"Where the fear and the four winds blow,
That’s where I’m headed now."
And so
darkness fell. And an acrid mist did rise. Through the glooming comes a pulse
of light. Indistinct silhouettes. An incessant pounding. A mordant wailing. Welcome
to Ghost Dance (featuring ex-members of the Sisters and Skeletal Family) at the
Kilburn Town & Country Club (now the HMV Forum, kids).
Little did we
know at the time that these same conditions were being replicated on the late-October
streets outside – with perhaps a little less wailing. Though only a little less. Stepping out of the
uncomfortably sweaty gig in to the bitter cold midnight air, we discovered
North London had been shrouded in a thick mist. It really was like something
out of a Stephen King tale. Specifically, ‘The Mist’. In fact, you could see
next to nothing, which would make it more like a fog. The kind of creeping,
suffocating haze you’d get in a horror movie. Specifically, ‘The Fog’.
Somehow we
had to drive home through this. I say ‘we' but my friend Chris was doing the
actual driving (in his trusty Mini). My job was to stick my head out of the
window and see if I could read any of the road signs. Or spot any other cars
before we hit them. It was a tortuously slow and highly treacherous journey –
long before the days of sat navs and even mobile phones. And worried parents
were waiting up at home. But we finally made it back to our pleasant Surrey suburb,
without landing in a ditch or encountering the vengeful ghosts of shipwrecked
Californian mariners. We were just sleep-deprived, nervous wrecks in school assembly the next day.
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