Friday night and a five mile walk home

Subject: FW: Friday night and a five mile walk home.

 

 

"It's Friday night and I just got paid" reminds me of the clamor to be out. End of the working week, free for a couple of days before the dreaded Monday morning called.
Putting on the glad rags, putting on the style, we made our way to where our chums would be. No car, the trolley bus was our chariot of choice, tickets please as we plunked down on a seat upstairs. Stop go we went into town, people drifting off to their own favorite place, the snug at the Albion or the Pictures at Five Lane End. These though were the parochial's, the people who never strayed far from home who thought the city at night time too prone to the unexpected.

We got off at the town centre, the wet drizzle always a challenge for the hair and entered our favorite pub to look around to see who we knew. "Pint of Bass please" the night was young and this was the fuel for later when you needed the courage to ask a girl for a dance. The juke box was blaring out to the faithful, the atmosphere was noisy and cloudy with cigarette smoke and we were happy with anticipation. There were no drugs other than the alcohol, we were largely a naive bunch of lads and lasses having our last unfettered swing before marriage and the responsibility of kids.
The evenings were routine. The pub and then the dance hall with all its glitz and pretty girls (a couple of pints and they all looked pretty) "can I have this dance". The band struck up a tune and we were off, helter-skelter twisting in and out of the other couples caring not to collide, swaying this way and that to our practiced steps, for the moment at one in the excitement that dancing can bring. Boy and girl, potential mates, "thanks for the dance, see you later". Sometimes you did, a walk to the bus stop a quick snog before her the bus came and we, released from any further contractual nature realised your own bus, the last, had gone and we were in for a five mile walk home.