Groundswell

As I write, it's 6am Friday in London.

Fridays there went on forever, but in a blink of an eye.

Half a day of work, travel back to Paddington, and into the office at Trafalgar Square for the afternoon. Timesheets, paperwork, emails with the US, and if the sales guys were in the office, a pint at the Ship & Shovell kicked off the weekend. Sometimes the sales guys were already there, and would be a few pints ahead by the time I'd get there, but they'd be game for a catchup round or two. Eight would roll around, and when a tab got paid, it would be time to start rolling to the west end. A 30-minute walk, or 2 stops on the Northern Line to Oxford Circus and the Kings Arms. The bar is hardly as big as the living and dining rooms of my house in Austin, and 250+ people would be packed in elbows-to-assholes. On warm nights, the crowd would spill into the street in a noisy grinning mob.

There were no strangers. Friends from online or social groups, some from the US blogosphere would show up when you least expect it, and plenty from last week's carousing. Rounds were shared, and when my turn came to buy, it would hit my wallet hard, but every one I bought was paid back over the course of the night. It just works like that. Last rounds at 11, early enough for a herd of men to catch the Victoria Line to Vauxhall. We'd all been at the KA, and none were ready to call it quits. The tube platform would be echoing with idle banter and cackling, and the fashion show in the train of punks and muscle and leather and über-queer scene boys would raise eyebrows.

There are a number of venues at Vauxhall, drawing every type, but the now defunct Growlhouse seemed to be the place for me and my crowd. Tucked under 2 arches of a railway line, a dance floor, sound and light, a couple of bars, and I'm sure plenty of tweakers among the regular joes bullshitting about the week and the weekend, arms around shoulders. It was loud. It was sometimes jammed and sweaty. It was never dull. And somehow, it never seemed that late when they pushed us out the back door at 4am, so that the next promoter could hold their 'club' in the venue, accommodating the queue at the front door. Whether by night bus or minicab, the Friday afternoon energy would finally start to fade as people headed different directions.

The ceaseless cadence of the city brought with it camaraderie, closeness, and a clutch of co-conspirators that help fuel the long Friday into the inevitable dawn.

And on nights like tonight, when I go out for a beer and stand in a large American bar lonely and apart from those most familiar, I grasp that its precisely that rhythm that is missing from this place. I think back on Fridays in London and I know that for a time, I was there with those guys starting the weekend, sharing that pulse and that fleeting energy which tumbled over and around us heading into the weekend.