Alf

I opened up the centre to the public for the first time in four months today. We started opening just for the nursery a few weeks ago, but today we re-opened our doors to the public in general; specifically a traditionally well-attended A.A meeting that we’ve been home to every Monday afternoon at 2 p.m for twenty years, the last four months being the exception. Having been informed by email that forty percent of the Monday group’s regulars had started drinking again, I expected a horde to be accumulating on the patio waiting for me to unlock the doors. I was both relieved and disappointed by the reality.

The first person to arrive was Jim, early thirties, presentable, clutching a take-away coffee. He had never been to a meeting before but he’d travelled twenty miles to attend this one. It was the first actual meeting he’d come across online since lockdown began. All the rest had been virtual.

“This is the first time I’ve left my house in months,” he told me, pacing the patio, anxious, restless, not knowing what to expect. “It’s all a bit surreal,” he said, “just being out. Is it OK to smoke here?” We were alone, I was just finishing my own cigarette.

“It’s fine,” I told him. “Someone will be along soon to start setting things up.”

I stubbed out the end of my roll-up as Jim produced a packet of tobacco and began fumbling one of his own. I’d tried to reassure him but it wasn’t enough.

The first organisers to arrive were Janet and Alf.

“You’ll be in the upstairs rooms rather than downstairs,” I told them. “There’s a maximum of nine people per room but you can use both of the rooms upstairs, no one else will be in them today. You have to use the plastic chairs rather than the cushioned chairs – unless someone needs a cushioned chair – and you have to wipe down the chairs you use afterwards.” I hand them J-Cloths and bottles of anti-bacterial spray. “Sorry.”

“Of course,” says Janet.

“Totally understand, chief,” says Alf.

I ask them who will take responsibility for making sure that they don’t exceed the maximum number of people in each room.

“I’ll do that,” Alf tells me and they both disappear upstairs, J-cloths and germ-sprays in hand. Alf returns shortly after. I listen to him from the office, greeting people arriving at the door.

“I’ve just ignored it all,” he tells them. “What a load of old bollocks…”

Alf, a seasoned A.A regular – balding and middle aged, with an overly loud voice – is the sole reason many people in the city have tried and since avoided these Monday afternoon A.A meetings. The normally adjacent 2 p.m yoga class have been complaining about his volume for as long as I can remember. They’re not here today though, nor is any other group who would would normally be here on a Monday afternoon, so I don’t have to worry about that. I don’t have to worry about anything today other than my own safety and more people arriving than the meetings can accommodate, which doesn’t happen anyway, because for a regular meeting of normally thirty to forty people, only fifteen show up, and two of those leave within minutes.

If you’re coming to the town’s only Monday afternoon A.A meeting for the first time, come prepared for Alf, who will be the first person you encounter. If you can get past Alf and your feelings toward him, and then come back a second time, you’re really in need of help and deserve a place here. Which is maybe why they put Alf on the door in the first place as a literal first step. I listen to him welcoming the people who turn up today:

“All that Zoom shit,” he groans. “Online!” He barks, rolling his eyes, referring to how A.A have kept going for the last four months, for the first time in well over half a century without actual meetings. “Well, what if you haven’t got online? Me and a few of the others – Val, Sid, Debs – we’ve been having meetings in my back garden the whole time…”

He doesn’t wait for a response. Alf is indifferent to other’s people’s experiences. He doesn’t want to know. If what is asked of him deviates from the written-in-stone tenets of A.A; from what is fundamentally required of him to stay sober, then he couldn’t give a shit. Every Monday, “come rain or shine” (as he puts it), there he is unloading packets of bourbons and digestives onto small plates (because the women who actually run the group know he can’t be trusted to handle the responsibility of making the teas and coffees by himself). And as far as Alf is concerned, isn’t that enough? Dutifully, loyally, week in, week out, he’s there, here, at a meeting, doing his best?

“Me, the wife, the kids, we’ve all been fine,” he tells arrivals, new and old. “Coronavirus…it’s all a load of fucking bollocks, innit?