One for the Road: Changing colours…

Most of the time, people’s faces are fairly consistent colour-wise, wouldn’t you say?

It is true that frightened faces are whiter, embarrassed faces, redder, angry faces, purpler, wealthy faces, tanner, and dead faces, greyer… but most of the time the tinge of any given set of cheeks remains pretty steady throughout life.

It takes a potent force to change the colour of one’s natural countenance.

Well, I was socialising in a busy pub the other week when I watched a man’s face undergo one of the most dramatic tonal shifts I’ve witnessed to date.

Allow me to tell you the semi-cruel circumstances that triggered this almost-divine illumination.

Like most good stories, it is set in a pub, involves drink and bad manners, and ends in tears.

I first ran into our man early in the night.

Like Jesus before the transfiguration, he was soon to shine with the radiance of a thousand suns. Unlike Jesus, however, he knew nothing about it.

He sat himself beside me for a drink. Happy to see him, I paid for his pint, and took no notice of his appearance.

When I picture him at that moment, grinning, sat high and proud on the bar stool beside me, I see him – and his jaws – in both healthy and steady hue.

Perched by the counter, we laughed and joked and amused one and other with reminiscences from our not-so-distant past. You see, I have known this fella for many years. Since childhood, in fact.

As our relationship has evolved over the years – from inseparable brothers to sworn enemies to old familiars – I have come to know well many of his habits, hobbies, predications and foibles. Pertinent to this story are the following…

One: He has never shied away from a pint.

Two: He has never shied away from another pint.

Three: He would argue with the neighbour’s dog over who owns the bowl of water at the backdoor.

Four: He has always had untrustworthy bowels.

Five: He has more courage than sense; a dangerous trait for a man who struggles to differentiate innocent wind from something more sinister.

Anyway, it was one of those nights when chance unexpectedly brings old friends together.

It seemed every second person that entered the pub – some striding, some staggering – was another character from the story of our childhood.

Jesus, the craic was ninety for about an hour. Drinking, laughing, slagging, smoking. Everyone was in good humour. Pints had lifted our spirits; but soon one man’s would be dropped from a great height.

Our man was rightly on and had started slagging another old friend. It was funny at first. It was personal at second. Then it was all-out war at third.

“You think you’re the quare funny boy, don’t ye?,” said the offended party, looking menacingly at our cackling assailant.

“And ye are funny, funny surely… Oh, here, I nearly forgot, it must be about time you’re looking them shorts back… Ye know the ones ye left down the side of my bed.”

Our man’s laughter faded fast. Quiet and panicky, he put his pint to his mouth… But he could not keep it there forever.

The rest of us exchanged inquiring glances, searching for the eye of another who might know the code to crack this cryptic line. After an interminable slug, our friend had no choice but to lower his glass. A series of defensive profanities fell from his lips, ending in, “so what are ye on about?”

The wounded man did not hesitate to clarify.

“Ye know the shorts that ye wore that night you stayed in my house years ago? Mind, ye wore them to bed, filled them to the brim, then flung them down the side of my bed and never said a word about it to anyone? Ye know them ones? My ma found them a couple of days later. I kept it to myself for about the last 15 years. But you’ve annoyed me, so…” he said, and with a winning smirk, gulped victoriously from his pint.

What happened next was without precedent.

Within seconds, our man went from a human-hue, to redder than the rising sun. It was a beamer for the ages. Had I not seen this change with my own eyes, I would not have believed that a man – nor any other living organism – was capable of producing the hot, incandescent glow that overtook his jaws.

I swear that if at that moment, the energy from his face had been harnessed, processed, and converted into electricity, every light bulb in Beragh could have been powered by pure embarrassment for the next 150 years.