I have a particularly unpleasant head cold so my evening yesterday involved an early retirement with the fantastic James Patterson for company (try cat and mouse it’s superb). Some of you will know, and some will recall from previous posts, that I not only live on the coast but I live on the route from the town to the traditional late night pub.
When I say that I live on the route what I mean is that I live at the point at which the distance between the pub and home seems insurmountable to most drunks and they decide to use their remaining energy fighting, shouting or vomiting. Interestingly, and perhaps not unconnected, the hedge outside my building is the choice of places to deposit stomach lining chips and supermarket purchased ‘preload’ alcohol on the way to the late pub.
And so it is that when there is a quiet night I am actually surprised to awake at 03:00 and realise that I have not been woken earlier by a drunken serenade, albeit a serenade aimed not solely at me but more generally the world.
Last night was not one of the exceptions to the rule, I was awoken around 1am to the theatre of drunkenness that is comfortably reaffirming of the decision to have an early night!
What set me pondering after the nightly display was the failed logic of a generation, not only failed logic but counter intuitive actions! Allow me to explain, our subjects who we shall call L1, L2 & L3 have met up several times in the week and debated their Saturday night plans. There will have been countless Facebook and text debates about where to go, where to start and what to wear all leading to the big night.
They will have met up at an agreed home where they will have preened into a suitable vision to attract attention from the opposite sex, at this stage they will have had a drink at home to ‘start the evening’ they will then have visited some pubs and walked or maybe even taken a taxi past me to the most popular house of the late evening.
Now arrived at their final destination, the place that they hope holds those that they seek to impress, they are well lubricated but still reasonably charming. Now it goes downhill as a reasonable blood alcohol content is driven to absurd levels with shots designed to provide rapid deceleration of sense levels. Now this is the counter intuitive part, your dressed up to attract the opposite sex but now your fuelling yourself far past any ability to be attractive!
Inevitably we hit closing time and our subjects are the worse for wear and have no money left and so no taxi home for them, oh no they get the bracing sea air walk home. And now to the theatre that is mine to behold as they leave the lights, music and fun behind and the cold night air draws them close, the insurmountable target of bed draws ever further so they stop and argue about who saw who first, who brought the most drinks, who was rude to who. There is an inevitability to the dark humour of this theatre as our subjects get louder and sway closer to each other until eventually the brawl starts.
Perhaps brawl is too strong a word for the drunken slanging match and close quartered ‘aggressive falling’ no real damage is inflicted probably saved by the combination of drunken aim and moving targets, but real damage is intended this is real aggression but carried through bodies and minds that don’t have the ability to act on it. And then the pantomime draws to a close, with yelled taunts and drunken threats, they part their ways and wobble back to sleep off the weekly consumption.
Anyone wonder on who our subjects were? Well L1,2 & 3 are not ‘Lads’ they are what passes as ‘Ladies’ it would seem, when they passed me at the start of the evening they would have been well dressed and happy young women. Worse still the numbers mean nothing, they could be any of dozens that I see carrying out this strange dance.
When did the young ladies of the world stop challenging the young men of the world to stay sober enough to attract? When did a good night out for girls turn into one that was evidenced by torn clothes and broken friendships? When did girls stop being girls? One odd thing I do notice is that I see less guys fighting in the street these days and this reminds me of working in Northern Ireland during the troubles. There was so little work then that the women with their part time jobs became the main breadwinner and with this came the right to pay day drinks, is that what’s happening in our welfare culture? Is the nighttime spectacle funded by welfare cheques?