Arriving Home Just After Midnight

Arriving home just after midnight, and with a sudden urge to write in blue I grab my black book and begin to compose, my head fuzzy with drink.

I remember the moon, hanging in the sky, disc shaped and glowing, laughter, a few drunken girls and then a blurred walk home.

It is 1977, I switch on my computer, make myself a coffee and stumble through to the front room and turn the television on. I have missed the football - you know the feeling - the programme has finished, I curse.

You wonder what this can all be about in a certain shade of red, and turn the page, your drinking chocolate cooling beneath your bedside lamp. You remember as a child being snuggled up in bed and your mother, or father, bringing you a drink. It is comforting, you return to the story.

I remember a girl in the bar who had waved, mouthed my name, I couldn't hear because of the karaoke and the madness taking place all around me, I've been drinking vodka and blackcurrant and my friend, who went to the toilet half an hour ago, has gone missing. He has left his jacket on a chair and I pick it up and go outside to look for him.

I shiver in the cold.

You stop reading, your telephone is ringing. You wonder who it can be at this time of the night...morning. You answer, and the voice on the other end of the line is vaguely familiar, but he doesn't say much - 'Hello...erm...erm' and then goes silent - perhaps it is my friend? You say hello several times, but he can't muster the courage to answer anymore.

I see him leave a phone box on the other side of the street. He is staring at the ground. Music filters from the pub behind me. Anarchy in the UK by The Sex Pistols, a new punk band who have just burst onto the music scene.

I see my friend look up and he tries to wave, but he is drowning in a perplexingly purple ocean of colour.