The only light in the street that's always on is the one above Mike's Place.

You have stumbled across the world's first virtual illegal drinking establishment. This is the terminal for trenchcoat troublemakers, the rendezvous for rainmac rascals. Remember, though toots; we like Mike's how it is. You want something changed, talk to Pete, the Stepney Fisticuffer. The tall psycopath by the door with glitter on his Borstal tear. He'll start with your face. This week the barman's been spending some time off, so here's a little Christmas tale to keep you all out of mischief. Usual bilious reactions to the sick, beautiful ruin of life seen over this bar next year.

Christmas Past

Fuck me if it wasn't the Old Huntsman with a thin flashlight beam scratching at the window without getting through. The landlord brushed past the landlady, amorous with Christmas brandy.
'He's late,' she said.
'Right. Listen love, I'm popping upstairs for a bit of a sit-down. Will you be alright?'
'Think I can manage. Keep them watered, listen to them put their exes in front of the fireside jury and refuse credit to anyone who stands on their feet or picks up their glass with their hands.'
'Who's my girl?'

In he came, putting off the flashlight, with a cough like weeping bagpipes. He was a fucking gentleman, this one. He came in at lunch, asked after her kids. Nodded compassionately when she told him every day that they lived in another town and didn't see her. Came in again at about five and thought of ways to persuade her to betray the landlord until they rang the bell and he'd grin before staggering cheerfully into the streets. He kept his hair short, though it was greasy. He wore a suit, but it was frayed on the cuffs and ankles. He always offered her a drink.
'Good evening, love. Double gin on special, slimline tonic. Whatever you're having. Scratchings.'
He always asked for food at the bar, always had it on the saucer in front of him for the night.
'I'll have a gin with you, if I may.'
'Of course you may. Where's he tonight?'
'Upstairs. For a break. Don't get ideas.'
'Can I help my thing for you?'
'Come on. I'm hardly love affair material. You just like me because I give you gin. Doesn't do this girl's heart any good to think that all the men who love her are drunk.'
'Maybe. Maybe. Still, my whole world's drunk and you're the brightest thing in it. Why should that be different if I saw the whole show sober? Sorry, ain't going to squabble. Got an evening dark and cold and joyless like a pit ponies' ringpiece out there, I'll get some cards on the go.'
'No-one's in.'
'Shit. Guess I'll have another drink. Nothing to do, yeah? Looks like a drinking night to me. Going to have that Christmas glass with me?'
'Yeah, that's nice, love. Season of goodwill and you want to do me in trying to keep up with you when you're thirsty.',
'You know that Christmas when we bumped into each other in the offie and went walking? Remember?'
'Sure.'
'Because you weren't being professional in my face all fucking afternoon. I wasn't wearing this barfly coat you hate so much. That's why you remember. What did we get up to?'
'Went for a walk. You suggested we have an affair. You know, I would have done if you hadn't asked me like that.'
'Fuck me, honey, don't they teach you the golden rule at barmaid college? Don't give your admirers something real to regret, your best customers will defect to an undertaker. What was that there, then?'
'Baby, you asked me. I get asked shit all the time, no-one takes me by the hand and pulls me into some room with all the extra-marital shit all laid out in silk knickers and French booze. That's why.'
They drink gin like professionals. Carol thinks of Christmas gone by, thinks of a young man about to own a string of nightculbs wanting to populate his chain of great boozers with the smartest men and her, queenlike in her landlady's pearls, everyone asking 'How's the lady?' He thinks of Christmases gone by, days free from his jobs, whatever they were. They tuck into the gin, tomorrow a vague crock of shit that will end like today. On familiar territory before the goodnight horrors kick in. Fuck. Christmas past. People drinking mulled wine, tiptoeing round like you've got some new, contagious form of cancer drooling down your chin. Guys from old adventures who didn't call when your life collapsed, ringing because the season has made them feel guilty.

'Oh shit. That's it on the gin. I nagged him, love. I really did. He was supposed to go down the cash and carry. Something came up.'
'His dick?'
'Shit, you're forward tonight, eh? No. Not that. How about scotch instead?'
'Yeah. Happy Christmas, hey Carol?'
The clock ticks with a little sigh and lunge, sigh and lunge.
'What you doing this Christmas, baby?'
'I'm moving on at last Carol. Going to jump off the wagon, hang with the freefall boys awhile and then hide somewhere.'
'What a resolution!'
'What about you, baby?'
'Looking after your friends for you. Cooking. Getting touched up under the mistletoe by rank old bastards with yellow hands. So that's your future, is it? We're about out of drinkable scotch as well, to be honest. I can do you a vodka. How about a nice Bloody Mary?'
'Yeah, that'd work. Cheers, Carol. Have one yourself.'
'I will. Not getting any work, might as well join you eh? How do you like your Bloody Mary?'
'Not too spicy. Or too fruity. Maybe just some bitters and a little brandy, eh?'
'Might as well, it being Christmas and all.'
He sipped at his drink, winced, and downed the rest. Looked at her eyes with the casual affront� of the habitually drunk. Turned away, ran his hand along the bar as he went behind it and helped himself to the bottle of vodka, plucking it from the rack as though it were an orchid. He filled two fresh glasses with ice. Poured drinks for them.
'You're not allowed behind there, you know.'
'Are you going to run away with me, Carol?'
'Aye. I'll just get me coat. Fuck off, baby. I let everyone else tease me.'
'No, I mean it.'
'Bit sudden, eh? You've been coming here for two fucking years and you ask me this on Christmas. What a rare bastard you are, baby. Why now?'
'Because I'm going. When I was coming in here every night and seeing you, fine. Going away and not seeing you, that's when it comes into my saggy head that you're just not going to be there anymore. So I have to ask if you'll come because drifting slowly away from you would break my heart. I know I shouldn't have said a single word of that, not ever.'
'You're quite drunk, baby.'
'You've kept up tonight, love. Coming?'

Charlie

Another drunk comes in.
'Evening Charlie.'
'Hi, Charles.'
'Hi, is he behind the bar tonight now or what's going on?'
'Just tonight, Charlie. What can I get you? Carol's having a Christmas rest from doing all the food and shit for us lot.'
'Oh. Pint then. And a whisky.'
'No whisky, Charlie. The landlord's run out.'
'He's not much of a fucking landlord then, is he?'
'No Charlie. There you go, on me. For Christmas.'
Carol smiled as Charlie shuffled to his chair by the fire.
'You paying for that?'
'Of course. I'll put in for you as well, eh?'
'You do that. I'm not running off with you, love.'
'I wouldn't show you a good time anyway. If you change your mind, I'll be on the train station at eight o'clock, I'll have enough bottles for the journey, but you can bring some if you want. Christmas next year could be Paris. I'm going to London initially, taking the Waterloo.'
He took his stool again, toasted her and downed another glass. Took a cigarette from his packet, wrote with a biro from the quiz pot. 'I love you Carol,' on the cigarette.
'You're really fuckin' pretty, Carol.'
'No I'm not.' She put it in her mouth, he lit a match for her.
'You are, but in your way. Sorry, that was a shit thing to say. You might know what I was getting at. I'm off, love. You know were I'll be.'

In the street crushed stars like powdered glass under his feet while the air made smoke shapes from his face.

Christmas Future, all those years burning ahead, full of joy. Full of joy, but all the same. Full of joy, but all the same, sometimes it's time to put on a coat for good. Carol smudged a cigarette into the icy pavement. Made for the station.
Carol waited an hour. It's possible, of course, that he forgot or got delayed. Among the cheerful pink embraces of rejoining travellers she burned like a yellow light on the frosted steps. She put dignity over her face like Saturday paint and went back behind the bar.

Drinking With the Freefall Boys

A postcard, apparently carried by pocket before its journey by post and 'plane, is on the bar with the bills.
J'ai perdu ma vie. Que le temps vienne O� les couers s'�prennent.
'Fuck's this?' asks Charlie.
'It's like a code. He used to write French because the landlord can't read it. He's gone to France. Somewhere called Ouezzane.'
'You going?'
'Yes.'

Charlie walks her to the station foyer.
She gives him the keys.
'What's this? Is this the keys to the bar?'
She smiles at him before getting on a train. It's handy at the platform as only happens in stories. She waves from the window, shouts 'Christmas present.'
Charlie turns, runs creakily for the bar, doesn't look back.

She sits in the carriage, December air coming snow-clouded from her lips. Opens a packet of cigarettes. The night air folds around the carriage.

ENDS

Okay, you fucks. It's time to get real lyrical. The Quicksilver Kid has been in touch and sent us a couple of jewels from the mean streets of Edinburgh. Cheers, my man.

Filth

Send me filthy rooms, carpets crammed
With ash, empty bottles stained with
Wine

Send me cold nights in warm places,
Old friends that can't fill spaces,

Send me photos, memories and scents
Lonely nights in crowded places,
Crowded moments in empty rooms.

Tell me of good times, good friends,
Bar tables and candlelit dinners

I never will speak again.

Dress the kill in weak will & poetry

Another drunken murder
Of another drunken memory.
Another night when the murderer kills the
Murderer.

Mystery, mystery; and the killer lives to kill again.

Murder hurts
Killing kills

Stop

Call me

Dress to kill
And make me the victim again

Okay, be nice to each other, you fucks, it's a mean old bastard of a world out there and you're all in it alone.

Don't forget to stay in touch, now.

The top picture is Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. Next down is Cocktails and Broken Hearts by Jack Vettriano, last is Study for Fetish by same. Cheers to Quicksilver for the new paintings. Cheers to Brett for turning down the lights and fixing the sign above the door. Cheers to Evil Friend for turning out to be irreplacable as expected. Okay. That's the bell, so fuck off and pour yourselves a Merry Christmas. See you in zero-one.