An hour wasted is not a wasted hour.

I struggle to understand why something like British Summer Time still exists, it seems unnecessary to me. That being said I was assuming that I would sleep through the changes and wake up feeling an hour better off this morning. That was exactly not what happened and here is what did.

I started drinking at around half past five, in the bath, watching Homeland. I then put my looking-ropier-by-the-second Hannibal Lecter costume on and sat about waiting for a reasonable time to go out and see other people. This was about half nine when I managed to drag my brother out of the house to give me a lift to the Brush. Once there I acted as a conduit for the brilliant people I know. You know when you overhear someone saying ‘Oh you will love me mate Jonesy, he’s fucking mental’, and you meet Jonesy and he can just down a pint really quickly and inappropriately feel up any girl in sight, well my friends are actually mental, and I mean they act so odd that in the Brush (a meeting place for the weird) people stop and stare when they dance by. That’s why I love them. Since re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-reading On The Road I see myself as more of a Paradise type figure, I take in all these firework personalities and I light their fuses and then I stand back and it all blows up in my face and I laugh harder than I’ve ever laughed before. That’s what my friends are like.

I got to see my friend James who only just decided to return to the land of the living (from up north). We spent the evening in sporadic bouts of conversation before he would be distracted like a budgie and head off into the flashing darkness, with a stead like a pirate and hair like Robert Smith after a salon day. Then another of my friends (coincidentally dressed as a surgeon) spent the evening necking a stripper from Basildon who was dressed as a zombie nurse. Then my friend Ben (who I mentioned the other day) was a skeleton John McEnroe celebrating his cat sister’s birthday. That’s what I mean by mental. I also got to see my Gonzo friend Mike and his lovely girlfriend Jess. We talked (drunkenly) about how we just switch hanging out on and off, there’ll be nothing for months, barely any contact and then it’s a click and everyone is back together and it is all hugs and how are yous and we dance in a circle and love love love one another and it is just pure and brilliant.
Kate was also there (in the best costume I saw all night) with her friends and I love seeing all of them as well because they’re just in the league below when it comes to crazy and I like to watch that develop.

How I spent that extra hour gained was stood outside. There were fifty people crammed into the glass faced kebab shop opposite, there were girls with ripped tights and fake blooded necks lying in doorways waiting for friends or taxis, there was still that noise in the air that said, where can we go? I stood out in that for over an hour, trying to make sure everyone was safe and able to get out and home, and then picking James up from the sloped entrance to the cornershop and getting him to the taxi rank. I discovered that even in this day and age the clocks resetting still fucks up technology. Every ATM in the high street refused to dispense cash and confused rolling skeletons and mummys roamed up and down in the lights of the parade of cabs trying each one in the hope of that golden withdrawal that could carry them home. Eventually it was just James and I making promises we knew we would forget by the morning. I shoved him into the back of a cab and promised to speak to him soon. I then sat on a wall waiting for the clock to turn back.