A Pint At The Haymarket Bar With My Bad Decisions (And The Flicker Of A Woman Who Wasn’t There)

Slid into the Haymarket Bar on a late half-afternoon when the light was sitting crooked above the tramlines, aye that slant-grey sliver-shine that makes the windows look hungover and the whole street’s filled with that low tired buzz, and I pushed through the door into the warm amber murmur of bodies half-talking, half-drifting, the scent of spilled lager, wet coats, and old wood rising like an unholy hymn, and I found myself a corner seat beneath the muted TV where horses sprinted nowhere fast, and the barman handed me a pint with that nod folk give when they ken you’ve been here too many times to deserve ceremony, and the foam settled slow as a patient thought, and I felt the day loosen its jaw around me.

And the bar breathed its usual symphony of glassclink, throatclear, banter-whish, pintdown thump, a jazz of human noise blethering in the rafters, and I let it flow through me, aye, let the pub’s heartbeat knock soft at my ribs.

The regulars hunched at their posts like old saints waiting for a miracle that had not shown in years: the man with the nicotine fingers counting imaginary victories on the betting slip; the woman in the red scarf talking to her pint like it was a stubborn relative; the pair of daft lads arguing over which football god betrayed them last; and the old boy in the corner muttering stories to the air with his whole chest, as if the universe were listening through a crack in the ceiling.

And me, I sat there nursing the pint that tasted like cheap gold and old mistakes, and I let the foam froth at my lip as my thoughts wandered their staccato zigzag, that familiar scatterflight: Dalry nightshift still buzzing in the back of my neurons, childhood mitten fluttering in the corners of the mind, the greyblank sky hanging above Morrison Street like a bruise not yet formed.

Then—och here it comes—the flicker. Not her. Not her form, not her face. Just the flicker—that sideways neon-laugh ripple the Salamander Street woman left stitched into the ribs of the city, a bright-sharp tug somewhere behind the eyes like the memory had inhaled and exhaled through me quick as a fox slipping round a bin, her ghostprint glinting off the brass taps for a halfsecond, aye just long enough to make me turn my head as though she might be stepping in from the rain though there was no rain and no her and no sense in looking.

And the pint glass caught the light wrong—wrong—held it for a heartbeat the way she once held her smirk, twisting the reflection into a shape that felt too alive, too bright for the room’s dull charm.

I took a long drink, and the foam kissed my lip, and the bitterness warmed the throat, and I let that flicker settle, neither chasing nor fighting it, just letting it slink back into the thought-hollows where these things go when the city’s not in the mood to make ghosts visible.

Two men began telling a joke that never reached a punchline, each laughing through the other, drowning themselves in the sound; the old boy in the corner declared the world doomed in a voice that sounded like gravel learning to pray; someone dropped a pint and the smash rang through the bar like a wee cathedral bell, a sharp clang, a reminder that everything breaks on schedule.

The truth is, I wasn’t in the pub for the pint. Or the warmth. Or the noise. Or the refuge from the drygrey day. I was there because sometimes the city asks you to sit still in a room full of strangers until your thoughts line up enough to walk home without tripping over yourself. And maybe, because some part of me hoped the door might swing open and her echo might step in, not her, no, I’m no daft, just that spark she leaves in the space she never occupies, the neon glint that makes even the dullest hour feel slightly, dangerously, alive.

But the door stayed shut and the day stayed dry and the pint stayed bitter and the world kept breathing its beer-breath heat around me. And when I stood to leave, coat on, head clearer than it had any right to be, I felt that familiar wee tug, the one she stitched into me the night I met her—a thread pulling toward something I cannot name, a bright pulse beneath the city’s dull skin.

Outside, the light had shifted— just a fraction—and the whole street looked a bit less tired, as if it had blinked once on my behalf.

Dalry Road is a book-length prose-poetry project set in Edinburgh, unfolding through long, rhythm-driven fragments that trace a city across night, memory, and movement. Neither novel nor traditional poetry collection, the book occupies a liminal space between narrative and lyric, where sentences stretch, loop, and accumulate like footsteps on wet stone.The text follows a wandering first-person voice moving through streets, bus stops, stairwells, and fleeting encounters in the hours before morning. Weather, light, and sound are not background but active forces: rain writes, streetlamps mutter, stone remembers. The city is experienced from within, not described from a distance, and language mirrors this intimacy through dense, breath-heavy phrasing and a jazz-like cadence influenced by writers such as James Joyce and Jack Kerouac.

Rather than telling a linear story, Dalry Road assembles an atmosphere. Past and present blur, faces recur in altered forms, and memory intrudes without warning. The fragments resist resolution, favouring repetition, drift, and sensation over explanation. What emerges is a portrait of urban consciousness at night—half-dreaming, half-alert—where walking becomes a way of thinking and listening.