Gloucester Ghost

I am sat in the North Laines pub with three people I used to work with. I look around the pub that used to be the nightclub The Gloucester. It is very different - and yet, the same. The most striking difference is that the Gloucester used to be a windowless hole, and now it is the North Laine, has a series of large windows looking out onto the street. It feels very much like being in a dream place (I had a dream about Gloucester last night, and it had windows! - you know the kind of thing). The clientèle are very different too. The Gloucester used to be full of alternative university students, ageing metallers and goths, teenage emo kids... The North Laines is full of people who have just finished days at the office - lots of shirt and ties.

I used to come here a lot with Joe about ten years ago. There was a night we would go to on tuesday night called Sindrome, which was their metal / alternative night. Pints were only 69p, as were shots. We would stay till 2:00am, trying to approach women (I was always too scared too), trying to dance (I dread to think) and often, trying to ignore the fact that I had work the next day (often starting at 6:30am).

If I didn;t have work the next day, me and Joe would have what we called 'urban adventures' which would mean that we would find ourselves in some place we were never meant to be - a night-bakery, a house under construction, a building site, an overgrown patch of railway wasteground.

Joe is now teaching English in Poland, and I am here in Brighton - currently unemployed - going to places which are now unrecognisable from the days when Joe was here.