I was in Leeds last weekend working at a comedy club incidentally Leeds is apparently the hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism...who knew? All I saw was a typical English town and a few nice art galleries, there were no men in long beards burning flags or strapping bombs and running through woods, then again I always miss the action so what the hell do I know?
I tell you what Leeds does have and to me this is a new phenomenon- and it’s happening more in major towns across the UK and makes you kind of want to own an AK47 and go crazy....its drunken screaming at night. I am not talking about three people having a sing song and believe me I am from Glasgow the city of madness, religious hatred and angry football violence, I know a mental city when I see one and I know what they sound like.
Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, Cardiff and like minded cities on late night weekends are just full of drunken people walking about screaming, eating and trying to not walk into moving cars.
It’s as if some fucked up psychotic film director is standing atop a Victorian monument and persuading the crowds of young people to squeal till their throats bleed. Alcohol is the main factor and possibly an overload of processed meats mixed with a glut of ‘express yourself go girlfriend’ loud stupid TV shows. After the gig I walk back to a city centre hotel and literally have to dodge through the screaming fuck wits like a light footed first league footballer. They stand in crowds just simply screaming, arguing and yelling unintelligible shit, some of them fall and burst open their heads and some women prefer standing in city bus shelters and yell at full pitch, so the loud noise resonates through the glass walls and makes the fillings in your back teeth pierce and rattle. There are urban foxes somewhere begging for silence, I blame the human attacks from feral animals on this late night caterwauling. The animals deserve their revenge is all am saying.
I don’t recall screaming when I was younger growing up in Glasgow and I will tell you why.
In Glasgow if you screamed in the street and it wasn’t the result of violence or sudden death and you startled people....They would inflict violence on you for scaring them. You have to have good valid reason for making that noise and it better be good. Other than that we tolerate the odd singing gang of drunks heading down the street but just barely.
In my city streets we get loud teams of shouty wankers during football or marching season. (Marching season is when The Orange walk come through town and sing songs about not liking other Christians- look it up if you don’t understand, it’s called sectarianism and has nothing to do with secretaries) anyway we have our share of shouters but nothing on the scale of English cities that are destinations towns for party/stag and hen weekends.
The worst part is trying to sleep in a city centre hotel. The noise levels can be horrific and that’s when you wish you had the gun. You know that one woman screeching “Stevie” at 3am on the street corner for about an hour? She would be in my sights and you know those loud girls in pink glittery pink cowboy hats singing “Here come the girls?” down the hotel corridor? They would be splattered as I went trigger happy.
I would take those fuckers out along with the fat baldy checked-shirted- bedecked kebab fingering hotel door kicking men with one rat-a-tat with my big angry gun and happily suffer the consequences.
Okay, am exaggerating and glorifying violence but if they think it’s all right to trap me in a lift and suggest I would like a gang bang in their room then I can think about them dying in a hotel corridor as I run about like something from a menopausal version of Black Ops with my control pants full of weaponry.
Anyway violence is bad but when did adults start running about city streets yelling through big angry mouths? I don’t recall getting the twat memo that says- stop being a responsible adult with a full time job, get badly dressed in mad made fibres and go shout at cars in a strange city- did you get that memo?
It’s becoming the blight of my life. I love comedy and I don’t mind the shouters in the comedy club because I can control them, it’s when I just put my head down to sleep that the madness really kicks in every Friday and Saturday night and doesn’t calm till about 4am.
Bars in these towns advertise that you get drunk as much as you possibly can for as little cash as possible and then they let you stagger out into their granite towns to hit the statuesque squares with your own brand of pissing, vomiting and screaming at stone lions and cenotaphs. The dead soldiers of world wars would be horrified if they could see what happens above ground but then again isn’t this the freedom that they fought for? People died in the trenches so generations down the line could drunkenly scream at their monuments in the moonlight whilst full of cheap cider.
In retrospect writing this has made me realise maybe our culture of drunken screaming does help blow off steam and lets the society feel less intense within itself....what’s the opposite? Religious, pious rule makers taking over and shutting everyone up....no, I think the answer is earplugs and tolerance. Peace out.
