“Oh my God, can you take us on a tour?” I ask like a 5-year-old.
“Yeah! Let’s go,” he replies, his grin leading the way.
I smile my face off as we walk up the street. What a wicked novelty. It’s the sort of unfolding of random events that, had it all happened while I was travelling, I wouldn’t have thought was all that out of the ordinary.
But this is my hometown. This sort of thing never happens here – and especially not after 11pm on a Tuesday…
* * *
It’s Tuesday evening when I meet up with a friend to talk about our respective career paths, with a job interview that day being primary subject. Of course, we don’t stay focused for long and and wind up talking about anything but.
One hour turns into two which turns into several. Soon enough, it’s 10pm, and I start thinking about getting a bus home so I can be asleep at a decent hour.
The problem is, though, I’m wide awake. And though it’s June, the night air is mild. My mate and I are having a jolly old time yakking away. Why leave? Quality of life isn’t all about getting enough sleep (though, so often, it is).
“One more,” we both nod.
This is a pub I’ve been to countless times before. And never, not once, have strangers ever spoken to me there. It’s the kind of pub you go to so you can chill out with friends and not be bothered by randoms – the perfect place to dissect your career path (or the diversionary subjects) over a glass.
So when I see a large group of guys all at a table in the middle of the room looking in our general direction, I think nothing of it. Actually, I’m pretty sure they’re looking out the window behind me.
My friend and I are mid-coversation when a broad-shouldered young man with spiked hair approaches us.
“Hi, are you girls going to be here for a little while longer? Because, I’m just about to put some money in the jukebox and thought you might like to come and pick some songs with me,” he said in a breazy, friendly way. “Would you like to pick some songs?”
Eh, why not? I thought.
“I think it’s important that, if we’re all here for a while, we should at least agree on the music,” he explains.
My friend and I both grabbed our stuff and wandered over to the jukebox with him, where he introduced himself.
“Oh, Chicago – I love Chicago,” our spikey-haired host said, scrolling through the options.
I pick Foo Fighters’ Learn to Fly and Incubus’ Drive for their awesome film clips. My friend chooses something by Garbage, and spikey rounds it off with an INXS song.
My friend and I go back to our table.
“I’m gonna be stranded if I don’t leave fairly soon,” I tell her.
But I don’t leave. It doesn’t feel like a school night, so leaving seems wasteful somehow.
Spikey comes back to our table to talk to us for a bit longer. And that’s when we discover that spikey is a firefighter who works around the corner. Apparently the pub that I’ve dubbed my local is also theirs.
Eventually, we’re joined by another from the team – a guy who insists on the unusual spelling of his name (some of my friends might have called it a “bogan name”). He’s such a pisstaker I can’t quite tell if he’s having me on, but I tell him that he was ahead of his time and that he should probably be a celebrity. He proves my point by demonstrating some mime.
“That looks more like Feng Shui,” I say. “No, I mean, Tai Chi.”
He’s completely unfazed by my mistake. It looks more like he’s trying to keep his head up. It’s that time of the night…
“…hey, Keira can sing!” I hear my friend dobbing me in to spikey.
“Oh really?” spikey says.
“Oh really?” the miming guy asks.
I look at them both.
“She’s not denying it,” says the mime.
“Yes, I sing,” I say.
They look at me in anticipation.
“Go on then!” the mime says.
I look back at them and feel like going home.
“And now we’re going to sit here in awkward silence while I try to side-step that request,” I say.
“I only sing if I’m leaving a phone message,” spikey says, saving the day.
“Well, this I have to see,” I proclaim.
He gets his phone out.
“I have 04 dialled so far…” spikey says.
And so, very creatively on his part, spikey ends up with my phone number.
I also get the prize of his sung voicemail message. The mime joins in the singalong. I have no idea what this song is. It sounds like an ’80s-sounding power ballad, or similar. But two firefighters sitting across the table from my friend and me, belting out some kind of love song onto my voicemail is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.
“She can sing!” my friend insists, pointing at me. “She does shows and stuff.”
Ah great, I thought we’d already awkwardly side-stepped this issue. In the words of Sherry Bobbins (The Simpsons‘ glorious Mary Poppins spoof), I’m not a bloody jukebox!
“Go on then!” the mime says.
I really don’t want to, but sometimes the performer inside tugs at a corner of my brain and won’t stop nagging until I throw it a Magnum Ego every now and then.
I pick up my phone and call spikey back.
I sing They Can’t Take That Away From Me – as you do late on a Tuesday night on the voicemail of a near-stranger while they’re sitting across the table from you in a pub.
Of course, I realise the next day that I should’ve sung a different song. One of my favourite songs as a kid…
With his helmet and his axe and his ladder and his hose,
Every fireman fights a fire, as everybody knows.
He’s a man who’s very brave, and he’s got to climb up high,
Hosing water on the flames as they leap into the sky
When they hear the fire bell, down the pole they zoom
Onto the red engine, boom, boom, boom.
Standing on the engine, the men we all admire,
Those fighting men, the firemen, are going to fight the fire!
I reckon they would’ve dug it.
* * *
The pub has closed and, after many requests, they finally shoo us all out the door.
“I know it’s a Tuesday night, but you never know, this could be the best night of your life!” spikey says.
My friend and I exchange a look in which we’re trying to work out whether to stay or go. It’s then that I overhear someone say, “Can we stop by the station so I can get a jacket?”
“The station! Oh my God, can you take us on a tour?!” I find myself asking, like a 5-year-old.
“Yeah! Let’s go,” spikey replies, his grin leading the way.
On the walk there, I mention how I haven’t been in a fire truck since I was a kid. And, of course, the immortal Bridget Jones climbing-up-the-pole scenario. This is lost on our firefighter friends.
Nonetheless, we took a midnight tour of the fire station…
spikey (kneeling centre) and the mime (on the right with the cheesy grin).
Unlike my friend, I didn’t have the guts to slide down the pole at midnight while under the influence.
spikey and The Girl Who Never Grew Up™.
I think there may have once been a similar shot of me at age 6.
