Everything else in the neighbourhood - and most of London - was closed. For such a big city, the Old Lady goes to bed rather early. As I walked into the last pub alive, I saw the tall, thin lady under the darkest shadow of the alley. She was very clearly crying, and doing her best to pretend not to.
Does that make sense?
Three Brits joined me at my table. She joined us later. She was drunk and wanted to know why we were drinking. She asked in an eastern European accent: she needed to know why the British drunk so much.
"Because we enjoy it," Symington's girlfriend said.
"But why?"
"Because it makes us feel happier."
We had a long conversation after that. She asked many uncomfortable questions. She cried a lot. She had broken up with her boyfriend. Their sexlife wasn't great, but that's a story for another day. She told us a lot. Probably more than we wanted to know. Definitely more than we needed to know.
At one point, one of the boys got up and brought back a round of shots for everybody. We raised our tiny glasses.
"What is the happiness for this?" She asked. Nobody said anything for a very long time. And then, Symington's girlfriend replied:
"There is no happiness."
A drunken lad was trying to catch a pigeon that was sleeping on the roof of an old grey car. Young boys were stealing the newly rebranded Boris Bikes. Two Chinese girls were smoking and puking, never stopping to do one so they could keep on doing the other.
It was just another night in Waterloo.
