The spring sunshine still flooded the little pub garden and the air was warm, just as it had been a minute before. Glasses and cutlery clinked and sparkled in the hubbub and friends and colleageus chatted and laughed in a dozen conversations on a handful of wooden tables. Up until that particular moment, it had all been quite pleasant.
I looked down the long wooden bench, scanning the faces of my colleagues. I was wondering whether I had imagined what I had heard, right there in the garden of The Crown, and whether I was alone in feeling so paralysed and appalled... or whether this was just one of those terrible dreams that people have and wake up from in sweat and relief.
We'd gone to The Crown, rather than The Bull today because someone had seen the blue sky through the slatted blinds of the office and had realised that such a glorious Friday lunchtime requires an establishment with an outdoors. Taking a punt on how warm it would actually be, they'd suggested it and we'd all gone along, either to enjoy it, or even better, prove him wrong.
Conversation at these lunchtimes can get quite fruity. Beer loosens tongues and sometimes the language and the jokes drop clumsily into filth with a muddy splash of shock and laughter. I don't like it, but I've come to reason it out as cultural banter or latent schoolboy humour. There's always a sense of affection behind it, in a uniquely British way. You know you're alright when the group start insulting you. If your nickname has four letters, you're in.
There is a line though, to this badinage, and today, unfortunately, it was crossed. It was stampeded over. I wasn't expecting it, I still can't quite believe it happened, and the more I think about it, the more horrified I become. You see, as I sat there enjoying the feel-goods of a Friday lunchtime, one of my colleagues told a racist joke.
It wasn't borderline, on the fence or diluted, this joke; neither was there a question of how you could perceive it! It felt like it had parachuted into the conversation direct from the 1970s and it was unquestionably racist. The joke poked fun at one ethnic group for no apparent humorous reason and relied on the dangerous premise that members of another should be automatically persecuted based on the colour of their skin. It was anything but funny.
After a while, when I had processed what had happened, I was furious. I was furious that my friends thought this acceptable in 2014 and could sit there grinning; I was furious that my colleague had not only judged it appropriate, but had committed the joke to memory and clearly considered it to be hilarious.
Most of all, I was furious with myself for not doing anything. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to say something, anything to protest, to get up and walk away, to reason, to make a stand, to be a voice for good! I am so annoyed that I didn't! It was a moment and I had failed. 'Evil prevails,' went the quote, rolling around in my head, 'when good men sit back and do nothing.' Evil prevails...
Sometimes this world really sucks. On a pleasant afternoon, with articulate, clever and well-educated men from the 21st Century, an ancient and dangerous beast raises its ugly head over bowls of chips and pints of coke. It growls and it snaps, barking obscenities with old-fashioned hatred and death in its terrible eyes. And what do we do? We laugh and we do nothing, enjoying the sunshine and the beer. But the monster in the garden has seen it all before, this sunshine and beer: in the cotton fields of Alabama, on the sweltering railroads of the Confederate South, in the streets and cities, the ghettos and the townships of South Africa, the beast knows the warm white sunshine and the sweet smell of beer all too well.
Had all this happened in work-time, I'd have a clear responsibility, but for now, all I can do is vote with my feet. This is why I won't be joining them at the pub next week, or any other week for the foreseeable future.
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