I find a seat directly opposite my reason for being here; a stunning ceramic bar frontage crafted by Burmantofts of Leeds, one of just fourteen left in the country. I can only spare it a glance before I am distracted by the pixels flickering away in my periphery, there is a television pride of place, right next to the bar. Decades of history shrinking under the glare of sky sports news. I instinctively turn away from the brightness, shifting in my seat. It’s one of those chairs you only really see piled up in the corner of a town hall. Scratchy. It scrapes against the skin on the back of my legs as I pivot to face the back room. The smell of grease and crispy onions crawls along the corridor, toward me. Smells good. Am I hungry? No. Look at the menu anyway because I am nosy. Something about cowboys, and the incorrect use of ‘your’. Why cowboys? Does not matter. Try to remember why I am here. Back to the bar, try to concentrate, ignore that flash of light in the corner of my eye. Something needling at me, but I don’t know what it is, something building. Shake it off. Take a sip of my pint. Clumsy. Not me, the beer. It’s a bit of a mess, an awkward combination of hops that act in conflict rather than concert. Not the best. I think it might have been on for a bit. Probably not as long as that blackcurrant sour they’ve got a cask of though. If they aren’t getting through a local pale ale quick enough, heaven knows how they are gonna shift that. Imagine it. Like ribena that’s been left out in the sun. For days. With the cap off. Pungent. Acidic. Shake it off. Look at the bar. Beautiful. Cascading arcs of green and yellow, like olive oil pooling into mustard. Not the bold yellow Colmans of my youth or the radioactive American stuff. No, the more subtle tones of French mustard. There is that needling again, something is not right. Shake it off. Why do I keep saying that? Wait. My ears finally attune. The needle becomes a nail, the final one in the coffin. I turn to my friend ‘Is that a fucking instrumental cover of a Taylor Swift song?’. He confirms my suspicion. It has been instrumental covers of pop songs ever since we walked in apparently. ‘I don’t think I like it here’.