Tonight was the last ever Whirl-y-gig at the Camden Centre, the plan was to get there early and enjoy every second.
It opens at 10. Normally we’d arrive at 11/12ish. But tonight looked as though it might be very very busy. So we were at the queue, and indeed in it, by 10pm. It was moving slowly, we’d already finished of some vodka at the flat and most of a bottle of whiskey on the bus. Whirly has no bar, but drinks can be taken in, the queue was moving. We now had no drinks.
I offered to run to the off licence . The others accepted my offer, I was hoping for some polite English “No, I’ll goâ€, but there was none , so I ran.
The shop was a lot further than I thought, there are a lot of people in Kings Cross drinking cans in the street, from young hip kids to Special Brew swilling media types. Seemingly only one off licence. At least, only one that I could find.
I was in, I was out of breath, I was drunk. I picked a bottle of the finest High Commissioner Whisky and some Diet Coke. I paid. I got ready to run back out. My phone rang. They were at the front of the queue. I had to work fast. I ran out of the shop.
It was here that I neatly forgot to notice the large concrete step down to the pavement. In slow motion (not a trick of the mind, but a trick of aliens that are following me) I lost my footing and feel downwards, my right ankle landed first, and awkwardly. There was a horrific crunching sound (in my head, it was the aliens playing a horrific crunching sound just behind me). I managed somehow to keep my balance. And not look like a complete idiot (admittedly, most of one though) and got a round of applause.
I thanked them and then remembered the queue…
Starskey and Hutch type music flooded my brain (aliens) and I ran up the street, ankle hurting, but adrenalin pumping.
I got to the door just as we were going in. Phew.
After sitting down for about ten minutes it transpired that my ankle was fucked, swollen and unable to move. I also realsied it was the other ankle to the one thatI hurt the other month.
The problem was that over the course of this drunken narcotic evening the pain completely subsided. I knew this wans’t real and had to be careful to try and limp to conserve nasty ow pain in the morning.
But even when the foot hurts I sometimes limp on the wrong foot, so I had no idea whatI was doing.
Whirly was still good. And by the end we were all invited to a whirly reunion at Hyde Park.