Dammit. The spam-filter thing turned out to be no good. (It just took all the spam and wrapped it in an e-mail asking “Do you want this?” Not helpful or time-saving.)
Last night I got together with The Friday Gang, and we went to Anita’s to make little cakes in various shapes, ’cause it’s her birthday tomorrow. I like that getting together with my friends just to talk is activity enough for us. I’ve been lucky with the number of neat people who’ve found their way into my life.
But not everyone’s Friday nights are like this. On the walk home, I passed:
- A drunk yob performing for his friends by throwing a big black plastic cover of a bin over the fence of Princes Street Gardens, which then rolled into the road, making a bus swerve. I would guess from the mess on the ground that he got covered in lovely cigarette water from the ashtray on the top.
- A group of four girls fighting — scratching, yelling, punching, and swinging handbags — while one’s boyfriend tried to keep them apart.
- A couple dressed up for the night, him in smart casual clothes, her tall and skinny in a form-fitting black dress complemented with a shawl and unbelievably high heels. They ran across Princes Street, and she tripped over the island in the middle of the road, falling spread-eagle onto the ground. I’m not sure if her face made contact with the tarmac, but her knees and hands did in a way that made me suck breath through my teeth and say “Oooh”.
<
p>All of these people, along with the elderly gentleman swaying back and forth while leaning on a bus shelter, were drunk as lords. Now, I don’t have a problem with drinking; I can’t deny that there have been times it’s been fun to have a big social time with a buzz-on. But all of these adults are going to be bringing scrapes and bruises back to their regular, conscious lives. In fact, with the number of people I see running in front of taxis and buses, getting into fights, and vomiting because they’ve drunk to a level of being poisoned, it’s really quite amazing that any of them survives a Friday night.
