The Joy of Being Anti-Social

My local pub has only been reopened for a couple of weeks and already I'm being anti-social.  You see, te problem with the old place being open for business again is that all the old faces are back, including, sadly, some colossal pub bores.  The sort who aren't content merely to bore you, but to try and argue with you about anything under the sun, regardless of whether they know anything about the subject or not.  Their ignorance is no barrier to them being right and you being wrong.  Curiously enough, I don't go to the pub for confrontations and arguments - I get enough of those at work.  So I prefer to avoid these kinds of characters.  Even if that means being incredibly anti-social and ignoring groups of people I know.  Which is the situation I found myself in the other week.  Actually, there was a bit more to it than just the presence of bores among a group I knew.  This particular group of former regulars had deserted the pub years ago, during the reign of terror that was Deke (not his real name, but close enough) to go and drink in another pub just outside of town.  They were always so smug about the supposed superiority of their new 'local', (except that it wasn't local for any of them, it was miles away and inconvenient to get to), but every time we had a new landlord at my local, they'd condescend to come back a couple of times.  (Of course, during the latest closure of my local, they couldn't be smug, as theirs was run by the same landlord and it closed at the same time, leaving them without a pub as well, much to my satisfaction).

Anyway, right on cue, they turned up at my local the other week, expecting me to join them.  Except that I didn't.  For one thing they were sitting out in the garden - I'm afraid that the allure of pub gardens has always eluded me, especially after dark.  So I stayed inside.  There was a perfunctory attempt to speak to me, but I made the cardinal mistake of talking about me, rather than them, (which I didn't think unreasonable as I was asked what I'd been doing lately - always a stupid question, I mean, what else do any of us do other than exist?).  But the main thing keeping me inside was the fact that not only had this group brought their own resident pub bore with them, but they had also been joined in the garden by our own resident bore.  Which meant, of course, that there would be no conversation, as such, going on, just two competing monologues, both devoted to telling everyone how they were wrong about everything.  Not only do I not go to the pub for arguments and confrontations, I don't go to be talked at, either.   Especially talked at in stereo.  So, I stayed in the lounge bar, had a pleasant chat with the barmaid and read a bit of the newspaper I hadn't previously had a chance to peruse, all accompanied by a couple of pints.  All rather pleasant and not at all boring.  I fear that my anti-social behaviour might have been taken personally, as I haven't heard from any of them since.  The thing is, though, that I don't care.  I think that we all know that they are only trying to sneak back into the old local because the new landlord of their pub is proposing things like Drum'n'Base nights, (he seems to think this will attract new customers to a village pub mainly frequented by locals with an average age of seventy three), rather than because they actually like the place or its loyal customers like me.  Besides, I'm perversely proud of having been so anti-social, it was quite a return to form on my part!