People on a Friday Night

All this while the sun sinks into the darkening sea and the gloom of night casts its shadows longer across the square except where artificial light dispels the gloom with its frivolous fairy sparkle. The bright orange of the afterglow is shut out by the clouds which roll up in heaps from the west and threaten rain and wind to come.

Boys on mountain bikes invade the square ducking and weaving among the older folk. Their pleasure in their skills, they do wheelies and show off a variety of tricks and stunts. Harmless this, the boys conscious of their audience perform more for themselves than for the older youths who not a year or so ago left mountain bikes behind and bowed to the more pressing challenge of the libido and the manlike achievements of the bottle and the can. Would they had stayed upon their toys and pranced and danced and rode around avoiding all the crowds and groups of older boys grown young and immature. It won’t last long. A group of girls, still puppyish and not made up, shriek with pleasure as the boys brush past and call with mocking or with half hopeful challenge. Too soon the boys, the mountain bikes put away to rust in some dark shed, will, with clumsy skills challenge and call the girls, as they too with clumsy skill, soon honed, respond with laughter and with jeers all calculated to entice and to allure.

One last look and a doorman turns away a punter. Professional hardness wearing wearily, they scan the crowds for trouble with practised and cynical eye. They have seen it all before. The swagger and the eager questing look, the challenge and the bitterness half hoping for a fight and half afraid. They lookout for these, high on drugs or drink, desperate with new-found strength to flex their muscles and to challenge those who wear authority and menace like a shroud. They have heard it all, the macho talk, the abusive language and the taunts. It makes no difference to them. It is all part of a night’s work; and for eight pounds an hour it is not to be concerned too much about. “Sorry! Sir.” “No! The management’s orders.” A pause, a protest. “No Sir! I’m sorry!” Polite, remote but firm and exuding menace the doorman or doorwoman prevails and the punter slinks away, determined, one day to have his or her revenge. One dark night!