IAN McMILLAN The night wanders with me through a shining city

AS an early riser it follows that, because I don’t burn the candle at both ends, I’m an early to bed kind of chap. Recently, though, I was working at the

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Festival in Leeds and that necessitated walking through that vibrant and exciting city at a time way past my slumber time.

There’s something epic and almost symphonic about a city at night; there’s an interplay of light and sound that sparkles and shimmers and delights the senses. Here’s a chip shop full to bursting with the sizzle of conversation and the anticipation of the stories of the weekend that will be told in the office or the warehouse or the lecture hall on Monday morning.

Here is someone whose heels are so high they need planning permission; here is someone whose skirt is so short it needs the opposite of planning permission, whatever that might be. The chips are tasty and the fish is straight from the sea and the vinegar is sharp and fresh.

Here’s a pub where the music is so loud you can feel it jingle the change in your pocket as you amble by and you realise that, despite yourself, you are walking to the music’s beat. People sit inside and their mouths are open as wide as opera singers’ and somehow they can tell what they other one is saying, or at least pretend that they can.

Outside the pub a man in a suit dances around his briefcase; he promised somebody in a suburb that he’d be home for tea and the trouble he’ll be in is mounting by the second. To be frank, he doesn’t care and he carries on dancing. A double decker bus passes, slow and stately as a cruise ship making its way up a fjord in the glow of the northern lights.

On the bus are people whose Saturday night is, in many cases, not the Saturday those people in the pub and the chip shop are enjoying.

A man in a hi-vis jacket, on his way home from work, has fallen asleep against the window, his face pressed into the glass, distorted by it so that he looks like a two-dimensional owl.

His mouth is slack and his eyes are locked shut. I can almost hear his snoring from the street. I hope against hope that he doesn’t sleep past his stop and have to walk home through darkened streets. At the back of the bus a bored child waves; I wave back but he doesn’t see although a hen party across the street does, and they wave back in waves of waves that break on the shore of hilarity. The child is still waving but I’m not.

An ambulance shrieks by, a cutting reminder of nights in the city; is it my imagination or does the music in the pub stop for a moment, do the chips stop frying momentarily? Maybe it’s just my imagination, as the old song goes. Just my imagination running away from me in an ambulance.

I wander on and the night wanders with me, telling stories, singing songs, raising its voice and raising a can in greeting.

A couple hold hands and then she whispers something in his ear and they suddenly stop holding hands. A man stands in the doorway of a shop eating a burger with pure joy and abandon.

I’m almost at the hotel I’m staying in. It’s nearly tomorrow and I really should be in bed because I’m working again first thing. Just a little more walking though; just a little more Saturday Night Fever.