The Invisible Barrier

I went jogging the other day in an old, old T-shirt (recently recovered from a stash of abandoned clothing in the loft of my brother's house, after an interval of several years of disuse). It's a little tatty now, but I couldn't resist the old schoolboy-subversive impulse to expose my Chinese neighbours to the phrase "Pogue mahone". (If you have to ask....)

The shirt came from a mini-tour by the Pogues early in late 1995 or early 1996 to promote their new album of that name, their second since their split from Shane MacGowan.

I went to see them play in Shepherd's Bush (what is the name of the theatre in the Bush - is it The Empire?). I went with my most disreputable drinking buddy, The Bookseller, who came down to London from Oxford specially for the event (I hadn't seen him for a few months). In addition to all the drinking that invariably accompanies a Pogues gig, and all the drinking that invariably results from my increasingly infrequent reunions with The Bookseller, I had a big extra reason for celebration that day, in that I had just received the news that I had won a place at Bar School for the following year (the competition for places is extremely stiff, and the fact that I had not originally been a Law major, and had ended up with a fairly mediocre degree, was a massive handicap to me in the assessment criteria - so it was something of a surprise and a relief to discover that I had been successful in my application after all).

In light of all this, it is quite remarkable that I managed to get the souvenir T-shirt home in one piece. That was one of the heaviest sessions of drinking in my life (well, in my post-University life, anyway).

The Bookseller had taken the day off work, so was able to roll into London to begin drinking with me mid-afternoon. We had a bit of a pub crawl around the area where I was living in Pimlico, then headed over to the Bush before the rush-hour crowds made the Tube too insufferable. Arriving a good couple of hours before the gig, we wandered off in search of a good, cheap local pub in which to continue our advance lubrication. We found a particularly good one - the unusually (perhaps uniquely?) named 'Shepherd & Flock' - one of those cheap, shabby working-class joints that caters mainly to the Irish building labourers.... and thus has improbably cheap and perfectly-kept Guinness. We had 4 or 5 pints, and maybe one or two Jameson's chasers as well.

Then, at the theatre, the main bar, situated a little towards the rear, but bang in the middle of the floor, provided surprisingly good sightlines to the stage, so we took up station adjacent to that and continued to ply the Guinness, without too much concern (for once in our lives) for the inflated prices being demanded there.

I really didn't think I'd had that much, though. Sure, it had been a long session - 8 or 9 hours. And I hadn't eaten - apart from a few packets of crisps. And I perhaps hadn't slept all that well for one or two nights previously. But I was shocked and surprised to discover just how drunk I was when we staggered outside after the show and hurried to the Tube to try to catch the last train home. It crossed my mind then, and a number of times subsequently, that perhaps someone had tampered with one of my drinks - "slipped me a Mickey". I don't think The Bookseller would ever do such a thing. But it's an odd, druggie crowd you get at rock gigs, and you never know what some of them might do for random kicks....

The really embarrassing thing about this, of course, was that The Bookseller, whose alcohol tolerance is generally much less than mine, still seemed to be reasonably functional on this occasion. It's not looking like an idiot in public that hurts, it's looking like an idiot in comparison with The Bookseller!

We suffered what seemed an interminable wait on the platform for a train, during which I was beginning to feel alarmingly woozy. Then a train arrived. People got on. The Bookseller got on. I tried to get on, but..... I somehow lost momentum or balance as I was about to step aboard, and instead stumbled backwards a step or two. It was as if I had bounced back from an INVISIBLE BARRIER placed across the open train doors. I tried again. Same result. I tried again - though by now I was giggling at myself far too much for it to be likely that my sense of balance would improve. After three failures, I just stared dumbly at the opening into the train carriage, feebly trying to figure out why it was that I was unable to walk through it. The doors closed.

Now, in such an unhappy circumstance, you might hope that one of your oldest friends would come to your aid...... and lead, push, carry you through the mysteriously impassable doorway. Not double up with laughter and jeer loudly, "Ha-ha, you're SOOOO drunk!"

It was probably only the fact that The Bookseller was laughing so hard that saved him from my subsequent fate. I'm sure he was cackling at my misfortune all the way back to Victoria (where he was getting a night bus back to Oxford), and that must have kept him awake.

There was one more train on the District Line that night. This time - without my friend taunting me for my incompetence - I was able to board quite easily. I promptly fell fast asleep.

The train terminated in East Ham. This is not a nice part of London; it is far further east than I had ever been before; I did not know the area at all; it was many miles from the centre of London, and my bed. It was a savagely cold night. I had just about no money left. I was still very drunk. After blundering around hopelessly lost for the better part of an hour, I found a police station, and fearing that death from hypothermia was a very probable outcome if I spent any more time out on the streets, I meekly offered myself up for arrest as 'drunk & disorderly'. The desk sergeant would have none of it (I suppose I should be grateful: it would have been an inauspicious, and perhaps disastrous, beginning to my 'legal career'). The miserable bastard wouldn't even let me loiter in the reception area for a while to warm up. There was, he told me, a night bus stand just down the road.

In those days, night buses only ran once every hour or so - and it would appear that I had just missed one. After another 40 minutes in the biting cold, I was close to death. However, I was starting to sober up a bit, and had worked out a general sense of where I was. I began to walk, south and west, in the vague direction of Westminster, hoping eventually to hit the Thames Embankment. After an hour or so, I was lucky enough to happen upon a black cab operating late. Remembering that I had my cashpoint card on me, I asked the driver to take me home via a cashpoint (which he charitably agreed to do; he might easily have formed the judgement that there was a high risk of my defaulting on the fare, and left me to freeze to death at the roadside). It cost me something like £25, I think, (a fortune in those 'poor student' days) to get home; but at least I lived to tell the tale.

Funny how a T-shirt will bring back memories.