great nights out I have avoided

Naturally I expect to be woken up when my housemates and whoever is with them get home from clubs. It’s now becoming a sport, however: they’re competing to see who will be the first to jolt me from my dreams. Hannah won on Thursday night, by a finger (on the doorbell), but Dave also made a heroic attempt by tumbling loudly down the stairs. He fetched up under the clothes horse. Trembling in fear, Mat approached the still form draped with washing at the bottom of the stairs. He tentatively twitched aside a pair of damp pants to reveal Dave’s grinning face: ‘Hello’. I am continuing to take my washing home.

It was the Pink Toothbrush I was avoiding that night or, more specifically, Bez, who was DJ-ing (ie: shouting incoherently over the music). Tonight I am not going to school disco night at Sam’s, in which punters relive their carefree schooldays (before returning to school a couple of days later). I am quite looking forward to not going. ‘You could be a teacher’, they say. I’m sure I could radiate the expected disapproval. I could sit alone and bend my cane, as the song has it. Probably get thrown out, though.

Mat got thrown out of the Pink Toothbrush. For dancing. Or that’s what he called it - he was very drunk and horny, so anything could have happened. To paraphrase The Simpsons, his growing insanity continues to be a worry. He has more or less given up work since he downloaded this program that provides a hypnotic visual accompaniment to the music he plays. I come in from work and he glances briefly away from the screen, looking like a startled bush baby. Then it’s back to the swirling patterns again. His only ambition now is to take hallucinogenic drugs and make the patterns real.