Almanac Memories: Conversations around a bar table

 

When I lived in Canberra for many years, I became an early member of the Canberra Irish Club. I served on the board for several years as a Director, then Deputy President and also as Treasurer. It was a very successful club and I have fond memories of my time there enjoying the ‘Craic’ with friends, acquaintances and the broader membership. I knew all the regulars well. A large number of the members were either Irish who had emigrated to Australia over the past several decades or were of Irish heritage. The types and variety of characters who frequented the club was extraordinary. Such that a half decent producer could probably have made a Coronation Street series on the club and its members. The club was a strong and vibrant, social club which looked after its members well. It also contributed many dollars to local community organisations and individuals in need of support.

 

This piece has been stimulated by two British articles/research papers I read recently about the contribution pubs can make to community well-being and social cohesion. It caused me to reflect on my own experiences in this regard and especially when socialising at the Canberra Irish Club in the 1980s and 90s and early 2000s. As already stated, I knew the broader membership well, but like many I had my regular table of cohorts with whom I enjoyed a pint or three of the ‘Black Stuff’. My usual table had four to six regulars all different in size, height, personality, age, occupation/profession, likes and dislikes, marriage stakes etc.  We enjoyed each other’s company (mostly!) and topics discussed were many and varied.

 

Reflecting back on our everyday banter and light talk (sometimes heavy!), it included football of all categories (tactics, ‘greatest of all time, umpiring decisions, ‘how the game is not as it used to be,’) racing, cricket, golf, and sport more generally – you name it and we probably discussed it.

 

Discussion on work-related issues were common: complaints about the management or staff, colleagues, younger worker attitudes, retirements, redundancies and the good old days versus the new.

 

The weather always rated highly as a topic. ‘Bloody cold today isn’t it?’ ‘Can’t believe how dry it’s been.’ ‘The heat and humidity are frigging killing me’. ‘That bloody wind.’

 

Comparing car types and home machinery like kitchen appliances, lawnmowers, chainsaws and motorbikes often made the grade (constant, especially for two of my cohorts).

 

Family and personal lives loomed large as a discussion item – kids and grandkids (‘My daughter’s boyfriend is a worry.’ ‘The grandkids run us ragged. Young Ethan’s a good little footy player.’).

 

Marriages, divorces and relationships were more often than not spoken about with humour and understatement, as was, in some cases aging parents and issues with their nursing homes and health (‘Can’t get mum out of her house and into a nursing home where she needs to be.’)

 

Music and how much better it was in the day compared to the crap that is put out today e.g. rap music.

 

For our couple of older mates, health and aging issues were more prominent and mostly shared in a joking way but with an undercurrent of realism e.g. – blood pressure, knees, hips, prostate, erectile dysfunction, colonoscopies, skin cancer, doctor’s drugs, liver and kidney complaints.

 

Then there were our regrets and ‘what ifs’- careers that didn’t pan out, old lovers, education levels, the missed opportunities and so on.

 

Mortality and life purpose issues were common too – ‘We’re not 25 anymore’, ‘Dunno why we’re still doing all of this’. We reflected on old friends, funerals, or people who have done it tough.

 

More often than not, politics made the agenda – sometimes heated, always opinionated.

 

Best of all was probably our combined humour and storytelling. Tall tales and exaggerations about past sporting feats and glory, old recycled jokes, size and number of fish caught, making out when a younger man etc.  All good-natured ribbing with each of us interrupting the other, using punchlines, and trying to top the last point or story. All done in a sense of mateship, belonging and shared history. Something akin to a bunch of men who might not share deep emotions directly but do so sideways through humour, memory or a story about someone else.

 

A couple from my old table have now passed but the friendship of those of us still standing remain.  Maybe a bit worn about the edges these days due to life, but still serving up the same warmth and laughter whenever we meet.

 

What follows in this piece is a fairly true account of the sorts of conversations my table of ordinary blokes had in the day when talking their way through the stages of life: the regrets, the humour and the good, the bad and the ugly of everyday existence. How the quiet understandings that friendship, in its own rough-edged way, is what endures at the end of the day.

 

Essentially it is a memoir about old friends, a familiar place and the way that laughter softens the years. Our table at the Irish Club was a small of part our world – a glimpse of a group of men who’ve weathered life’s changes and who found comfort in familiar company. Along with the banter and humour it probably could best be described as a quiet ritual reminding mates of who we are, and who’ve been and where we’re at in the moment. I’ve tried in a both a true and fictitious way to describe a normal evening’s conversation at our table in the Canberra Irish Club.

 

Names have been changed to protect the privacy of my mates (not that they’d give a damn!). I’m sure if anyone from the Canberra Irish Club reads this piece they will know (or guess) the characters anyway.

 

Here we go:

 

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The club was only half full at 5.30pm on a Friday but would become busier as people knocked off work and came in for a drink and/or a meal, to watch the footy, or for the music after 8pm. Presently there was just a low murmur of voices under the clink of glasses and the soft sound of recorded background music. Although, across the room, Cork-born Peter O’Callaghan could be heard speaking loudly as usual, meaning that he’d enjoyed an afternoon session on the ‘Black stuff’ followed by a few ‘Jamesons’, as was his wont on a Friday. We four blokes (Rob, Peter, Frank and I) sat around the corner table near the window, jackets slung over chair backs, the table scattered with empty pint glasses and a packet of Tayto crisps. Bill was yet to turn up to make it a group of five.

 

‘Bloody hell, Bob’s done a good job this week on replacing the old carpet’ Peter said, looking around. ‘The replacement of the old stuff was way overdue. Remember how you’d stick to it during the summer?’

 

‘Yeah,’ said Rob. Not just summer though, all bloody year.’

 

We all laughed. A round of nods and laughs and half-finished memories following.

 

‘Bill’s running unusually late,’ said Peter. ‘He’ll be in for sure,’ said Frank.  ‘Do you remember when he had that old converted green VW Kombi van, new motor and the lot? He used to reckon that it could beat most cars on the road.’

 

‘It could,’ said Rob. ‘On a good day. Downhill. With a gale behind it. He’s put it to good use though, since his divorce.’

 

The laughter rolled again, easy and unforced. Frank bought another round.

 

‘Remember when the club used to have all those blasted poker machines front and back,’ said Frank. ‘Too many of them. Took away the ambience of the place. You could lose ten bucks in an instant’.

 

Rob chuckled. ‘Those were also the days when you’d lose your money and also your senses but be unlucky to lose your licence on the drive home. No breathos about then.’

 

‘Yeah, we thought we were bullet proof back then in every way,’ said Peter. ‘Now I get a twinge in the knee if I so much as think about running let alone home comforts with the wife.’

 

We all laughed. Frank said, ‘You’d better get used to it mate. We’re not young bucks anymore.’

 

I raised my pint. ‘Here’s to the young bucks – may they rest in physio.’

 

As always, someone mentioned kids.

 

‘My boy’s just started an electrical apprenticeship,’ said Peter. ‘Loves it. Reckons he’ll be running his own business in six months and a millionaire by the time he’s thirty.’

 

‘They all do,’ said Frank. ‘Just wait till he’s chasing bloody invoices for the first time and the tax bill arrives.’

 

‘Now my daughter’s left town and gone to Melbourne. I’m lucky if she calls me,’ Peter said. ‘Unless she wants money or needs something else that is. Must get that from her mother.’

 

We all nodded and grinned knowingly.

 

‘How’s the batching going then,’ I asked.

 

‘Good, nearly two years now. Best thing that ever happened to me, except on laundry day.’ Sipping his beer, Peter added, ‘Mind you, I wouldn’t mind a bit of company again. You forget how a house can get. I even miss someone to argue with.’

 

‘Try a wife and three teenage girls,’ said Rob. ‘You’d pay for some quiet. I haven’t seen my bathroom in two weeks.’

 

Frank smirked. ‘You could always ring your ex. She’s probably free. You could always check with big John over there, he knows all the red light comfort zones in Fyshwick. You could pay for an argument too.’

 

That created some mirth among us and mock groans.

 

‘Don’t laugh,’ said Peter. ‘Last time I spotted her, she was with some bloke who looked like he ironed his socks.’

 

More laughter.

 

‘Speaking of which,’ asked Frank. ‘Anyone heard or seen my ex, Jill, lately?’

 

Rob snorted. ‘Your Jill? That’s been awhile. Is she the one who threw your clothes out the window?’

 

‘Yeah, that Jill. I saw her at Coles.  She gave me that half pity, half relief look.’

 

‘Mate,’ said Rob, ‘that’s not pity.  That’s someone remembering the bills you forgot to pay and all the time you spent here with us.’

 

Frank smiled and said, ‘could be worse, at least she still recognises me. My last date thought I was the Uber driver.’

 

More laughter. My shout.

 

At that moment Finn and Liam, a couple of newly arrived young Irish twenty-somethings came in and headed for our table. They were on working visas with jobs at the new Cotter Dam.  Fellow Irishman Frank had befriended them and invited them in. Also, at that moment, Bill turned up, unusually late for a Friday ale.

 

‘Where have you been mate?’ I asked. ‘We’re on the way to being nearly done’.

 

‘Bloody annual prostate and PSI medical,’ Bill said.

 

‘How’d it go,’ I asked. ‘PSA okay,’ Bill said. ‘And the usual finger up the bum didn’t detect any hardening.’ Bill said this as he performed a caricature of the GP putting on a rubber glove and inserting his finger between Bill’s buttocks. The young Irish lads looked at this aghast. I could perceive their thoughts: ‘Shite, will this happen to me when I’m as freaking old as these blokes?’

 

Then it happened. One of the youngsters couldn’t resist the question. ‘How often do you have to have that done then?’

 

Bill, a local part time actor and musician, and a very humorous man, was now in his element.  ‘Once a week,’ he replied. ‘Once a week,’ exclaimed Liam and Finn in unison. I shuddered when they then asked, ‘Why?’ Bill with a wide and gleeful smile knew he had them. He replied, ‘Because I like it.’

 

That really set us off with our laughter nearly spilling all drinks on the table.

 

The young Irish lads took it all in good spirits, before finally wandering off, presumably to search out younger and better looking company.

 

‘Hard to believe it’s nearly twenty years since that club golf trip to Dalgety,’ I offered, to get us going again. ‘Where’s all that time gone?’

 

‘Down the toilet with our beer’, Bill said, grinning.  ‘Boy, do you remember Crooksey knocking down all those cans in the esky on the drive back?’

 

Rob’s face softened a bit. ‘Saw Crooksey last week, by the way. He’s been crook and off the grog. Got some severe stomach issue which they think might be life threatening cancer. Same thing that did old Neville in last year.’

 

‘Yeah, that was sad too,’ said Bill. ‘Bloody good accountant old Nev. Got me back quite a bit from tax over the years. He was on the board of East’s rugby club for donkey years. Good player in his day, by all counts. Both he and Crooksey loved a drop though.’

 

We all went silent for a time. Left to our own thoughts. I remember in the moment being sad for both Neville and Crooksey.

 

‘He is a good bloke, Crooksey,’ Frank said quietly. ‘Never ever see him without a smile.’

 

‘Yeah,’ said Rob. ‘Good footballer in his day by all counts.  Represented the ACT in both rugby and AFL school footy apparently. Played quite a few games for Ainslie when James Hird was there. Kicked a winning goal after the grand final one year. Crowd at Manuka went mad and Crooksey just stood there like he’d done it every week. Typical. Gave the game away early for some reason.’

 

I said. ‘Told me once he just lost the passion for it.’

 

Frank raised his Guinness slightly. ‘To old mates,’ he said. We clicked our glasses to mark the moment.

 

Life’s funny,’ Peter said.’ You spend half of it trying to get somewhere, then one day you realise you were already there. Sitting around with great friends enjoying an ale around a table like this with good banter.’ Bill looked around the table at us. ‘Yep, could be worse ways to end a Friday.’  We raised our glasses again.

 

‘They’ll be saying the same thing in thirty years,’ said Rob, nodding at some young blokes closeting the bar.

 

‘Yeah, except they’ll be talking about meeting on Tinder or one of those other bloody social media things instead of at the pub or club.’

 

We all laughed again.

 

After six pints each we’d had enough ‘Black Stuff’ and we spilled out into the night.

 

Usually, I would walk home. Peter would head toward a waiting taxi. Rob to the car park, his wife waiting. Frank lived close, as I did, but in a different direction. Bill usually cadged a lift or his daughter might collect him. Sometimes he also walked.

 

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I reflected on these old conversations when I dropped into the club a couple of weeks ago for a pint of the ‘Black Stuff’. It was mid-afternoon, mid-week, so quiet. I only had the one pint (lovely it was too) while Lorelle skipped down to the Cooleman Court shops for some groceries. I asked the bar attendant about several people.  Many she didn’t know and some she did, some had died or moved on.

 

Nostalgia enveloped me.

 

Friends around a bar table wherever it might be, may start out talking about petrol prices, the latest footy results, horse racing or bad knees and somehow all end up brushing against the edges of who we used to be. The chances we took, the people we loved, the ones that got away. Maybe what I felt wasn’t nostalgia really but more like gratitude.

 

I contemplated the years that had carried my old mates and I from our various pursuits to the club table from first jobs, first cars, various relationships, kids, health issues, and quiet houses. In our own ways we’d all built something of a life. Some tidy, some messy, all imperfect. Yet, thinking about this, I realised how much of all that really matters.  What stays is the laughter, the shared stories, the comfort of each other’s company and the sense that for a few hours you could lean back into the safety of old friendship and forget how fast the world turns.

 

I smile at the memories. This is what lasts. This is what it’s about. Not the wins or losses or the people we tried to become. It’s about the ones who sat beside us while we tried to figure it all out.

 

Old mates.

 

Old stories.

 

Some of us still standing.

 

RIP:  Peter O’Callaghan, Crooksey and Frank

 

All power to the bar table!

 

 

To read more by Allan Barden click HERE.

 

 

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