Wednesday night is allright

Spent all day yesterday moping around at work, generally feeling sorry for myself and avoiding any employment-related tasks. The last thing I wanted to do was to go see Maximo Park and the Kaiser Chiefs at Brixton Academy, and most of my afternoon was indeed spent trying to devise a means of getting out of it. I had no money to my name, not even enough to catch a bus, so my options were pretty shit. Manus reneged and announced he wasn't going to go, which left myself and the Professor. When I spoke to him, he was already halfway towards London, so it was too late for me to cancel. I made some pasta, rolled a joint and necked a couple of valiums. Still not even remotely psyched about going to a gig I had been looking forward too for a long time, I set off on foot. Brixton is not exactly around the corner from where I live, but what choice did I have? In a moment of brilliance, I arranged to meet the Professor at Tottenham Court Road, so he could lend me some cash and we could go from there. A brisk walk and half a bottle of Buckfast later, and I was greeted by the Professor himself on the corner of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road. He had beers and money, so we set off towards Brixton. On the tube we talked shit and finished the rest of the Buckfast. As we were heading up the escalators at Brixton station, I overheard a strange conversation between junkie and dealer:

Dealer: ..it's up to you - there's about 40 old bill outside
Junkie: ..(paranoid) hmmmm
Dealer: two for forty, I won't stick around

I never got a chance to hear if the procurement took place, or indeed what specific kind of contraband was on offer. The dealer was right, though. The entrance to Brixton tube station was brimming with police and plain-clothes officers. I took some more valium and we broke open more beers. At this stage I had completely forgotten about the gig, I was just enjoying myself, street drinking in Brixton. We tried to shift Manus' ticket, whilst trying hard not to come across as touts (the Professor had a significant amount of valiums on his person). I went to a shop and bought two big bottles of San Miguel, which was a stupid move considering it was already 8.30pm at this time , I was more than tipsy and we hadn't even been in the vicinity of Brixton academy. When we finally entered the venue, we realised that we had mistakenly bought seated tickets. At this stage I was roaringly drunk so I didn't really care. We had lost track of time, and missed Maximo Park's set completely, which in retrospect was dumb. The Kaiser Chiefs played, and played well. The professor snuck downstairs for some action in the heaving throng of the pit whilst I tried not to throw up.
Post gig we tried to score some drugs, but got ripped off. Back on the tube north of the river style. Made our exit at Old Street, where the Professor ran into an old acquaintance, and this time we had more luck with the drugs. 4am I had to concede and collapsed in bed, after having tried to rouse the professor from what seemed like an extremely unpleasant position into which he had let himself collapse. This morning I felt like shit, showed up 20 minutes late for work and began my seemingly daily routine of sweating alcohol through my nicotine stained skin whilst trying to appreciate a deadline.

It was a great fucking night!