A Perfect Storm

I made a rather uncharacteristic mistake on Friday.

Generally on a Friday I’ll go home at around 11:30 so as to ensure that I’m not too hung-over for my all dayer on Saturday. Now as you might imagine, for me, this requires iron discipline.

Unfortunately I don’t have iron discipline.

So what it requires is a Jade or Gareth (preferable both, one after the other, ten minutes apart) to tell me to go home.

Unfortunately Gareth was off playing an apparently awesome show in Brick Lane and Jade went home early because it was so quiet.

Equally, for some reason I had it in my head that the Taps shut at 12:30 on a Friday night (this was partly due to it being so quiet – I mean I’ve been drinking in the Taps since it opened and in all that time I’ve never seen a Friday or Saturday night like it. In fact I’ve seen busier Tuesday nights). So when the bell for last orders went I thought it was 12:30 because it was so empty.

I only realised my mistake when I got home and it was 2:30.

In other words people, we had a perfect storm, a once in a thousand lifetimes calamitous situation event arising from the powerful combined effect of a unique set of circumstances which led to me still being there when the shutters came down.

Anyway, that mistake aside, I was thinking about where all those people had gone, because it was really very strange.

In general you can predict what the crowd will be like. For instance, the Friday before a Bank Holiday Monday will always be busy. Or the Friday of pay week (and by the same token you can predict that the weekend before pay week will generally be quiet).

But last night there was no rhyme or reason to it. Everyone had just disappeared. It was like one of those wild life programmes where Richard Attenborough whispers quietly: something had spooked the herd away from the watering hole. Some scent of an unknown predator or the ozone whiff of an impending lightning storm perhaps.

But there must have been some manner of explanation for where they’d all gone. Some kind of group logic. Perhaps some kind of big event for random scummers was going on in Palmers Green or something.

A convention of some sort to discuss the latest new developments in taking people's bar stools and dropping glasses on the floor.