I had always intended to have a sleep before going out for the party but just when I was seriously considering sliding under the quilt somebody, somewhere in the building, decided to start using a hammer. The construction of the block is such that the sound could have been coming from anywhere, quite possibly not even from within our section. Annoyed, I waited for it to stop, which eventually it did.
Still enough time for a respectable kip. I laid down and waited for unconsciousness. Then one of the cats decided to start talking to anyone who would listen. Frustrated, I buried my head and hoped. I think in the end I managed just over half an hour. I could have had longer but I had arranged with Ollivier that we would go to McDonald’s for a bite before the party. We rendezvoused at south gate at 2030 and caught the bus. Regular readers will know that any event or outing I attend here in China always has some drama or other attached and this was no exception. I said to Ollivier, being younger than me, to go on ahead of me and try to bag seats at the rear of the bus. No sooner had he boarded than I watched in disbelief as the doors closed and the bus started to move off! It wouldn’t have been a catastrophe as I could have taken the next one but between the pair of us we got it stopped and I got on.
I ate some nuggets whilst Ollivier polished off a German sausage burger, his large fries, MY large fries and two apple pies. That boy can eat. With time to kill before our 2200 assignation at Phebe bar I suggested we find somewhere to sit and have a beer. Whilst I had jing jo medicine wine with me, you can’t smoke in McDonald’s.
When Linda got to the bar she called me and we walked up to New West Street (where Love In Town is) and walked up the escalators, which annoyingly weren’t working. We found the entrance locked. Trying to tell Linda where we were and what the problem was proved impossible so eventually I shouted through a small hole in the door and banged on it for them to open up. A stream of Chinese came back and so I simply said “English!”. It’s a great key for opening doors here!
Once inside it was clear there would be no conversation that night. It was a typical Chinese bar with the music ramped up so loud that the bass thumped your stomach. I don’t think I would be far wrong in saying I was probably the oldest in the packed nightclub by a decade. There was some consolation in that there were scantily clad dancing girls for our entertainment and Linda and Co kept us supplied with bottles of beer. The DJ, to use modern parlance, sucked. With the amount of jabbering he kept up constantly there may as well have been no music. There was one “strongman” act in which at one point he used hypodermic needles to puncture his cheek from inside his mouth (at that point I decided it was a good time to visit the loo), he blew up a car inner tube with people standing on it and at the end downed half a dozen bottles of beer in rapid succession. The staff also insisted Ollivier and I join the public dancing on a spring-mounted stage. Needless to say with two fat lumps added it got decidedly bouncier and today my ankles are telling me all about it.
All in all it was a very different new year to any I have had before. On a final note, when we arrived back at south gate in the taxi Ollivier said he had either left his scarf in the bar or lost it somewhere, maybe in the taxi. Ten minutes ago he sent me a message saying he hadn’t lost it, he was that drunk he didn’t realise it was around his neck!
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