Late Night Carousers

I'd forgotten the chaos of late night tube journeys. Two years break, and I'm shocked by the noise and the volatility. I've just got back from Leicester- driving back had proved not to be possible.

At King's Cross station, there was a woman shrieking really loudly- apparently to herself. There was a lot of solo intoxication, especially on the tube itself. People were glassy-eyed and slumped on the seats and there was an overpowering smell of weed. One poor young woman was so fast asleep it was almost impossible to wake her at the end of the line. Her phone was loosely clasped in her hand, and her bag was perched unsteadily on the seat beside her. An only-slightly-drunk chap tried to wake her before giving up, and I tried too, but she was next to unconscious. I wondered what I would do if she had actually died. When the tube driver came along and rapped on the glass window really hard, she started to stir; between us we woke her and she stumbled off the train. On the way out of the station, a young guy had folded himself over the railings. 'I feel really awful!' he groaned to nobody, because he too was all by himself. Other passengers stumbled and zigzagged up the hill, and on the High Street a man (on his own) had flung his first floor window open and was singing at the top of his voice, a tenor bellow that rung down the road in a melancholy paeon to loneliness.

It was a nice gig, what I saw of it. Ruth from Po! and the Punkgirldiaries zine came along and it was great to meet her. Lisa from the Flatmates and her partner did a fantastic starter set. Blimey that woman is talented! She drums standing up and sings her heart out! Great songs, too. I'll see the bands properly tomorrow at Exeter and will write more at the weekend.