Sunshine, sticks, and plastic pints
Bank-holiday weekend sunshine flared off the sea like fresh tin foil, and for the first time this season, the seafront smelled of candyfloss and frying onions. I’d claimed a bench outside the Red Lion — a grand Victorian building with a mock-Tudor façade added sometime between the two wars. Predicting an afternoon of carnage, the staff had already swapped pint glasses for brittle plastic. Across the promenade, council crews had spent the morning clearing the last of the winter sand-drifts from the pavement; their mini-digger sat parked against the harbour wall, its hazard lights blinked in silence, engine long since off.
Jack finally appeared through the knot of pedestrians, still wearing his hi-vis jacket, trainers dusted with sand.
“Sorry, mate — road’s murder. Been dropping off kit for those council boys all morning and couldn’t find anywhere to leave the truck.” He wiped sweat from his brow and nodded at my plastic pint. “We drinking or hydrating?”
“Both,” I said, passing him a beer that carried a faint line-cleaner aftertaste — sunshine has a way of forgiving flaws.
We hadn’t shared a pint in months, yet the cadence returned instantly: club flyers, first decks, early-2000s nights when he’d spin trance in a back-room while I loitered by the bar deciding whether black was still the new black. Now he delivers machinery to building sites and I craft synergy narratives for fintech clients, but nostalgia turns every detour into a main road.
A May Queen tractor rolled past, bunting snapping. Behind it clattered a troupe of Morris dancers: white shirts, bell-pads, and sticks raised like polite weapons. They funneled straight into the pub doorway, emerged moments later clutching plastic pints, downed them with professional haste, then formed a ragged circle right in front of us.
Their accordion began a wheezy jig just as a trio of day-drinking lads tried to muscle through the ring. One dancer’s stick clipped a beer; foam geysered. A brief, theatrical standoff — bells jingling, lads bristling — until the accordion switched tempo and the troupe whirled away, leaving the lads dazed and flecked with hops.
As they retreated, one of the dancers locked eyes with Jack — just for a moment. Then he turned, not breaking step, but Jack had stopped mid-sip.
I went inside for the next round and found John leaning on the bar, leather waistcoat over T-shirt, glass eye catching the light like a distant lighthouse.
“Did I hear your Landy rumbling by this morning?” he said. “How’s the V8?”
“Running, miraculously. You joining us?”
“Can’t mate. Got a date with nostalgia.” He tapped the counter, ordered a brown ale, then launched into a story for anyone within earshot: how, back in his supposed Hell’s Angels days, he and three brothers kidnapped a hobby-horse from a May-Day parade in Torbay and held it for ransom — demanding fifty pints and four fish suppers. Some part of it — the timing, the details — felt too rehearsed. I’d heard him tell it before, but never exactly the same way.
I relayed the story to Jack when I returned, fresh beers in hand.
“You believe any of that?” he scoffed.
“About as much as the May Queen’s virginity,” I replied.
We toasted the afternoon as tourists streamed by — pushchairs, sun-hats, selfie sticks — while locals hovered at the threshold between welcome and resentment.
Jack glanced at the sea, where paddle-boarders dotted the sparkle.
“Did you see that dancer?” he said, frowning slightly.
“The tall one — he looked straight at me. Like, really looked. I know it sounds mad, but for a second I thought I recognised him. Then it was gone.”
I waited, but he didn’t elaborate. Just squinted toward the glittering water and sipped.
“Still think about DJing sometimes,” he added, quietly. “Kim laughs, says my back would give out before the first encore.”
“You could be worse off,” I offered. “At least you’re not writing marketing drivel for European financial startups.”
He grinned and raised his cup to the horizon. I offered mine up in return.
Behind us, the Morris troupe finished their encore, bells jangling into applause. John wandered past, hobby-horse story already forgotten, glass eye fixed on the accordion as though daring it to play something dirtier.
The afternoon lounged on — blue sky, prop-planes droning, and the faint, tinny music of the seafront arcade drifting up the promenade. No deadline, a working Landy, and now nothing to do but watch the town try on its summer costume for the first time and pretend it still fits.
Plastic cup in hand, I watched the shadows stretch down the street — longer than they should have been, and not quite in the right direction. A burst of bells from the pub door made me flinch. Then just music, and the wheeze of a drone climbing the sky.