speak much, but share the joy of views, smells, back-breaking walks, danger, excitement.
It’s a world away from our metal chairs on the street outside Carefree Arms.
“One day, on the mountain,” says Mr French, “the uncle turned to the boy and said, ‘When I die, no matter what anyone says, burn me and bring me up here.’ And when he died, that’s what the boy did. When he told me, I felt it.”
Mr French’s eyes are welling up now.
“You make an agreement with a friend, you stick to it,” I said, sounding like Pike Bishop in The Wild Bunch.
Mr French, not talking for a moment, but swallowing his Adam’s apple firmly, nodded.
We are silent. After a while, Mr French said: “My wife hates me, you know. But she hates Tom more.”