Drinking Among the Entrails

A couple of colleagues of mine and I went for a drink after work this evening. I realise this is becoming a prevailing theme but bear with me. We didn't go to our usual bar because it has recently changed hands and in a fit of misguided solidarity with the previous owner we decided to go elsewhere. The increased time span between leaving working and getting a drink took its toll on our camaraderie. If the journey had been more than five minutes murder would have been committed.

As it was we arrived at what I fervently hope will not become our regular bar just in the nick of time. I'm not going to mention its name because I'm about to dump on it. The place was clean and well lit with mirrors, brushed steel and what looked suspiciously like genuine marble on the floor. The seats were comfortable, the staff friendly and the wine only moderately overpriced. After five minutes there I wanted to gouge my eyeballs out. I don't object to a bar being clean but I do have a problem with one that appears to have been sterilized.

Let me assure you I have no problem with gleaming metal surfaces and an over enthusiasm for disinfectant; I wouldn't go into a dental surgery that didn't have them. However I have no desire to drink in a dental surgery (well I do but that's for completely different reasons). In a bar I desire something different. Specifically I desire wood. If a bar has soft lighting, lots of wood and perhaps carpet (or more wood) on the floor then I can forgive almost any amount of substandard amenities and crumbling infrastructure. Wood even crumbles better.

Wood has a warmth and an implication of comfort and well being utterly lacking in metal or stone. For all their uses metal and stone are dead things, so dead that they were never alive. Wood does have life and I think that is the difference. Even chopped down, carved up and twisted into fantastic shapes, wood has life. You can feel that when you touch it.

Of course if you think about it for too long you realise that sitting in a room full of wood relishing that warmth and life is actually an act of hideous floral vampirism. What you're really doing is squatting in a cave festooned with the entrails of eviscerated plants. Drink up and I'll get us both another.