(from notebook, written march 2004, presumably)

There's jokes and there's lies. I'm sitting in the yard outside a pub. When the doors open beer smells, smoke, yelling and laughing flood out before they swing closed and it's all muted again. The folks in the yard look up for a moment then get back to their pints and their newspapers. They're out here because they don't fit in there. Physically I mean, it's friday night and we're operating close to capacity. The yard is cold because it's only March (and the telly tells us the temperature is below average for the time of year) but it's full, mostly people sitting in twos and threes with rakishly loosened ties and bad lager. The just-off-workers. I'm one of those too but I'm sitting alone. The guy on the bench next to me is waiting for his wife (or lover, or "squeeze"), she came back a few moments ago with arms full of FCUK and Habitat carrier bags, now she's gone again. "You don't mind me leaving do you? I just need two more things." He doesn't seem to mind. He fetches another pint of dark beer from inside and for the first time I realise the newspaper his face is buried in is the Daily Mail. I immediately resolve to stop romanticising him in this prose.