The bar was a small one. Mulled wine and homemade popcorn accented the musty interior. All in all, it wasn’t that bad of a bar. Not great. But not bad either. It was a local tavern above anything else. One could see it in the way the barkeepers’ eyes shone at every other guest. The Regulars returning to their watering hole. They knew each other by name and preferred drink. Young men would bring perspective lovers here as a first date. A comfortable place, such as it was, would bring them back for their weekly night out as spouses in the years to come. Assuming it was still here. You never knew with small pubs. They would either stand vigilant through a century or collapse before the end of the decade. It was easy to understand the extreme.

Regulars were pillars. Businessmen would hold their moonlit scrums, their jackets looking a bit more dishevelled than they did that morning. Musicians would find their name under the staircase. Those young men would grow to bring their wives then ultimately their sons who would bring their perspective lovers. And so the generations would pass to the scent of mulled wine and homemade popcorn laid out on the countertops.