We didn't want to go out. None of us did. What we really wanted was to stay at home and play with the aged karaoke machine my friend had found in a charity shop for ten quid.
We almost forced ourselves to get ready, haphazardly applying make up with a hand mirror whilst the dog tried to grab our attention and nick our hulahoops. We opened belated birthday presents and laughed at inside jokes. We tried to second guess what the DJ would play (boy would we be disappointed).
We bought five pound wine at the train station and a falafel wrap, took photos by graffiti on the way to the venue, drank all the wine in the queue and peaked far too early.
My friend said the door man was fit. He heard and laughed.
Inside the air was thick. Images of Tupac, Will Smith and other icons of the early nineties precariously hung from the high ceiling. At first the floor was sparse with self-conscious, semi-sober students looking this way and that but soon it filled with circles of moving bodies expecting better music.
The drinks were expensive so we had to rely on cigarettes and the previous wine to see us through until the early hours, although I remember drinking a free redbull which mysteriously appeared from nowhere.
Every now and then a siren would blare and a voice "ARE YOU READY?" permeated the dance floor. Ready for what? 20 seconds of a good song and then another 5 minutes of an unknown track.
We danced til 3.30am, then found a McDonald's on google maps and trekked through an industrial estate to sit there for two hours, making up bad raps, breaking vegetarianism/veganism, and dozing off. I took some questionable photos of my face to remind myself how bad I was feeling the following day.
We walked back in the general direction of the station, exactly four hours early for the train. Sofas with graffiti, Thomas the Tank Engine, a vague beat diffusing the air.
A young man rode past on his bike, grinning and at ease. He invited us to a warehouse party but we didn't have the courage to accept his invitation so we sat on a bridge and shared a burn, biding our
time with bad jokes. There was a canal boat called "Salad Days".
Our shoes were so muddy afterwards. I don't even know how.
