Versions of an Event

The company accountant is everything you’d imagine an accountant to be: mid 50s, stern, abrupt and very, very serious. It was the Christmas work’s do and the rest of us sat around feeling the customary awkwardness of having to socialise with people we wouldn’t normally choose to. Not the accountant though. He’d already drunk way too much Barnsley Bitter in the restaurant before we somehow ended up in the student area of the city in a bar that was far too trendy for the likes of us.

It was Salsa night. Everyone else in the bar knew how to dance Salsa properly and were obviously regulars. We couldn’t have been more out of place if the bar had been on the moon.

I was just about coping. The volume of the music fortunately meant I didn’t have to talk too much and I began examining potential excuses for leaving. However, half an hour later, the accountant disappeared. We searched everywhere for him until, just as we’d almost given up on ever seeing him alive again, I weaved my way to the toilet and spotted a grey head of hair bouncing around on the middle of the dance floor. Arms flailing, glasses skew-whiff, he was head-banging in the middle of a pack of serious and dedicated Salsa dancers.


FOCUSING ON SOUNDS & SMELLS
The company accountant – always ready with a savage quip, a headmaster’s voice with a home-counties accent. The accompanying smell of old churches and Golden Virginia.

The trendy side of Sheffield, moneyed students in a bar blasting out South American music loud enough to prohibit conversation. The fruity alcoholic smell of extravagant cocktails mixing with the Lynx deodorant that seemed to seep from the walls.

A fug of beer fumes lingered over our table and, amid the tumult of trumpets and bongos, we took our attention off our accountant for a second and he was gone – vanished like the smoke from his roll-up on a windy day.

We braved the girating bodies and flapping silk in search of him. We followed our noses through the swathes of perfume at the bar, crossed the underlying stench of sweat on the dance-floor and made it all the way over to the nostril shrinking tang of disinfectant by the toilets.

Nothing.

Then, a wisp of grey hair amid the cloud of elegant, sweeping youngsters. Right in the centre of the dance-floor, the aura of drunkenness coming off him like musk - there was our accountant pogoing mercilessly to chilled latino beats, as inappropriate and unavoidable as a klaxon in a library.


AS FICTION
Split personality. Jekyll and Hyde. However, instead of a chemistry set and beaker, the accountant’s magic potion came from the casks of the Kelham Island Brewery.

The rest of us were sober enough to be ill at ease and uncomfortable in the student bar. I tried to stay quiet, waiting patiently for the first couple to peel away from the group and go home so that I could more easily justify my own escape. But then, panic. Our accountant was missing.

We murmured concern over the deafening thump of the Salsa music. He was in a wild enough state to create trouble with the gym-attending, easily offended clientele 30 years his junior.

Having patrolled the perimeter, scanned dark corners, checked the toilets – both male and female – and sent out a rescue party to search the streets outside, there was still no trace of him. Then, reconnoitring the dance-floor one last time, I spotted him. A mass of grey hair bouncing anything but rhythmically amid the irritated looking Salsa-ists. With horror, I watched as the trademark brown cardie came off. Next, it was twirling around his head in what appeared to be some kind of pagan fertility ritual.

I wasn’t the only one watching. A pack of bouncers was gathering like storm clouds close by. The extraction of our accountant from that dance-floor would need to be planned like a military operation.


A HAIKU
Wild hair, flailing arms
Blind drunk feral accountant
In the Salsa throng.


FROM A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW
Boring bastards. Boring, miserable bastards. What’s the matter with you? This is fantastic! Listen to that music – can’t you feel it? Drink up, come on, let’s go and dance!

Wait, what are you doing? Don’t start talking about politics – are you mad, we’re on a night out! You, take your head out of your hands. Don’t you dare look at your watch and yawn. Keep drinking, all of you, it’s only half one – we don’t have to be at work for another eight…er...seven…no, seven and a half hours. The night is young and it’s Christmas!

What are you… get to the bar, come on! I’ll have a cocktail this time, get me a Sex on the Beach. I don’t care what it costs, I’m the bloody accountant, it’ll go under expenses.

I need to dance now, who’s with me?

What?

Miserable bastards.

Right, screw this, I’m off. Not sitting around here all night when there’s music like this playing.

Wow, they all look very good at dancing. It’s a bit controlled though, a bit too regimented, like a routine or something. You’ve got to really feel these rhythms, let it flow through you, be free with it. I’ll show you all how it’s done, I’ll get right in the middle, right in the mixer.

Excuse me, coming through, oops, sorry about that – it’ll wash out. This is more like it! Everyone – hey, everyone – watch me! This is how you do it!

I may be an old man but as you can see, I can still cut it with these youngsters. Impressive eh? Hello there my dear, what a lovely blouse you’re wearing.


CHANGING THE SETTING
I was at the gig, the gig I’d been waiting months for. The Deathpigs haven’t played here in seven years and the crowd were well up for it. The sense of anticipation had been building all the way through the support act and we must have necked at least eight ciders before the ‘Pigs even started. By the time I made my way down to the mosh pit at the front, I was already pretty wrecked – I think everyone was.

When they finally came on stage, the crowd went ballistic. Bronco had his devil mask on, Cagney was wearing all his leathers, Brody threw a bucket of fake blood into the crowd – it was amazing! When Fester picked up his bass and cranked up the amps, I was shouting so loudly that I lost my voice for three days afterwards. It was the best gig I’ve ever been to in my life.

There was one weird moment though, so strange that I can’t be totally sure that it wasn’t just a cider hallucination. Right at the start of the guitar solo in Head Full of Hate, I noticed this old guy. He was really smartly dressed with immaculate hair and well pressed clothes. There was a quiet dignity about him, he seemed to give off an aura of charm and sophistication. Baring in mind, this was when the crowd were at fever pitch - beer and spit and hair everywhere, psychos headbanging and crashing into each other and throwing bottles at the stage – the mosh pit was utter bedlam, a seething mass of black shirts and sweat. But none of it seemed to touch this old gent. He just breezed through the lot of us doing this smooth, slinky kind of dance. Never in my life have I seen anyone dance to The Deathpigs like that. In a really strange way though, it seemed to fit perfectly with the tempo and beat of Head Full of Hate, as if the old guy had natural rhythm and was totally at one with the music.

Like I said, weird.