Im writing this in Wetherspoons Newcastle waiting for my hourly train back down the coast.
Don’t Judge.
I can see the pint of beer for £2.19 or less, and food on the menu with a free drink for under £7.
The table is slightly sticky.
My bum is on a hard seat, as the more cloth backed moon chairs around a table are taken.
It has 3 floors, and it has an air of something in it, that I cant quite work out. Maybe freedom, reluctant freedom against a system, somewhere between that and content to be stuck in a victim mindset.
Faded images of the old city off Newcastle adorn the walls.
Yet. It is full.
(for the non UK reader, Wetherspoons is a pub chain in the UK, known for, well, cheap beer, food and Brexit)
And not that long ago, four of the Wetherspooons pubs in the north east had my fairly regular custom.
One of them was a place I went weekly to eat, the meal out with my friend who housed me when I had no where to go.
The first night I got there, penniless and with nothing, he took me out for food.
And that was the same every week.
Then another one nearby was one weekly bus pass away. So, if I went out for a walk, and I walked loads, take a bus into the city, then walk along the river and up to the beach, then back to Wetherspoons for a cheap lunch and drink, before getting the bus back.
In that same one, it was full.
And I was in it at 10am.
For coffee, when the coffee was 99p for free refills (I knew the prices of all the coffee in all four of them), when I had very little money, coffee, or 3 cups of it at 99p was great, Costa or local independent coffee shop was out of the question.
People were drinking at 10am.
It was their place to be.
I was in there on my own, lost in many thoughts.
In Wetherspoons, I began to see them. Talking to the staff every now and then, or maybe the other people not far away, on adjacent tables, get a sense of peoples situations. Their torments, their issues, who had offended them, their rage.
Rarely any joy.
Drinking at 10am.
What were their lives like? To need to be in Wetherspoons drinking at 10am?
But then, it dawned on me.
Its like what they say, don’t complain about the traffic when you are traffic.
I was practically homeless, jobless and drinking in Wetherspoons at 10am. But I was alone.
The only difference was that I was drinking coffee.
It wasn’t just a place in which I could see others. But I saw myself.
I saw at the time that I was no different to the 10am drinkers in Wetherspoons.
I was scraping around for the last 99p for 3 cups of coffee, some weeks.
There was no moral superiority to be had, my pretense at even trying to read a book was just that a pretence. To all purposes I was the same, a human being lost, and wondering where their home was. Also realising that it was one thing walking alone, drinking alone was something I wouldn’t do, and being in a busy Wetherspoons meant that I was in the vicinity of people, alone, but not on my own, alone, actually but never lonely.
And where was I, also somewhere between feeling wounded and oppressed, and not being able to see, myself or the situation I was in.
Once I began to work, Wetherspoons was a great place, like now for working and writing, cheap coffee, the noise of people around, lunch at a fairly reasonable price, and it became a place that was distant from the home I was staying in, gave me a break and a boundary.
Was I the kind of person who would judge people in Wetherspoons before all this? Nope not really, and even now, there’s a difference between the persons in Wetherspoons and the values of its Owner. Sometimes I would be afraid of the noise in Wetherspoons if I was standing outside it waiting for a bus on an evening, sometimes when I walked in I realised I had to toughen up and be confident in myself just a little bit more, to walk in. Amongst the noise.
Did going to Wetherspoons help me, heal me, save me? I’m not sure, was it somewhere where I could be invisible, where I could feel human, where I didn’t have to pretend and ultimately be anything or anyone other than a person in need of a coffee at 10am on random Wednesday mornings. Was it a place that gave me an insight into the darkness of my own soul? No, but I was a place which holds a kind of static, stable memory of a safe place to go to be just like anyone else. Where I didn’t have to be the me that looks like they have everything together, that has degrees and can think, the me that has a reputation, the me that had ‘a ministry’ or a ‘calling’ .
Where I didn’t have to talk to people where I had to try and pretend to be ok. Even people who I know now would have been fine with me saying my real stuff, i didnt know even how to articulate it, or want to ask for help, or bring others into the drama I was hiding. I wasn’t going to be asked the question ‘How are you’ in Wetherspoons at 10am in the morning.
In Wetherspoons at 10am I didnt have to do any of these things.
I was just a stranger in a pub drinking at 10am. Just like anyone else. Because I am like anyone else.
Life might be more about being the lost stranger in the pub.
Someone trying to find their way home.
Speaking of which…my train is due..
James Ballantyne 
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