The Wild, Wild, South-West

Sometimes I feel like I’m cursed. Trouble seems to find me wherever I go. I'm sure you've noticed the shit that happens to me rarely happens to other people.

Take Saturday night for instance. A work colleague asked me to come out for a drink. Cute Asian girl I’ve nicknamed ‘Princess’ because of her princess-like tendencies. She is an arch mainpulator and usually manages to wrap everyone around her little finger. Including me. To be honest I disliked the little minx at first, especially after she took a two-hour ‘break’ in the pub the first night I was leading the shift. After that, she was on my shit list.

But her persistent chatter wore me down, and hateship turned to friendship, hence why I entertained meeting her 1.30am in Brixton on a Saturday night to go to a club playing house music.

Princess and her friends, who mainly live in Brighton, had been to a Primal Scream gig at Brixton Academy, and needed to hang out ‘til the early hours of the morning to catch their train back, so I suggested Plan B, as I knew it opened until 5am. I rolled up around 1.30am to meet them. It was pretty packed as a lot of people had the same idea, but once in there, it was like a time machine had transported you back to the 1990s Summer of Love.

A DJ from New York was playing, and the brother was on point. It reminded me of the 90s Chicago and New York house I used to like.

I drank quickly and recklessly at Plan B because I was a few hours behind the others. Half a bottle of wine before I left home, double vodka, glass of white wine, a brandy shot, and then another vodka. Yep, I think that just about did it. Everyone was pretty high on some other stuff, and the vibe was really good.

Even though I recognised very few tunes, I danced all night. I remembered going to raves and taking Ecstasy. We went to one with Suzie Wong once, and me and Lou dropped half an 'E' and Wong wouldn't do it, then she 'screwed' all night. Every time we looked at her, her face was push-up, and it was so funny. I was almost wetting myself at how vex she was. Me and Lou danced til' 7am, but Wong was swellin', bored and wanted to go but couldn't. Thing is, I don't touch illegal drugs any more. I don't need them to rave until 7am, or even 9am, I just need a couple of drinks and some good music. But I understand why people do, most of my experiences were fun.

Princess was attracting some attention from the local yokels which led to a few sticky situations as her boyfriend wasn’t taking no checks. When he spoke to one weirdo who was stalking her in the club, the guy lunged at him and bit him on the neck. What the fuck? I tried to talk to the bro’ and then he started talking about ‘no white boy can come to Brickie and tell me nothing.’ This seemed to be a popular theme for the evening.

One of the girls wanted to go to the chicken shop afterwards. So we headed to Morley’s. Wrong move. As I walked through the door some bredda tried to feel me up. I told him ‘don’t do that’, so then his friend says ‘can I touch you’. So my loose drunken mouth said: "Do I look like your babymother?’. Ohhhhh…ego dented and bruised.

His friends kept repeating it and before long he started getting abusive. I said to him ‘ah big woman sumptin’ dis you know'. You can tell I was lean can't you. 'Have some respect, I’m a big woman for you.’ He said: ‘How do you know I’m a pickney’ ‘I don’t', I said , but I know I'm older than you. so have some respect'. Next thing I know Princess’ boyfriend is next to me, and mans is saying who you telling to shut up. Fight bruk out. I try to keep them apart but it just ends up turning into this mass brawl, with one of their friends talking about ‘the white man and 400 years of slavery’. The relevance of that is at this particular moment what exactly?

One of the guys was brandishing an Alize bottle threatening to lick the boyfriend with it, but thank God he didn't, and just thumps were thrown. The chicken shop workers called the police, who had to escort us to the police station across the road to get the fuck out of there.

Everyone was shook, including me. Especially as I had to go home without my fucking chicken.

But still, looking back, that was one hell of a fucking good night.