I’m with Steve in what used to be Mr Lawrence the wine bar but is now the London Beer Dispensary. Much of the furniture – old wooden tables and a range of chairs that wouldn’t look out of place in a fantasy tavern – is the same. What’s different is there is now a lot of beer: beer in barrels, beer in bottles, beer – sorry, IPAs – chilled on tap. Being old farts who were pioneers of CAMRA back in the 70s we should really sneer keglessly at all this, well, variety, but we both have a sneaky liking for colder beer and therefore quietly hail the US-style IPA revolution taking place in the UK; at least, in the parts of the UK where people don’t mind paying £5.50 a pint; in fact, would be suspicious if they paid any less.

“I’ve been writing a blog series called ‘How to Write Fantasy’,” I say.

“That’ll get you noticed,” he says.

“Well, obviously, I’m trying to come at in from new angles.”

“Not really a very innovative genre, though, is it?”

I remember then that while Steve is a huge fan of science fiction, or at least SF from the 50s to the 70s when, according to him, there were at least some writers who were using SF to comment significantly on the world instead of playing at it, he has little time for fantasy.

“Surely by its very nature,” I say, “fantasy must offer the most opportunities for a writer to express his imagination.”

He holds up his pint of IPA with an unpronounceable name, checking, I choose to think, for specks of fantasy gold.

“I think it’s the opposite: most fantasy writers use that endless opportunity to avoid facing the real thing their genre should be producing.”

He puts down his glass and waits for me to say which is? But before I can, he takes on a distant gaze and continues speaking. At least, he carries on talking but at first I suspect he’s decided to change the topic.

“Years ago,” he says, “I went on this art course, in a big house in Yorkshire. There were fifteen of us and each night a team of three would cook the evening meal for everyone else. There were two women on my team but on the night one of them went sick, so it was just me and Mary.”

“Ah, Mary.”

“What do you mean, ‘Ah, Mary’? I’ve never mentioned her before.”

“Yes, but I think I know what’s coming.”

He looks deeply wistful, like a wizard who’s lost his clay pipe.

“If you know what’s coming,” he says, “you should be able to write a killer fantasy story. At last. As I was saying – Mary and I were in the kitchen for about three hours, cooking. I’d noticed her; couldn’t really not: tall, long black hair, kind but sometimes really fierce eyes. Anyway, we talked as we prepared the food. And because we were doing something practical, our conversation was sort of set off to one side of us. Which meant, without realising it we were sensing each other, and listening to the spaces between our words, and liking each other a lot but without actually thinking it.”

He drinks some more beer and gathers deeper into his memory.

“I felt liberated,” he said. “My normal cautious self was busy chopping onions. My free self . . . well, I really liked my free self. It joked about everything but warmly, spontaneously, included Mary without question; and she did the same with me until it wasn’t Steve and Mary any more. Harmony – it’s not a pleasant blending of different tones, Terry. It’s when two free selves rush around together like dogs off their leads in the park . . . And then there was this moment.”

I think I can almost touch the moment he’s talking about, like grabbing after the rapidly fading fragments of a dream you don’t want to lose.

“I was stirring a pot of bolognaise sauce by the stove,” he says. “Mary stood next to me, our shoulders just a couple of inches apart. She had a plate of chopped tomatoes ready to go in the pot. And right then, I knew, and I knew that she knew, even though nothing had been said and we weren’t looking at each other. We knew. Nothing before or since in my life has ever been so certain as that moment. It had no shape or substance and could never have been taught in a dating class or whatever. But it was totally real.”

“What happened?” I say.

He shakes his head. “I didn’t trust it enough. And I guess she didn’t either. And when we hesitated, our normal selves nudged themselves back into the moment and smoothed it off, rationalised it. I did make myself look into her eyes but I just couldn’t read what was there. But of course I couldn’t: because my normal self was already justifying my inaction. I never saw her again after that course.

“That’s what fantasy should be writing about,” he says. “Not poxy dragons, princesses, elves and talking hats.”

“But you can’t only write about those kinds of moments,” I say.

“No, but fantasy should contain more of them than any other genre, because it’s supposed to be about our not-normal selves. But if anything, it contains less per pound weight than any other form.”

“‘The Once and Future King’ has a pretty good ratio of moments to mass,” I say but I’m not really sure.

He looks oddly defeated. “I read the first book of ‘Game of Thrones’,” he says. “The last chapter is one of those moments. It’s fantastic – the writer’s free self really soars. But you have to wade through over 800 pages of stock fantasy normal-self shit to get there. Even if the other books end with those moments, I’m not reading them.”

I mentally summon objections to this; references to fantasy stories that have moments in them. But I say nothing since essentially I agree with him. There just aren’t enough. Modern fantasy has become a game of tomes, where the writer drip feeds tiny tastes of magic, and sometimes temporarily delivers at the end as a reward for his followers wading on so far with him, and for paying him to wade.

“There should be more,” I say. “It’s a writer’s duty, after all, to deliver magic.”

“Well said, Tel,” he says, “but I think you’re missing the point. I’ve only had one of those moments in over sixty years of living. The rest has been just the normal shit.”

“Are you saying fantasy writers who produce thousand page novels of tramping around boggy landscapes with just one moment of magic are accurately reflecting life?”

“No, I’m saying don’t wast your time reading fantasy.”