The fourth of July was a perfect English summer’s day. As the evening closes and the sun begins to set, the sky is every colour a summer evening sky can be: deep blue, baby blue, yellow, green, pink, red, purple. Thin slivers of grey cloud are skirting the horizon as I watch from an upstairs window. Alone in this big quiet house I can hear the laughter and conversations of villagers at the pub across the road. They are drinking a pint to a long warm Saturday. The pigeons are vying for attention with the barks of the blind village dog. He haunts the pub scrounging for food every night.
When I was young, pints at the little village pub were only pulled for tired old men who used The Eagle as an escape-valve after work. Now, under new ownership, it’s the heart of this little Hampshire village. Children play in the grassy back garden. Teenage boys play pool on the bar side. The village eccentric, dressed in green overalls, brings his own engraved silver mug for a pint. Every few minutes he steps outside to puff on his pipe (always complaining under his breath that the smoking ban has ruined his evenings). Last year he got married, and the whole village took part. He owns the village donkeys and collects Aston Martins. He tips his cap to me whenever he sees me, accuses me of slipping into a terrible American accent, and stands when a woman enters the room.
Friday night is curry night at The Eagle, and last night my Dad and I shared poppadoms while we listened to locals debate the new drafts. Not enough bite. Too bitter. Not deep enough. It took forever to order a drink; they had to change the barrel. Everyone knows each other here, but I feel like a stranger now, a foreigner in the village that has been home since I was two. When my parents first moved here from the north, they were warned that you remained a newbie until you’d been around for at least 10 years. After 24 years here, everyone knows my Dad, who used to be known as “slippers,” due to an unfortunate tendency to forget to change his footwear when heading out for a pint. You can hardly blame him; the pub is just at the other end of our garden wall. We commonly have a collection of Guinness glasses in our dishwasher — why buy cans of Guinness when you can nip across the road to get take-away on tap?
It’s a beautiful evening for a pint outside the village pub. Wimbledon finals weekend. It’s a pity there’s no British win to toast. But on July 4th, I can’t say I’m too unhappy that there’s an American contender. I have divided loyalties now. I’m a bit of a foreigner here.
