Saturday night

We went to see a band playing the Essex Arms. They weren’t on, but another band was. Since the only reason we’d been going to see the original band was that they formed part of a regular, rival pub quiz team in the Green Man, there was no real disappointment involved. It wasn't like we'd been going to see Radiohead, and 'Freebird' were on instead, playing covers. In fact, 'Freebird' were good. At least, their guitarist was. Guitar solos are often flabby, yawn-inducing things, especially on occasions such as these; this guy’s were crisp, succinct. The singer was… enthusiastic, managing somehow to remind me of both Will Ferrell and Roland Rat, and the bass player was as concerned with his (blond, shoulder-length) hair as he was with his bass-playing. And rightly so: the way it fell around his head when he tossed it (in a kind of slow-motion, as in the hairspray ads) was something to see. A flyer discovered on the bar told us they were fully-booked until December 2006 (albeit mainly at the social club in Silver End).

Afterwards we went for a curry at the Jubal Raj. Their definition, not to mention their spelling, of a chicken chat masala was quite different from that of the Sakura on the High Street. Well, we were past the station now, on the wrong side of the tracks, as was confirmed when, after leaving, Mat and I watched some drunken woman slapping her (drunker) partner about in the middle of the road.

We got a cab from the rank by the station, this gleaming white space fronted by a miked-up woman in black who looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. She greeted us, and led us to the cab when it came. There was something of the holiday rep about her and indeed the whole place looked like the setting for a minor reality TV show. You had the Chinese(?) guy talking Chinese(?) into his mobile. The Indian(?) guy who greeted Mat familiarly as he walked in, though Mat had no idea who he was. The bloke at the switchboard explaining over and over again to the same caller that there were no cabs available because it was busy. A voiceover was needed to set all this in context: then the whole thing could have played on the fuzzy TV in the corner. And been entirely ignored.