Up The Junction on a wet and windy weekday night, in one of the more salubrious corners of town, home to an old school friend lucky enough to have recently moved Birmingham.
And also home to the Junction, a curious club sandwich of a pub, jamming together a diner, bar and even a heated garden, although the less-than-tropical climes of Birmingham this evening forbids taking a look at that.
The bar area, in which we're sat, holds a comfy array of booths, tables and seats in the nose of the narrow wedge of a building. Comfy - yet wih an air of menace that I can't quite put my finger on.
Maybe it's the low chandeliers, seclusive booths or generally dark atmosphere, but it's starting to feel like the deserted ballroom in The Shining, where Jack Torrance gets his whiskey on the rocks from a ghostly bartender.
Or maybe I'm just being unfair. The service is far from madness-enducing, and the prices wouldn't drive you to an axe-rampage any time soon, unlike some of the joints in this part of town.
My pint of Okells Autumn Dawn - from the Isle of Man, no less - is seasonal, but bland, well poured but unexciting, and costs me £2.80. They've got a small but interesting range of ales - three in total, but in the end we just dive headfirst into the dizzying array of continental beers on tap, so many of them it's hard to remember.
Disappointingly, considering my companion is a rising star in the military engineering complex, and is probably even now thinking of fiendishly clever ways to deal out death, even plying him with a selection of the finest the extensive bar has to offer fails to elicit any state secrets.
Luckily for Britain, he’s far too professional And probably lucky for this blog too, that I don’t have to fear a visit from the men in black soon, to stop me passing it on to the enemy. Looks like pint-sized – and the West – is safe for another day.