TO the left of me is a man, perhaps in his early 50s, wearing a blue woolly hat splattered with paint and chain smoking roll-ups.

On my right is a bearded man of a similar age. He is smoking roll-ups too. Between them they produce a heavy cloud of dense smoke which hangs over the three of us.

Both men stare straight ahead with a comfortable ease. No words are exchanged.

I am stuck in the middle, trying to fan away the smoke without being too obvious. I too am staring ahead, but not with the greatest ease.

My eyes flicker nervously from side to side before darting all over the pub. I try to concentrate on a fixed point in the wall (a trick I learned at school when I was asked to read to the assembly) but my intense gaze leaves me looking like an axe-murderer.

It was a bad idea to come out this Friday night on my own, but the search for friends was never going to be easy.

Since moving from my birthplace and home for 28 years I have cut something of a lonely figure in a city where I am a stranger. I know nobody and nobody knows me.

I thought things were on the up of late, after a run of nights-out with the Long Suffering Marjorie and her gaggle of pals from teacher-training college.

After being just "the boyfriend" I had started to know them in my own right and would stop and chat if I bumped into them in the supermarket without the LSM.

So when the LSM took advantage of the extended Easter holidays a student is granted with a trip back to her mother's, I decided to venture out alone. A couple of months ago such a thought would not have entered my head, and I would have resigned myself to a Friday night, spent with just a cheap bottle of red wine and a fuzzy television for company.

But now I know people. I know their names and they know mine and I could almost describe them as friends. By no means bosom-buddies but I could - if pushed (like tonight) - have a drink with them and enjoy their

company.

I didn't know their telephone numbers so I just planned to visit the pub and see if anybody was in there. And besides, I wouldn't ring them anyway, preferring instead to play it cool rather than show them I am desperate.

The pub was relatively empty when I walked in and a quick scan revealed no familiar faces. A sudden rush of fear and nerves enveloped me and I suddenly felt conscious that I was on my own.

I walked to the bar and ordered a pint.

Cool as you like, masking the nerves.

The girl behind the bar didn't bat an eyelid - she probably thought I was there to meet someone, which in essence I was.

Nerves make you thirsty and without thinking about it, I shoved the pint down my dry throat and ordered another.

I moved away from the bar and sat down but quickly felt uncomfortable, so I put a pound in the jukebox and stuck on some music. All the while playing for time.

A couple of hours passed and I was still on my own. It was obvious by this point that nobody I know was set to come in and the more I drank the more self-conscious I became. My fellow drinkers - of which there were many - may not actually have been looking and talking about me, but it felt like they were.

The drink was making me unsteady and I started to pray that nobody I know did actually come in. What would they make of someone who gets drunk on his own? If only they knew.

So I returned to the bar and decided to stand there, flanked by the two roll-up regulars. They are obviously on their own, yet look so much at ease.

I try to fit in, look casual (perhaps talk to one of them) but it's obvious I'm a misfit.

Next time the LSM leaves me, it's a bottle of wine and a fuzzy telly.