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okay?’
    Terry didn’t look convinced. ‘One more fat jibe and I’m away.’
    ‘Shift over, ye big cream bun. Can an honest man not get his seat back in a pub these days?’ He was back, and he was carrying a tray. ‘I got us a wee Drambuie to keep the beer company, lads.’
    Terry found the strength to speak. ‘Uh, thanks Joe, but we’re working in the morning; we’d better take it easy.’
    ‘Aye, right. Your mate here is chucking it all in ‘cause his hormones told him to, and you obviously don’t give a shit about your job or you’d be looking after your appearance a bit better. Nobody promotes a sumo, lad; they can’t afford to widen the doors to the boardroom. Cheers.’
    Terry shrank back into the relative safety of the wall and it was left to me to move the conversation forward.
    ‘So ... Joe, when did you retire?’
    ‘Just shy of a year ago. Did I ask if you’d been losing your hair?’
    If I’d ever been on him I would have been going off Simon Fraser very quickly. ‘Yes, well, happens to the best of us.’
    ‘Not to me, lad. Mine’s actually getting thicker. It’s a medical phenomenon, according to my chiropodist. You’d be as well admitting defeat and shaving yours off. You’re not doing yourself any favours trying to cover up the baldy bit there; it smacks of denial. I’ve always said the only way to cope with deficient genetics is to embrace them. In saying that, you’d probably look daft with a skinhead, so you’re fecked either way.’
    I understood it was every father’s right to make their daughter’s suitors feel like amoebas, but I hadn’t seen Paula for twelve years. If I recall correctly, I was on the verge of saying: at least I’ve got a few years left before Alzheimer’s hits , or something equally insensitive when Joe (or whatever his name was) spoke again.
    ‘How’s your dad, James?’
    ‘Eh.’
    ‘And your mother, how is she?’
    ‘Eh.’ This was fast becoming my favourite word.
    ‘Terence, have you met James’ parents?’
    ‘Eh,’ Terry said, the copycat.
    ‘I’m going to guess you have. Do they strike you as good people?’
    ‘ Erm ,’ Terry said, adding some variety.
    ‘And yet they don’t know he’s packed-in his job. What does that say to you, Terence?’
    ‘ Pfhrrew ?’ Terry’s vocabulary was starting to make my own look positively limited.
    Joe looked back at me. ‘Any comments, James?’
    ‘Call me Jim.’ It was the only bit of actual language I could manage.
    ‘Fair enough. Jim, why haven’t you spoken to your family about this big decision of yours?’
    Come on, I had been expecting this. This was why I thought he thought he was here, after all. ‘Ach, just ... reasons, you know?’
    ‘ D’you know, James, sorry, Jim, back when I was working that comment would have fascinated me. I would have instantly started to make assumptions about you and about your parents. I would already know, purely from that statement and your body language, that you knew deep down you had, purely through your own actions and choices, ended up as a disappointment to yourself. But, because that’s a pretty difficult thing to admit, you’ve instead chosen to transfer that disappointment onto your parents and what you assume were their goals for you. You think they’re ashamed of you, and you therefore distance yourself from them. You tell yourself you’ve done okay in life with what you had to work with, and whatever mistakes and bad decisions you’ve made haven’t been your fault, but rather the fault of the restrictive society, and by inference the family, you grew up with and live in. Now, with this rash decision to give up your job, you think you’re finally taking a stand and giving yourself the opportunity to experience the life you think you should have had all along, but weren’t allowed to. On the surface, you think it was your parents and “society” who prevented you from doing this fifteen years ago when it would have made more