Travels in a Tin Can

soon as we donned our shorts, so Peter generously offered to lend us
jumpers to keep warm. This genuinely seemed like a good idea, as did
stopping for more beer from a liquor store on the way (complete with brown
paper bags to hold the bottles in while drinking the beer on the street. Such
class!) At this store Peter also tried to encourage Emma into stealing some
sunglasses, fortunately she was not drunk enough to be coerced and he was
too drunk to notice that she did not do it.
We were both too sober to lower our guard completely around Peter
and when we reached his van we kept a fair distance from it, in case he tried
to bundle us in. Judging by the amount of clothes in his van - he lent me a
coat and Emma a shirt, jumper and hat - we were fairly sure that the van was
his home, rather than him living on a boat as he had told us.
Suitably warmed we then walked back to Duvall Street where Peter’s
‘friends’ were doing a duelling piano act in a bar – literally two grand pianos
(plus pianists) opposite each other and playing songs, telling jokes, and
ritually humiliating people in the audience. We had heard about this show and
wanted to go, but probably would not have done so on our own. Peter sat us
at the front and we stayed quite a while, which we certainly would not have
done had we braved the bar by ourselves. The act was good, but very rude,
and within the first few minutes of sitting down I found myself being blinded by
a flashlight held by one of the pianists as he shouted out ‘You should not have
bought your wife to a gang bang!’ Well, obviously I should not have. But then I
did not realise that I had.
We also kept drinking. Well, Emma had by this time sensibly started
swapping bottles with Peter so that he drunk nearly two out of each round –