Sunday Afternoon

SUNDAY AFTERNOON An Observed Scene at Cardoon's Bar, Hilltown, Dundee Federation Site Publishes: Third-Person Account, Submitted to Media Intake ———————————————— [The federation's media intake received a request from Ms. Drummond's representative on a Friday afternoon: a crew of two, no interview, no directed movement, one hour, published only as a third-person account with no footage clips appended. The same terms as the visit filed after Behind Closed Doors 8. The location this time was not the flat. It was Cardoon's Bar, on the corner of a street in the Hilltown that has had a pub on it under one name or another for the better part of a century, currently run by Ms. Drummond's grandmother. The federation agreed to the terms. The following is that account.] ———————————————— We arrived at two in the afternoon, which is the quiet hour — lunch trade finished, evening trade not yet started. The pub was empty except for Ms. Drummond, her grandmother, and a regular at the far end of the bar reading a folded newspaper who did not look up the entire visit and whose name we were not given. Ms. Drummond was sitting on a stool at the bar itself, not a table. She was in a tracksuit, hair down, a plaster on one knuckle that she did not explain and we did not ask about. Her grandmother was behind the bar, restocking the optics from a crate, and did not stop doing this for most of the hour. The Women's Championship belt was on the bar top, to Ms. Drummond's left, strap folded once, face plate up. It had travelled with her from the flat in a holdall that was sitting open on the floor by the stool. She had taken it out and set it down the way another person might set down a phone. A radio behind the bar was on, low, tuned to a station playing older records. Nobody adjusted it the entire visit. ———————————————— She spoke four times, which is more than the last visit, and her grandmother spoke once, which the federation is including because it happened in earshot of the belt and seemed relevant to the record. The first time was at approximately 2:12. Her grandmother, without looking up from the crate, said: "You eating before Saturday or after?" Ms. Drummond said: "After. Same as always." That was the whole exchange. Her grandmother went back to the optics. ———————————————— The second time was at 2:20. Ms. Drummond had a laptop open on the bar — the only piece of technology we saw her use the entire visit — playing footage of Sera Voss's matches at low volume. She watched a full match without comment, then said, to nobody in particular, though we were the only nobody available: "She's already decided how the match goes before it starts. You can see it in how still she stands. Problem is, deciding and doing are two different jobs, and I've never once lost the second one to somebody who was better at the first." She said this the way she'd said the thing about Volkov — flatly, once, and did not repeat or explain it. She closed the laptop shortly after. ———————————————— The third time was at 2:35. We asked — this was the single question the crew was permitted, agreed in advance — what she made of the letter Ms. Voss filed about her ribs. Ms. Drummond considered this for a while, turning her pint glass a quarter turn on the bar without drinking from it. "She's hurt and she's still telling everybody exactly where to hit her, because she thinks the honesty's worth more than the advantage she's giving up. I respect that. I also think it's daft. I'm not going to pretend I read that letter and felt sorry for her. I read it and thought: right, so we both already know where this is going, then." She did not elaborate on where "this" was going. She picked her pint back up. ———————————————— The fourth time was at 2:51, as we were packing up the camera. Her grandmother, still behind the bar, said, apropos of nothing that had been discussed in the hour: "You'll still come round Sundays, whatever happens with the belt." It was not phrased as a question. Ms. Drummond looked at her for a moment — the newspaper reader at the end of the bar turned a page, the only sound in the room besides the radio — and said: "Aye. Obviously." She said it like the question had been slightly insulting for having been asked at all. Her grandmother nodded once and went back to the crate, apparently satisfied, and did not raise the subject again. Ms. Drummond did not put the belt away before we left. It stayed on the bar top, next to the holdall, next to the pint, for the remainder of our visit and, as far as we observed, for the remainder of her afternoon. ———————————————— What we observed, in summary, is the following. The defending Women's Champion of this federation prepared for her first challenge from Sera Voss by sitting at her grandmother's bar on a quiet Sunday, watching one match on a laptop, and delivering, across four short exchanges, the entirety of her public thinking on the subject. She did not train during the observed hour. She did not discuss strategy beyond the single sentence about deciding versus doing. She ate lunch afterward, as always, on her own stated schedule, unrelated to the calendar of the match itself. The belt sat on the bar the way it sits on her kitchen table. It goes where she goes. She did not treat it as a subject of the visit any more than the pint or the holdall were subjects of the visit. Her grandmother asked a question that was not really a question, and got an answer that was not really new information, and the pub went back to being a pub. That is all. ———————————————— End of submission. Filed by Allison Crawford STRIFE Media Documentary Services on behalf of Lacey Drummond