Welcome to twitter. Please enter quietly, and close the door behind you. We highly recommend the purchase of ale or stout in preference to Babycham or Bacardi and coke, as refusal often offends. The bar nuts may be covered in wee, but avoidance of said nuts will be viewed by the clientele as snobbery (village urine not good enough for you, eh, Londoner?) so get ’em in your gob and swallow, and, whilst we’re on this theme, there’ll be nothing but icy water in the toilet taps and if you want soap I suggest you go back to London. (There may be a morsel of soap, the approximate size of a cough lozenge, under one of the sinks, but the odds are it’s fallen in something you’d rather not touch. It’s a swings and roundabouts situation.)
The best chairs are already taken. The best chairs will always be taken. Contrive to stand artfully, casually, with an arm draped on the fireplace, and await an appropriate moment to join the conversation. The conversation will not stop for you. The conversation does not want you.
Stranger: ‘Do you have any hot soup?’
Twitter: ‘No.’
Stranger: ‘Do you have any coffee then?’
Twitter: ‘No.’
Stranger: ‘Do you have any, uh, hot chocolate?’
Twitter: ‘We’ve spirits and beers. If it’s something hot you want, have tea.
Stranger: ‘Then you have tea?’
Twitter: ‘No.’
An American Werewolf in London
Compose your opening gambit with the sort of care otherwise reserved for wedding vows, eulogies, excuses for why you weren’t, in fact, working late at the office when you claimed you were. Charming self-deprecation is the way to go. ‘Tiptoeing onto twitter with all the panache of a geriatric tortoise’, for instance, although it’s possible someone (currently writing a blog not a million miles from here) may have used that one already. At any rate, it’s wise to be inventive with your self-deprecation. ‘I really don’t know what I’m doing!’ or ‘What’s this all about, then?’ have all the freshness of the year-old turd you will find down the back of the gents’ toilet if you poke about for a bit.
Whatever you do, incomer, don’t announce yourself with a pocketful of flyers. It’s advisable to buy the clientele a round of drinks before trying to sell them your book/film/interpretative dance project. Twitter is a conversation. Peruse the word ‘conversation’ in your dictionary. Reconsider your pre-planned material. Respond, instead, to a topic in mid-flow, unless you’d quite like to be chased all the way to the village green by strange men wielding pitchforks and banjos. I mean, picture the scene: there’s a nice juicy chat going on, the beer’s flowing, another few logs have been thrown on the fire… and up you jump, the cuckoo clock of the pub customer, with a frankly shit line from your novel. And picture, too, the peculiar looks you’d earn if you’d brought along your coterie of ventriloquist’s dummies, and every hour, on the hour, one of those leapt up as well with a frankly unbelievable review of your novel. And everyone could see your lips moving.
These things will not endear you to the clientele.
This is a local pub for local people.
And then, suddenly, before you know it, you are the clientele. You’re in one of the chairs. (Not the chairs by the fire, but still… small mercies.) You’re composing blogs about how to behave in this pub that you think of, now, as your own. You look up, disgruntled, from your oddly-named ale, at the stiff blast of wind when an incomer opens the door. You tut when ‘something white, not too dry’ is asked for at the bar. ‘What’s wrong with the nuts?’ you say quietly. You have long come to terms with the fact that some of the cleverest things you say will slip soundlessly into the ether. You don’t even mind.
Because this is a noisy pub. And on twitter, as in life, it’s not always about you.
Mine’s a vodka, if you’re asking.
Lynsey White 