I am sober at this time, as I am not supposed to be. I have lifted the veil of my society's guilty, nocturnal habit, by abstaining from the state-altering substance and retaining my wits and senses. And it is all melodrama to sober senses. I see wobbly men, pirrouetting upon the curb, attempting to walk straight but all the more wayward in their intent. I hear them growl and snarl, the utter embodiments of their disappointing nights - the regression to beast a by-product of their would-be romantic conquests' eventual refusal to accomodate their sexual hungers. Would I be of their ilk? For my night has crescendoed similarly yet I am unsullied by beer so I keep a level mind. My addled beast remains caged and I choose a walk home to cool and sooth him. And these creatures, they stagger home and screech at the night sky. Kebabs will have to suffice but the monster will bellow and howl and swipe at the air until the ready-trays of steaming grease are within reach. They meander and topple and I desperately await the passing of the night-time traffic so I can stray from the possible onslaught they have in store for me. I do not exist yet, they only wish to be the street, as their ever-stretching armspans make clear, and once my presence is known to them it will illicit a fright and an anger and an urge to right the sensory intrusion I may bring. So I leap across the road for a stay of execution. A woman squats by a bollard, hair masking her moist face as she whimpers into her palms. Her swaying boyfriend stands at a choice distance, savagely demanding she pull herself together and follow him home so she can fulfill his bestial needs. And so this goes. I see bastard boys, a thousand potential Jack-The-Rippers, torturing their woman-property at every turn and I modestly walk home alone awaiting my empty bed, quietly boasting the conviction that I am good and true and would be loyal and loving would I ever get the opportunity to be. I do battle with indignation as I feel ashamed whenever a twang of entitlement passes through me.
Eloquent writers? Charming clerks? Modest musicians? Who are these people in the daylight where they are such drooling vampires under the moon? It is an idle hypothesis to muse upon for I shall never know - bed is the coveted horizon and that is my joureny's end.
The sporadic, dimly-lit high-roads of Islington have passed and I detour onto John Street, Bloomsbury, and traverse the tranquil, Victorian residential passage to pass the Doughty Street home of my hero Charles Dickens, an abode I am soon to start working in as a steward, to satiate my passion and devotion to the dead master. I am feeling content and reflective as proximity to the man always makes me feel and, ever the time traveller, my distance from the donner-digesting dogs and angry vampires has placed me at peace with my bookish, tired self once more.
But the hideous Centre-Point is on the horizon. The West End looms - the epicentre for blundering, arm-waving lunatics in vain search for more beer to sing them to sleep. They swarm and swirl the urine-soaked, pizza-entrenched highstreets there - scowls illuminated by the lights of a hundred theatres and roars echoed among the warning bells of hurtling rickshaws and screeching taxis. I elect not to walk through Russell Square - having narrowly avoided an unpleasant confrontation with "Angry Man With Stella Can" there only a couple of nights before. I pass around it and through Montague Place beside the imposing collumns of the British Museum and, after a swift stride through the regality of Bloomsbury I am in Soho. I duck and swerve and avoide the maniacal glowers of the vampire hordes and with haste I am at my door. The throbbing, seeping, groaning end of Saturday Night is behind me out in the cold and I hobble up the twisting staircase to my room where a warm bed and a new morning await me.
