I'd just been reading AA Gill on Soho when I got the message that Ian Dunlop had finally died. We sat in the vague proximity of Ian for years and years doing precisely the fuck all that AA Gill disparages so smartly in 'The Angry Island'. These days, confronted by all sorts of bureaucratic enthusiasts who could all have done with a good ten year sentence in the Coach I miss it. OK the whole thing championed non-achievement on a monumental scale, but it wasn't the same as non-achievement in Halifax or Cowdenbeath, this was a very sophisticated form, exemplified by Ian who appeared to have done only a couple a weeks work for the Tattler (like AA Gill) before his retirement to nothing in particular except sipping Burton and offering rude commentary on the prospects awaiting certain young girls.
Really this generation is much maligned by reformed alcoholics like Gill, for whom it is a little less easy to slide on to the bar stool and waste your time in such a pointless yet in the end highly endearing way. There is always cause and effect, and the things that allowed, even fostered, such behaviour are now systematically ironed out by a bunch of priggish moralists in grey shoes touting first no society at all, then a big one; no wonder Ian had to exist. I mean, walking in to the Coach and Horses at opening time was an undeniable pleasure, and you managed your resources around being able to do it as often as humanly possible, and there was definitely something in that.
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