Late night drinking

I met a former colleague at Waterloo about 7:45pm and we headed to The Vaulty Towers pub. It’s a quirky little bar and I thought it would be relatively quiet and we’d be able to chat. But, it turned out to be quite busy, the hand driers for the bathrooms are on the outside of the bathrooms and flood (pun intended) the venue with the roar of the fans when busy and - sadly - the beer seemed to lack proper carbonation.  So we moved on to The Wellington Hotel pub which turned out to be much quieter and more suitable to us catching-up. There was plenty to talk about, although I guess much of it is pub talk given it’s now gone from my memory.  The overriding image is of her telling me about the birds that have made their home in her flat.

Of course, when we get together it seems like an evening is never enough. So, when the pub closed we went on to Cabana which is open until the early hours. I used to frequent this bar a lot when a different colleague and I used it as a stop-over point before we both boarded late trains from Waterloo (although, I would imagine we missed the trains more often than not). There are very few late trains these days so it was a cab ride home in the early hours. It was certainly buzzing but, I think, I might be getting a bit too old to appreciate the fun of an extended night in a club-like environment. My friend, of course, managed to find a group to talk to. Gin and tonic was the beverage of choice.  Nonetheless, I have enough muscle memory of these times to appreciate that I should have been having fun.