It's amazing what you can do when you're drunk
It was another Little League last night. The night begun as it was to go on, with an Arnaud martini (gin + dry vermouth + crème de cassis) as an apéritif, followed by dinner and a cab over to the South Side, to Queen's Park and its lovely bowling and lawn tennis club, in the clubhouse of which the Little League is now held. The Queen's portrait looks over the bar, the club president was helping to wash the glasses, and Glasgow's indie types were out in force once more.

As well as the charming, genteel atmosphere and the perfectly trimmed lawns, one of the biggest advantages of the venue is the double-take-worthy drinks prices: they are super-low. As R said, "I ordered a pint and it was so cheap, I felt terrible. I couldn't give them just £1.80! So I had to order a whisky, too."

Such low prices meant a quite extraordinary amount of gin was consumed on my part, and goodness knows what on the part of everybody else.

After a slow start, things got increasingly enthusiastic.

The downside of the bowling clubhouse is that they won't let us keep dancing past midnight. So when the lights went up - what was the last song?* it's all a blur, by this point - we wanted to go on. Five of us piled into a cab and and after much giggling decided to head to a party, the other side of the park from where we're based. Down Kelvin Way, with its grand ornamental chandeliers, through the tunnel of leaves, under the spires of the University and the Museum, and onto a street of grand old Glasgow tenements.



I don't know whether it was just the alcohol in my bloodstream, but this flat was really something, even in the extraordinary context of Glasgow flats. It was built on a scale which seemed to have had giant tenants in mind. The close (the name for tenement stairwells), the ceilings, the rooms, everything was vast. I felt like I was floating in some great, white void.

And then I realised how tired I was, how drunk I was, and how much I would regret it the next day if I stayed much longer. So we set off back across the park to our neck of the woods. Only, you'd never walk through it at night. It's a great black void of sinister rumours, mostly exaggerated, but still.

So we went a long way round, up crumbling classical staircases and terraces of gabled sandstone houses, past lanes of old stable blocks, and down the other side of the hill back home.



I was wearing 4" heels that I can normally barely walk to the pub in, but I made it all the way home, sozzled, without falling over once.

This morning, upon reflection, I was very impressed with myself.

*I remember now...it was Another Girl, Another Planet by The Only Ones