Personal

The Dog and Duck

Welcome to Margate.

"Who would go for a holiday in Kent?" I wondered earlier this week. Kent's a gateway: a county of ports, not a destination. It's the county I spent the majority of my teenage years in. A county of fond memories, not a place for holidays.

So I smiled to myself as I drove down this evening. It wasn't a smile for Coldplay singing Everything's Not Lost as I left work. It wasn't a juvenile smile for the road sign pointing the way to Thong, for the radio announcing traffic jams far away from my route, or for the boy racer on the A12.

No, I smiled as I answered my own question. I am the sort of person who holidays in Kent. And that is why tonight you'll find me at the Dog and Duck, the fourth place I called into for a room this weekend and the first that would accommodate me.

Like the rest of the town, the pub is sleeping. (It calls itself a hotel, but I prefer to be accurate.) On-season I'd imagine its vast lounge bar is heaving, but tonight the regular clientele space themselves out to fill the emptiness.

The result - at first glance - is a bar of loners. Of the half-dozen here, almost no-one acknowledges anyone else. Not the early twenties woman with paw-print tattoos on each breast playing an arcade game; not the bloke sitting in the window with his pint; not the red-head laughing at the bar, or the bar maid reading the newspaper. Only the guys around the pool-table seem to be interacting.

But if you wait, you'll notice they're closer than their physical spacing indicates. A pool-player rubs the tattooed girl's belly fondly as if proud of his unborn child; another is trying to chat up the red-head whose chortle reveals his lack of success.

Leaving only me to stand out alone, taking another sip of my pint.