a night out

Every time I come down to Swansea I suggest to my daughter she takes me out on the town. Usually it falls on deaf ears but occasionally she concedes to let me go with her and we drive into town to a selected gig or pub where I can't do any harm.

 Jazz is a popular venue and some of her friends are members of a band or play as a group who  sit in and play for the evening. I'm always envious of a person who can make music, who can immerse themselves in the entertainment of others and carry the night with their creative flair. 

Swansea seems like a final resting place for many a well worn guitarist. People who have been there and done it, now happy in their own skins, satisfied to 'jam' together before returning home through the wet early morning streets to a small house in one of the suburbs. The excitement of the riff and a pint is enough !!
Down the main entertainment drag in Swansea, a street called Wind Street (which runs at right angles to the bay and no doubt gets  its name from a winter gale or two) the clubs and pubs have taken over the once imposing buildings, initially  banks and merchants now cavernous drinking halls were the ubiquitous bouncer lurks on the door. Sensing I am well past presenting a problem, he lets me in with Angie and we enter to the welcome of some of her pals who's patch this is.
Tall leggy females in ever so tight clinging dresses and a Maurice Gibb look alike speaking a dialect which, even on a calm evening would be difficult to decipher but amidst the noise and bedlam of the band and the shouting to be heard make understanding what is said a lost cause.
It's a funny old world.  In my day the girls were all demure and dressed to attract but not to suggest ! Today the suggestion is shrieked from the roof-tops as the material she wares covers only what the law lets them get away with.
Once upon a time a girl would wait for a chap to ask her for a dance. Today the guys are sidelined as the girls dace with each other in some sort of tableau or rite.
It reminded me somewhat of an African tribal performance. Nubile maidens stamping their feet, displaying bodies in front of the men, a sort feline filly auction in Kentucky's horse country.
The men play no part in this Wind St burlesque. They are the bit players in the performance, there to look and contemplate but not to touch.
I suppose, after the girls have set out their stalls the real work begins but I had long gone home by then to my coco and the ubiquitous electric blanket.