Black label

Evening saw most of us at a party on Marion Place, at the same house as before. This time the place was not so crowded and Lee was there too, doing his anti-social bit, falling into the packed crowds and tripping others up. “What is Lee on?” someone asked. “How much has he drunk?” To both questions I could quite honestly reply, “Nothing.” Lindsey was there too, in a shortish black dress.

A glass pane in the front door was smashed by gatecrashers who were refused entry, and Barry and Pete were cut, so a few of us piled out and did our threatening machismo bit on the street corner, face-to-face with a gang of rockabillies.

We got home at four a.m., stopping by the derelict pub on Meadspike Road on the way. Amazingly, we found loads of booze in the cellars, so we made two trips, Lee and Barry descending into the darkness while Pete and I kept watch. The three or four bags we had with us were handed up full of clanking bottles and we struggled proudly up Windmill Ave. bearing ninety six cans of Carling Black Label and Breaker’s Lager, fifteen bottles of cider, and half a dozen bottles of Guinness and Tennent’s Export, plus three party cans of bitter.

We whooped and jumped about like kids when we got it all inside, making a pile in Pete’s room to admire. Free booze until New Year. We are getting dangerously adept at this sort of thing.