I’m not in my usual spot. It’s been taken by someone else. I'm sitting on the other side of the bar, staring over their shoulders so I can still see my bike through the window behind them. I’ve forgotten to bring the big lock, and I’m not sure if I ever did actually renew our insurance. People keep getting in the way though, making me shift across my arse on the hard wooden bench.
I can hear the Stones on the bar’s tinny sound system, but barely. There’s a large crowd in, though it’s not yet dinner time. It’s the first night of the Christmas market, and people come through the front door dripping, escaping the mauve wet December sky and carrying on them an afterglow of the festive boisterousness from the jenever stands outside. To my left is a gaggle of Australian tourists in jumpsuits and Patagonia fleeces. I look at their sweating chalices of Stella and wonder do they know what they’re missing. Maybe they don’t know any better; they’ve probably never even heard of a ribbekes glass. Maybe today’s exchange rate is unfavourable to them. Maybe I should mind my own business. Somewhere in their group I hear a discordant Flemish burr and think, “Well, they should know better.”
On the other side of me a bullock of a young man in Jackson Pollocked fatigues. He’s just come back to the bar with a Zinnebir for himself and a half-decanted bottle of warming Chimay for his drinking partner sittin within arm’s reach of me. She must be his mother I think, a growing older woman with a thick West Flemish accent. I am jealous of them both. I am alone. And I am drinking a non-alcoholic IPA. There is no warmth to it. It is just a cold glass of sort-of beer, and I drink it too quickly like a lemonade. It leaves no trace behind. Worse, it creates its own disappointment, digging a hole in me and failing to fill it with something else. It’s like a yawn that doesn’t catch. I’m already on my second bottle, and the music hasn’t gotten any louder, nor the room any warmer, nor the lights any twinklier. It hasn’t unwound the coiled spring in my chest, nor cooled the hot breath of my anxieties. I don’t want the dull Calvinism of this grown-up mineral. I want the gentle sedation of a couple of strong Belgian beers, a drink to soften my harder edges. I want to be gone, just a little bit, just for a little while. At four euros and fifty cents a bottle, I deserve at least a bit of a buzz.
But I’m trying to be good. A month without beer - proper beer - I’ve told myself. A month of sorting the bike insurance. Of remembering to bring the big lock. Of avoiding the Glühwein. Of keeping my thoughts about boorish Antipodeans to myself. Of confronting my anxieties, and controlling my stress. Of drinking pseudo-soft drinks, and trying to enjoy them on their terms. It’s only a month, after all, how hard could that be? And anyway, Christmas will be rolling around soon enough.