My name is Simon Peter Holmes. I hail from Sidborough, a pleasant, but suburban and isolated English town. This is my story.

It is a Thursday night and I am down the Tempo Club on Broad Street, to see the band of an old friend. It is £5 to get in.
There is inevitably a charge for entering, as this is very much a live music place: virtually every night there is some kind of band on. The place itself is open until 3am weekends and 1am other days, but live music usually finishes at 11pm. The choice of music is mainly rock and metal but sometimes there is jazz on.
There are some more double doors on the left and through them is a spacious room that is somewhat minimalist: there is the stage, the bar and that’s more or less it. There are virtually no flyers up on the dark walls at all, which lends the room an eerie atmosphere. I find this adds to the heavy-metal tunes playing in the background. Perhaps this is the idea? There is a no-smoking sign near the bar and an advert for Guinness (the one with the penguin in it) near to that. There is a room for smokers clockwise from the stage, which I can’t comment on, as I don’t usually smoke. I do find it amusing, though, that they are discouraging smoking while encouraging drinking though I understand that there is no such thing as passive drinking. 
At first, there isn’t anyone there except the bar staff. I think about having wine but decided to opt for lager on this occasion. The main lagers on offer at the Tempo Club are Coors, Carling, Budvar and Sol. (The last two are the ones worth drinking, in my opinion).
I brought my long-distance friend Alan with me (he lives in Birmingham but used to live in Sidborough). We start joking about builders drinking wine (somehow the idea doesn’t quite fit) and act out self-defence situations such as: the aggressive approach, the assertive approach, and the ignoring approach. We act out these approaches with different styles of bullying (persistent and not-so-persistent) and experiment with how it works. Then we pretend to kill each other. By 9 the place has begun to fill up. Everyone seems to drink lager in this place! What’s up with that? Jon is among the crowd and he comes over for a brief chat. Apparently the saxophonist is off so I suggest the possibility of three guitars, which I think makes a good impression.

I feel a wave of paranoia creep over me while in the background Motley Crue is playing, and I look round and see couples and groups chatting to each other and I speculate that I have nothing in common with them and never will. It’s as if they’re pouring scorn on me, with their lips, even though they’re quite clearly engaged in conversation with each other. It’s not to do with being alone while others are not. Besides, I’m here with Alan and Jon (and his band) tonight. It’s just that I seem to be in no way like them. The wave of paranoia briefly fades as the first band, Jon’s band, starts setting up on stage and playing.
Obviously I have heard the songs before and like what I hear, so the applause I give can be taken for granted. Without the saxophone, it seems different, but not in a particularly good or bad way, just different. You get the sense that they should alternate between saxophone and no saxophone, just to shake things up a bit.
The next band is somewhat retro-rocky, albeit fused with electronica. It definitely seems to take me back to the Seventies, but this is obviously the Seventies I imagine and have seen on programs such as Life on Mars, if you can accept that as a real, genuine, bona fide representation of the 1970s! Obviously I cannot describe that decade from first-hand experience as I hadn’t even been born back then. Stuff like old-fashioned telephone boxes and detectives flashes through my mind while I hear this music.
There is one last band on the bill. They are your typical death-metal band, with all-black clothing, ultra-heavy guitar riffs, screaming and growling. While this is going on, I imagine doctors torturing cats, and a femme fatale injecting me with a poison, just for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I find this very unfair. I’m trying to plead with her that she should give me a chance but she goes ahead with it, and the next thing I know I’m the subject of a cruel and callous experiment involving cannibalism and a lot of gore. Ultimately though, I must admit it is sometimes a wonderful thing to be outraged, just for the sake of it, which is why this kind of music appeals to me.
The music finishes and while trying to recover from my thoughts, I decide the band is unoriginal but good and worth checking out on Myspace.
Jon is making his way back already and we say goodbye to him and wish him good luck. We then proceed on our way out. I decide not to stay to talk as I cannot imagine getting a chance of conversation with anyone, and Alan needs to make his way back to the hotel he is staying in tonight.
There is absolutely no-one around on Broad Street at the moment, which is strange as this is very much Sidborough’s nightlife area. I guess maybe they are in the pubs and clubs a little further to the south. We turn right into South Street. There are a few people there, obviously with delusions of grandeur and rather a lot of alcohol in their blood, judging by the words they slur:
‘I’m the greatesht! I can get any guuurrrlllll in Sidbrur!’
‘Yesh, but you’re nottt ash musch of a studddd ashhh meee. I’ve done Fort Goldfaxsh!’
Even they know they are just boasting, but I guess it is all just jolly banter. We decide to turn through East Street, just to see what’s going on. No one seems too pissed up. There is a handful of people queuing up to get into Storm and another handful queuing up to get into Pulsate down the road. I mention to Alan that this placing together of clubs is a recipe for disaster and he seems thoughtful about this.
By the time we get to the end of the street, there is no queue outside Pulsate. The music is blaring down the street, which I have a slight problem with, as it invades my personal space. However, as the music is ok to me, I don’t bear too much of a grudge over it. Even if it were Busted, I could just about take it.
There is the usual bunch of drunken people, many of them in their youth, proceeding up Fort Goldfax Street. You have to be careful where to step because there is the odd pile of vomit here. It is difficult to make out conversations, because everyone is talking absolute shit simultaneously. The main actions are a short, stocky guy in a denim jacket and combat trousers lifting a taller, ectomorphic guy in white Burton shirt and dark blue straight leg jeans and carrying him down the street plus a girl in a black jacket, white blouse and black miniskirt urinating by one of the pubs.
The smell in the air is one of tobacco, alcohol, vomit and sweat. Apart from the vomit I have always quite enjoyed this. It gives the town centre a unique atmosphere, and is synonymous with the festivity of the weekend.
A girl dressed in a low-cut top and a denim miniskirt hands us a flyer for Pulsate, which we accept. It is free before 11pm on Mondays, £3 between 11pm and 1am, £5 after 1am. This discount is to do with it being student night. I feel a glow about seeming young enough to pass as a student. Anyone could be a student but they probably do not recognise this when handing out flyers. It’s funny because when I was 16 or 17, I was obsessed with the idea of trying to be older, and now my priorities have completely changed.
Alan's hotel is in Cambridge Street, so I see him off there. I tell him how good it's been to meet up again.
'Likewise.' he says, then makes his way to the hotel.
The long, cold walk continues all the way to my home, which is located in the suburb about half a mile to the south of Sidborough.