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Impair, manque
I settled down in the pub and finished Turgenev's Smoke, a passionate tale of an idealised love and the triumph of respectability and "realism", and then bumped into Wilma and her new bloke. Wilma has been off the booze for almost a year now. "I was hoping she'd become a bit less negative when she gave up drink, but she's still the same," someone said recently.
Then, an hour or so of gilding the lily, and it was off to Manchester, where a DJ I like was playing.
It was the coldest nightclub I have ever been in. It was like dancing in a freezer. The club is downstairs but there's an outside area with the communicating doors permanently wide open. I danced in my jacket and scarf, wondering how the girls in their thin dresses were coping. But the music was excellent and it was a friendly, careless crowd. And I got chatted up!
She was thirtyish, small, and had a mousey face, but it'd have been worth taking her home just to warm up. I wasn't particularly bothered about "full intercourse" but she might have had a spare hot water bottle.
She started dancing closely to me before initiating a conversation which unfortunately soon became a little stilted, about where we live and what the nightlife is like in Lancaster. She asked if I fancied a drink and invited me to sit down with them. I declined the offer, and that was it. But to be approached like that is flattering, and I'm definitely wearing that combo again--short brown suede jacket, pale brown and orange shirt with a pattern of little squares on it, dark brown jeans and plain black leather shoes--to see whether it can repeat its girl magnet trick.
The music wound down at 4.00, and my train back wasn't until 6.30, but by dint of some prior research, I had found somewhere I could go. It was a 24-hour casino, and was classier and more dressy than I was expecting. There was waitress service for everything, wherever you were. It was still fairly busy and people were wandering around the tables and sitting in the bar with a look of unconcern. The regulars and the croupiers all know each other, and there was a camerarderie of commiseration and congratulations.
A casino in central Manchester at 5am this morning
I'd never been to a casino before last night and being so close to a new subculture at perhaps one of its extremes--since casual gamblers wouldn't still be there at dawn--was anthropologically interesting. I sat watching the roulette and saw a man win six hundred pounds, and then lose it all within the hour; it's to see a licensed addiction running wild before your eyes. Another man told me he'd lost three hundred pounds that evening. "I leave my cards at home now. I'm trying to wean myself off it to be honest." I let my first train leave and stayed on for another couple of hours.
I had a coffee in Starbucks on the station, and marvelled at the incredible tedium of some people's jobs.
11 comments
Lucky you - can’t remember the last time I was chatted up *sighs enviously*
Well, negative and sober beats the hell out of negative and sloppy drunk. You’ll live longer and your friends can enjoy your negativity for an extended period of time.
The look on that guy’s face seems to say he is badly in need of mutual reassurance.
Man, I love casinos. Just love em’. I like both participating in, and observing, the carnage.
I know you have a low tolerance for tedium but, take it from me, you can get used to pretty much anything if you have to.
I’m fascinated by the second black and white photo. Who on earth has to be told to cuddle their partner? Is that a Really Late handbook by any chance?
PW:
I think it’s just Lancaster. My very attractive, well-educated, head-turningly gorgeous friend Linda, (who’s Irish) said she finds men up here are so frosty.
Exile:
It’s not my negativity I was talking about, it’s Wilma’s. But yes, sobriety is best for her. Even though the expected transformation hasn’t quite happened. And she’s a good friend, her heart’s in the right place. I, on the other hand, can’t wait to get back drinking.
My first time in a casino but it definitely won’t be my last. I really enjoyed myself. It didn’t feel like killing time at all.
I couldn’t ever accept having to get used to tedium. I’d plot my escape, or just walk away, with nothing to go to. Concentrates the mind no end!
Suzy:
Gosh, you’re a perceptive woman. Yes, it is. We’re having a clear out at work, and I filched it out from the rubbish when I was in the office on my own. I’ll publish some more illustrations from it. They’re unintentionally amusing.
It’s weird terminology. I bet Connie would like that, the symmetry. But the French terms don’t make sense in terms of congratulation or regret over how you’ve won or not. Manque in normal speech means to miss (as you know) – but in roulette it means to miss getting over 16. It’s as absurd and deliberately complicated as cricket. I could get into this.
I admire your will power from abstaining from the gambling.
Or just skint?
Like Pendlewitch said, lucky you. The only time I get chatted up now is by young teachers who want a day off.
Fabulous! Not that you don’t get chatted up, I mean that you’re back in the navel-gazing fold.
Gambling is the one vice that passes me by. And seeing how much you need for an average night out (well, you know, an average night out till 8am) in Manchester, very glad it doesn’t do much for me.
Great to see you back TSB – will fiddle with the controls to reinstate you now.
Looby- sorry I missed the email you sent me as part of your prior research… I’ve only just got back online in the house after moving and only just picked it up! Although admittedly I’m not brilliant at checking my emails even when I have no excuse (as you know).
But by the looks of things you got some very workable advice from my fellow Mancunians (if I can still call myself that having decamped over the border)- advice certainly a lot better than anything I could have given you, I would probably have been pointing you towards the Chinese-run snooker club on Whitworth Street that used to be a regular post-club haunt… but that certainly doesn’t have waitress service (of for that matter, functioning central heating, and I get the impression you needed thawing out).
Not to worry J, I thought you might be a bit busy.
You don’t mean you’ve moved to… not… surely… please tell no… Cheshire?
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