It had been a long day dealing with subcontractors. Tomorrow would probably be just as long. They had bid low for the contract, and the accountants had seized on the low bid and awarded the work. It seemed then that everything I asked for was a variation that had to be costed. It was just a long, draining day with me explaining exactly why it was not a variation.

I sat in the bar of the hotel nursing a pint of beer. It was just mass-produced brown rubbish; not a decent beer was available, and my mood darkened. I had eaten in the hotel restaurant, and that had been just about as good as the bar – very average fare, produced for the lowest cost possible.

This hotel made no effort to win Michelin stars or rosettes. It was the only hotel for miles around, and they just did the bare minimum.

“Bad day, huh?” A guy asked.

“No, just long and fraught,” I replied.

He was probably around the same age as me; he had a suit on, as I did, and his tie was loosened around his neck. Just as mine was.

“Where have you been?” He asked.

“At the power station, I am doing some work there.”

“Ah, right. I have been at the cement works; I think they get their power directly from the power station.”

“Probably, it would make sense; they are only a mile or so apart.” I wasn’t really interested in the sales of electricity from the power station, and I guess my newfound friend wasn’t that interested in where the cement works got their power from. It was just bar chat.

“How long are you here for?” He asked me.

Just tonight. I have a morning of more meetings and then back home to West Yorkshire.” Part of me always wanted to simply say Yorkshire, but the OCD part of me always won. Where I lived used to be the West Riding of Yorkshire, but since 1974 it has been just West Yorkshire.

“Ah,” he said, “yes, Leeds?”

“No, I am near Bingley,” I said; that was vague enough. No one really wanted to say ‘near Bradford’ – too many bad associations.

“I’m Geoff,” my new bar friend said.

“I’m Paul.” I didn’t bother offering my hand; it was just a bar meeting, no need to be formal.

“Hi, Paul.” He looked at my glass, almost empty, and nodded to the bar. “Another?”

“Yes, go on then, thanks.”

“Anything in particular?” He asked, looking at the various pumps on offer.

“Anything, they are all mass-produced crap,” I said. “My local only has cask beers and has guest beers. I don’t think it is tied to a specific brewery.”

“I bet the beer tastes good,” Geoff said.

“All of it tastes better than this stuff; even the occasional dud is better than this.”

“Lucky. My local is all mass-produced keg, much like the beer they offer here. They don’t have any guest ales, not that I have seen, and most of the pumps seem to be cider or lager.”

“Oh God, a nightmare.”

Cider is quite pleasant with Sunday lunch, or perhaps on live folk music night, but for serious drinking? No way.

“Family at home?” Geoff enquired.

“Just the wife. No kids, we never got around to that.”

“Ah, I don’t even have a wife, just me.”

“Okay,” I wondered. I mean, I couldn’t help it; I wondered why he didn’t have a wife; perhaps he was divorced. I had contemplated getting divorced myself. My wife, Mica, and I had so little in common. We shared a bed, but nothing more; I just had no interest in her. We went to bed, said goodnight, and rolled over.

“Does it ever bother your wife, you know, when you are away? I don’t have a wife, so that is something I don’t have to deal with.”

“No, not really; we kind of just exist in the same space and do our own things.” I didn’t really want to go into too much detail. Mica and I had started full of ideas and intimacy, but the intimacy soon faded away, and our ideas just died. The pressures of trying to earn enough to pay the mortgage, the finance on the cars, and the ever-increasing cost of food – those pressures just eroded any spark that we had.

“Oh, okay, I think I get the picture,” Geoff said, giving me a sort of odd look.

We sat at the bar, taking turns to buy drinks, talking all the rubbish bar buddies talk. Politics: how we would do things better than the elected people did. How the people wanting to be elected made promises that, once they won the election, were ignored. We decided that if we were in power, any election promises would have to be mandatory. Of course, we had no real idea of how to enforce such a law. We talked about international tensions and how every new US president seemed to find a war that had to be fought. We tried to understand how tariffs on imported goods could possibly benefit the country; to us, all they seemed to do was increase prices.

I excused myself and went to the toilets. I stood relieving myself, one hand on my dick, the other pressing against the wall, keeping me upright, supporting me. I washed my hands and used the air dryer, wondering why they always had to be so loud. I made my way back to the bar; Geoff was still there, nursing the last of his beer.