I began to half-wheel, half-drag the bike up the hill. Hythe Hill was almost impassable at this point. It smelt of anger, inexperienced drivers and burning clutch fluid. It wasn't pleasant. At the Brook Street lights, three yobs threw snowballs at me. They missed, I suspect, only because they were drunk. All along the road to St Botolph's, still in heavy snow, I kept passing under-dressed men, cans in hands, in drunken trances. At Colchester Town station, a courting couple were having a romantic screaming match by the wall. It was eight p.m. and half of Colchester, it seemed, was already trollied.
At the Arts Centre, amazingly enough, all three performers made it in and performed to a reassuringly three-quarters full house. "Anyone in from Wivenhoe, tonight?" I asked. Answer came there none. After ten p.m., therefore, once again, Nanook of the North wheeled his bike out of the place and set off back home. The snow had stopped and the town centre now looked like a Klondike gold-rush town on payday. The tourist brochures won't tell you this stuff but someone ought to, so I will. On the Saturday before Christmas 2010, Colchester High Street was full of large teams of raucously-drunk pond-life acting as if they ran the town.
At the top of Queen Street, I caught the attention of a group of about fifteen of them. They were so drunk that they were holding each other up. One of them screamed at me: "Oi mate. Why're you on a ******* (please insert password) bike?" I called back to him, "I've just finished work. I'm trying to get home." Whilst they considered my answer, I escaped. After a perilous descent of East Hill, just past the bridge, a smaller group of idiots threw a lump of ice at me, in a further attempt to unseat me. They missed.
Now look, if we can't do anything as complex as regulating the sales of I.Q. reducing liquids to these simians, can't we at least put a couple of snipers on the Town Hall roof on Saturday nights instead? This is my modest proposal. Because there seems little point in building the new Cultural Quarter in the town unless we do so.
Martin Newell, "Deep and Crisp and Even," in The Stars on a Tray, pp.15-16
