Tropical Saturday Night

A night that looks like autumn, but feels like some memory of a tropical jungle. By the time I get to the Evening Star I am dripping with sweat. It seems to take an age to get served. After a pint there we head to the Black Lion. Lancs' leaving do. He is going travelling around the world in December and does not intend to come back; 'return tickets are not part of the plan'. There is a DJ tent set up out the back. The beat overlays everything. I never go to places like this any more. Echoes of ten years ago. Everyone looks shiny and sharp. On the way out I accidentally nudge an empty glass from the table that shatters all over the floor. No-one notices. Keep walking. Don't look back.
We end up back at the Star. It's still too hot. The manager tells us how he sometimes dreams of the twins that used to live there, siamese twins  Daisy and Violet Hilton who appeared in notorious 1932 horror film Freaks. Doctor Occult joins us at some point. He orders a pint of cider and has a glass of ice 'on the side'. He is wearing a beautiful scarf, silk with some kind of pattern influenced by some late pre-Raphaelite furniture designer. He worries that the scarf is 'too ostentatious'. Claire reminds him that he has been known to come out in a purple suit including a very purple trilby hat.
When I get home I go straight to sleep.
I am woken with a start sometime in the night by a crash of books from One of the towers of books has fallen over.
I go back to sleep.