Current location:	borough market
Current mood:	drunk
Current music:	random 90s nostalgia music

nights at the market
I can't leave this place, not yet. 
I'm always in such a hurry to move on to the next phase of my life - wherever, whatever - that sometimes I forget to stop and look around, enjoy myself a little.
Feeling a bit flat after work last night (mopping the filthy floors at the end of a busy but unrewarding day) I went to meet F and his crazy Argentine colleague for a half pint or two - which swiftly became three, four, five; translating between his Argentine and my Castilian Spanish via F's Italian and some pretty idiosyncratic English, getting 'merrier' by the minute...  Before I knew it we were downstairs at the Banana Store, a place I've never understood but am coming to appreciate, like some kind of performance art.  The owner (drunk) practically mugged us into sitting down to eat - it was free.  They laid a table for two with candles and announced that there was going to be some romance in the place; apart from us, there was a table with a random assortment of people from the market, in various stages of inebriation, and some usual suspects propping up the bar.  We had the same dish for starter and main course.  At some point more people rolled in - a tall, wonderfully foul-mouthed Scouser with a hat and cane whose name I couldn't remember, with a bit of banter for everyone; he joined the market table and sat in the corner announcing "fuck me!  I've just had a text message from the queen! 'are you being served yet?' where's me fucking dinner?"  At the end of the meal (and the bottom of a bottle of the house white) someone gave us grappa - "the bollocks" - from the town where he was born.  He poured it straight into my espresso cup and after I downed it ("this girl drinks like a builder," apparently) it left the cup completely clean, god only knows what it did to my insides.  I got involved with an argument about Welsh rugby with a Saffa at the bar and F prevented me making an unwise bet about the next northern/southern hemisphere game.
Somehow or other I rolled home and into bed, singing all the way.  F called me to make sure I was ok.  I was more than ok.  I was happy.