What Mark did next

Saturday night was spent at a birthday party for an ex-colleague, who I always got on rather well with, but whom nowadays I seem to only see at his birthday parties. Having learned from times past, I made an extra effort to turn up late this time. I've discovered before that I'm the only person who ever turns up on time for these things, and other people I know always seem to appear at least an hour after the scheduled event. However, turning up late is a foreign concept to me, and there are few things that spoil my mood as much as being late for something. Or anything. I'd planned on being the full hour late in order to coincide with the arrival of the others, but couldn't quite manage it and in the end I cracked after 40 minutes. I justified this on the grounds that it seemed a reasonable compromise.

Though it was good catching up with Rem (the ex-colleague. The day after he left work I wore a t-shirt that said "No comment" - it's funny if you're a programmer, honest), he'd chosen to host his party at a bar just north of Oxford Street. Whilst I'm sure it's a lovely place during the day, in the evening it was thronged with an absurdly dense crowd, to the degree that was nearly impossible to stand still without being constantly jostled, far too warm, and had a music playing at a deafening level. The last was particularly frustrating, since it was virtually impossible to hold a conversation without yelling in the ear of the person next to you. Not only do I fail to see the appeal of such an environment, I really can't understand what anyone sees in it - why socialise in a place that seems expressly designed to make socialising an even more difficult activity?

Fortunately the party eventually shifted to a nearby nightclub, at which point a few of us decanted, ears still ringing, to a nearby pub in which we delighted in our new found ability to hear by holding an actual conversation.