Down to the 'Doctors'

The writer Keith Waterhouse used to say his favourite pubs were situated conveniently near a theatre, thus allowing a playwright such as himself to drown his anxieties while waiting for the response of the first-night crowd to his latest work; and hence he always thought of such places by the generic nickname, The Skulking Dramatist. To the best of my knowledge, no bar in the UK actually bears that name, but I feel that one should. Perhaps that could be a retirement project for me.

On my regular-ish jaunts up to Edinburgh in August to take in the summer arts festivals there, I am invariably faced with a quest to find The Skulking Theatre-Goer - a bar which will provide the best prospect of rest and refreshment in the fleeting intervals between the various Fringe Festival shows, sometimes five or six in one day, that I am attempting to see.

This year, it happened to be a place called 'Doctors'. One of those names that makes you fret as to whether there is an apostrophe missing somewhere. (It's a celebrated piece of trivia that 'Rovers Return', the name of the pub in Britain's longest-running TV soap, 'Coronation Street', is only a general statement because of a signwriter's mistake.) And I have my suspicions that this may be a recent renaming. I've certainly been there in years gone by, and don't recall it being 'Doctors' then, although I have no recollection either of what its former name might have been.

It has nothing particular to recommend it, except that it is unmodernised, still fairly traditional and 'old world' (something that can be said for depressingly few bars south of the border these days, as they are converting in droves to the airy wine bar model: Scotland, thank heavens, is still largely holding out against this unlovely trend): dark wood, comforting gloom, silvered mirrors, small windows, the distinctive smell of spilt beer and dog and furniture polish. Oh yes, and it sells Stella Artois 20p a pint cheaper than anywhere else in town - always a key consideration for the budget drinker.

Many a happy half-hour or hour was spent there last month digesting the work I'd just seen and planning out my next little cultural snack (while the main event of Edinburgh's frenetic August, the International Arts Festival, can be seen as a banquet of haute cuisine, the majority of the shows in the Fringe - mostly by tiny amateur or semi-pro companies, often by schools or University theatre groups - are more like Pot Noodle: welcome sustenance at the time, but unlikely to linger long in the memory).

Although I was mostly there on my own, from time to time, briefly, there was a Drinking Companion. The greatest of all the Drinking Companions I have known, as it happens: a lovely, sad, funny, wise man who is likely to appear often in these rambling anecdotes of mine. Like me, he is a long-time EdFest aficionado; unlike me, he has found a way to make a living out of his private passion, and is now promoting international theatre exchanges. If I make it to Edinburgh, I can always rely on him being there. I can't rely on him being available to meet up very much, because he's such a busy chap these days. But there will always be a few hastily convened alcoholic rendezvous (usually in The Skulking Tour Guide - whichever pub is nearest to the theatre where he has abandoned his American charges [cultural tourism for wealthy Americans is another of his bowstrings] at the half-time interval).

And yes, the shadow of the Lost Love passed through at one point as well. It was the darnedest thing. I had been on an extended holiday, away from the city, the country where we both live, and had been in a completely different mindset - revisiting the friends, reliving the life I had before I went overseas. I had scarcely thought about Her in a couple of months. But then, but then..... a song came on the jukebox by the band Garbage. From their second album, I think. A release from several years ago. This was an odd musical selection (randomly generated from the machine, I'm sure; I never saw anyone put any money into it while I was there - the Scots are quite properly too thrifty for such nonsense!): I never heard Garbage play on any of the many other occasions I hung out there in those two weeks; indeed, I don't think I ever heard another song that was more than 4 or 5 years old. A somewhat mysterious oddity, then. And a song with resonances. 'Our song', you might say. She played it on the one and only occasion she stayed at my apartment (usually we stayed at hers). Subsequently we both quoted lines from it at each other in our barrage of SMS flirting ("You look so fine. I want to break your heart, and give you mine."). After The Fall, for some weeks I would perversely torture myself with the memories by playing it over and over again.

But that was six months or more before. I thought I was over it. Until Dame Coincidence smacked me in the ear with that song, and unleashed a stampede of regrets to trample my heart anew.

I thought I was over it! Perhaps you never completely get over an affair like that. And there's something about bars, especially traditional, old-fashioned, dark bars that teases wistfulness out of you when you least expect it. I put myself in harm's way whenever I step through the door, I know I do.

But this is who I am - "I could no more change the colour of my eyes."