Life-locked

I’ve been to two parties, the first one at Castle Mount Court last night with Lee, Pete, Mo, Barry, and Stu where I ended up drunk, asleep on Mo’s bed. Mindless. On my way home I was sick and woke up this morning with a terrible hangover and was sick again. I went round to Stu and Gareth’s during the day and collected the mail from Jervis Terrace. Our electricity bill up to April 30th was £119.

Another party tonight at Hurst Road (off Cotham Avenue) that was no better and consisted on the whole of the usual crowd, sitting about silently.

After the party a group of us (me, Alex, Lee, Gav, Pete and Mandy) set out with torches and a crowbar to take a look at a derelict building near the Cathedral that Gav had told us about and which sounded worthy of exploration. Lee and Gav scaled the locked gate topped by barbed wire while the rest of us hung about outside, expecting them to open the gate from the inside; we were eventually moved on by a pub landlord.

Finally, I scaled the wall myself, and I was eventually directed to a second story window that could only be reached via a tall fence and drainpipe. Inevitably, my lumbering efforts to squeeze through the opening caused havoc and sent glass from the window showering down into the yard below. Lee cursed and I told him to “fuck off,” angry more at my own ineptitude than at him.

Inside the building was quite sound, a narrow three or four stories that didn’t seem to have been touched since the 1930s; there was a dumbwaiter, fully fitted bathroom, and even a chemistry lab in the cellar. A large front room had bay windows that faced onto Maynard Gardens and the Cathedral. We got out via an attic skylight (I broke more glass), ducking over roofs, clambering down three fire escape ladders and back over the barbed wire.

Life-locked, I strode back to the Vicarage, painfully aware of my distance from Lee who seemed very remote as he enthusiastically discussed the house we’d just been into with Gav . . ..