Half past
midnight, a
Saturday night/Sunday morning at
Carrick Knowe Golf Club. The
hall has been hired out for a
birthday party, or a
fundraiser, or an
anniversary, or some other such thing: it makes no difference to
me, they all
drink the same things.
Especially considering that they only had the temerity to actually get up on the dancefloor half an hour ago, that expanse of pine is heaving with a thronging mass of drunken partygoers. Everyone who's not on the dancefloor is at the bar, trying to squeeze in one last round before time is called. Usually it's a double, or a triple, round, or fourteen Baileys over ice, or something, and we're running out of glasses.
Behind the bar I slog from one customer to the next, mindlessly pouring vodka and Bacardi and pulling pints of lager. I have to wash and dry a glass for each drink they order, 'cos there's none left on the shelves and there's no way I can get out from the bar to bring any back.
And then the DJ announces that we're almost out of time, and he's going to play some slow songs to wind up the evening. A Sinatra number is not uncommon, Shania Twain's Still The One and that bloody awful When You Say Nothing At All almost obligatory. Beyond the mayhem at the bar, the dancefloor is another world of soft lighting and couples moving in harmony.
I serve the last drink and tell some guy who doesn't understand the meaning of 'last orders' that there is absolutely, positively, not a snowball's chance in hell that he can get another drink. I start to cash up the till, stained twenties and tens flipping through my hands in practiced, unthinking motion. Andy, my colleague, starts to dunk dirty glasses in the sink as he explains to some other drunken geezer that there is absolutely, positively, not a snowball's chance etc.
The last song draws to a close: Ronan Keating reiterates that you say it best when you say nothing at all, and I flip on the main hall lights. People begin to shuffle off the dancefloor and make absolutely no effort to leave.
It's Sunday morning, I'm still at work, I'm tired, I have a million glasses to wash and all your crap to tidy up before I can go home. And I'm the only one in the whole building who isn't drunk. Go home. Please.