Among the people out on a Friday or a Saturday evening who, by chance or by intent, wander absently, or with determination stride across Guildhall Square, there are a variety of thoughts, motivations and intentions. Who knows what really goes on in the dark, innermost recesses of human hearts? Who knows the fears, the hopes and the aspirations? Who knows what drives folk, young and not so young, out into the cold of the city and into the crowded and noisy gloom of the pubs and clubs into the colours and the varieties of human kinds on display? Each displaying what he or she wants to be seen, wants to be noticed and wants to be thought about.
There are those bent on pleasure, whatever that pleasure might be, and pleasures take a variety of forms. There are those who are plotting mischief, but that too, for them, is a form of pleasure. There are those, whose thoughts drive them, lusting after sexual adventure. There are those, seemingly more simple in their wants, who just seek euphoria and see that fuelled by alcohol and, possibly, by drugs. All these, to some degree or another, anticipate the excitement of shared revelry, some the testosterone enhanced drive of sexual combat or, physical adrenaline surge of combat and swaggering self-aggrandisement.
When they have recovered from its effects, the next day, they will perhaps reflect on what a good time was had by all and look forward to the next weekend of indulgence, seeing not the depravity, the dissipation and the waste.
Maybe there are others, tyros in the art of revelry, who, with sinking feelings, view with dread anticipation the night ahead. Not relishing a long evening and a longer night in the company of those hardened to it and who, single minded, set on it, who drag them along in their destructive, shouting, leering, jeering wake, seek desperately ways out of bravado entrapped bondage.
Ears assailed by thud and shriek of music unmusical and stomachs assailed by too much lager. Unaccustomed to the pace, like landsmen new recruited to the sea. Not used to the motion, they feel sick and out of place. As the evening, raucous, lingers on, they are wishing all the time for it to end, or for escape. They grin feebly, as, too afraid to say "no!" they resign themselves to sitting out the long hours of shouted talk without conversing, drinking without pleasure and without thirst and trying, without interest while attempting to show the semblance of interest.
Some of these, as those sickened by beer, or by cigarettes at first, then, on becoming accustomed, are at last addicted, getting a form of pleasure from their shameful enslavement, achieve acceptance. They achieve acceptance by accepting the norms of the group and, with acceptance, they find relief with a certain pleasure and reassurance. One of the crowd, they become like the crowd. The crowd defines them and confines them. It makes them by breaking them.
What relief! They shout hoarsely as the rest. They laugh at the sordid sleezy jokes and they engage in the vapid, ugly conversation in the world of the coarse and the inane.
Others, perhaps stronger, though not realising their strength, reject, though fearfully and with trepidation, the vulgar pleasures of the mass. They cannot betray themselves into copying the language, the humour and the mores of the friends who are not friends. They need to remain aloof from the vulgarity and the seedy, sordid world of the popular night out. If, by chance, they find themselves in such company they shrink form the jokes the remarks the coarse display of ignorance, vicious and insensitive, as it is.
Maybe in the noisy smoky ambience of casino, pub or club, they find a friend at last to share discussion not lewd nor cruel. Perhaps they make excuse, "not feeling well," or with unaccustomed courage walk out in disdain from the crude and quarrelsome badinage, the ugly face of entertainment.
Outside, a queue forms at a hole in the wall which disgorges money. Money to be wasted, money to be poured down throats in a vain search for happiness as elusive and as ephemeral as ice in Summer or joy in hell. The queue is orderly and courteous since it is but eight in the evening and things have not yet warmed up.
People, secretively, press buttons and take wads of cash to spend on brief euphoria for this is what they have worked for all the week. Next to them but a yard or two away, the homeless, invisible to insensitivity, huddle for warmth in doorways. They wrap blankets round them or a sleeping bag to keep out the chill. The chill that strikes upward from the stones for city stones are hard and cold and this is a desperate fight for survival against the elements and the cold hard callousness of the "caring" state.
