king's head revisited

The taxi from the airport dropped me off in the market place outside a familiar grand front door and almost immediately I recognised the old place. These were dark dark days that I had latterly endured. In moving to the north I had seen things that no southerner ever hoped to see. But standing here, under the hanging baskets, and looking at the prices on the menu, it was like being transported for a brief moment down south again. After all my travels of the last three weeks the place looked as if it hadn’t changed a bit. I went in to the bar. ‘What can I get you love?’ asked the lady who stood between me and the optics . It was as if I had never been away at all. ‘Gin and tonic, thanks’, I replied, with a nostalgic but slightly wistful remembrance of days long passed. I pulled up a stool. At the age of 39 the joints in my legs were now feeling stiff, and had been getting stiffer since I first turned 39 several years ago, as indeed had my gin and tonics. I looked around the bar. I had never been able to understand why I never saw any of the locals in here, but only well heeled tourists and retired civil servants from Guildford who came in after mass. ‘That’s £14.60’, said the lady behind the bar. No, I just couldn’t seem to fathom it out. I didn't mind though. ‘So you’ve just come back from holiday then love...’ she proffered. 'Only poor people go on holiday', I corrected her. 'I've been travelling. Am I really that tanned?’ I asked, admiring my complexion in the mirror behind the malt whiskys. ‘No, you just gave me a 100 euro note’, she pointed out. 'Sorry', I ventured, 'I've just got back from the airport, must be tiredness.' 'Oh, dear', she said, 'did you have trouble with the flights?'. 'Oh, very f****g funny', I snapped, and retired with my drink to the armchair around the corner which the hotel's teddy had been saving for me.