Extortion!

Out of the pungent vapours of beer, sweat, and god knows what else, down the stairs, down the ragged red strip of fabric, through the entrance (Why are we going through the fire escape? This must be some kind of administrative error.) and into, really, nothing in particular. The venue looked not dissimilar to some hideous old aircraft hangar that had sagged in on itself, crippled by its own self loathing, and there wasn’t a vibrant statuette or proud portrait frame in sight. (Call that a red carpet? Someone asks, a rhetorical question, we presumed. It looks like it’s had something amputated. The poor fool. He was probably right)

‘It looks like a fucking bingo hall,’ someone moaned and, according to a partially torn poster hanging uncomfortably above the urinal, it certainly was. It would seem that the architectural dress code, if such a thing truly exists, had strictly prohibited style, and it was perhaps for this reason that an attempt to merrily carry open bottles of wine inside the hangar/hall/hole was met with an orgy of frowning and tutting at the door, and someone faintly implying that I was being an inconsiderate asshole.

‘What do you mean, he can’t come?’ Some poor drunkard moaned, clutching her wine bottle tightly against two sagging burst balloons, ‘you mean this isn’t a suitable companion?’ Not unless style or class was on the agenda, but it seemed that the venue and the latter were no longer on speaking terms.

Matters improved considerably at the bar – reasonably over the top, treat-yourself-luv-it’s-the-fucking-ball price labels, but self conscious and guilty about it – however there was once again a sudden and unpleasant surge downwards as we approached the table. Everyone is talking about cummerbunds. I am not wearing a cummerbund – in fact, I don’t even seem to be wearing socks.

Eventually, sustenance arrives, born lethargically on the huddled backs of fierce, angry women who bark strangely exotic words at each other, referencing, presumably, the food, but in between their brain and their mouths some terrible transformation takes place, and what spews out orally is nothing more than garbled ejaculations. ‘Broo-lay! Krem-fresh! Do-fin-wars!’

‘Right.’ A particularly terrifying individual is stood directly behind my chair, glowering down at the puny post-it card bearing my name and some odd initials. ‘I wan’ a Gammon and I wan’ a Chikkin,’ she snarls at the hapless young boy, tentatively bearing a bent tray loaded hideously with the rickety plates of the meal, costing in excess of twenty pounds.

‘This isn’t Gammon, damnit,’ my drunken companion seethes, eyes fixed down on the sinewy strips of meat, mercifully all but submerged in gravy. ‘This is ham – this is just ham!’ Someone informs him that, really, the two meats are essentially exactly the same, but the attempt at consolation was promptly torn down and devoured hungrily, the hapless agent branded as ignorant and uncultured. Unlearnèd in the manners of food. Quite.

My attention drifts away from the small lump of chocolate on my plate which followed the Gammon – which didn’t taste too bad, even if it wasn’t true gammon – and over to the flashing lights and bold white panels of the photography stand across the hall. There seemed to be some minor dispute taking place.

‘What do you mean you can’t take a picture of all five of us?’ A bold young man was retorting incredulously, as his friends looked on in horror and restrained admiration for this defiance of the infallible photographer, ‘there’s more than enough room – we need to do a group photo.’

‘Group photos come later,’ he said. They didn’t.

‘Do not question my authority as a supreme fountain of aesthetic knowledge.’ They didn’t.

The masses then seeped into the centre of the hall, a dance floor of sorts, and so began the final desperate spasms of egotism. There might have been a band playing.

This strange throng of animals had moved as one for six years. But as the last synthetic fibres began to peel away, no one took much notice.