Dundee at Night

If you are a true Dundonian, then chances are you’ve been to Londons, Fat Sam’s, Lloyds, Starz, or one of the other centrally located, gaudy, cheap and bright lit cesspits that make treacherous the evening walk home for any non-scum unfortunate enough to have to make the deadly journey across the city. If you are really a typical, Poundland-loving Dundonian, then I can guarantee you’ve thrown back a few WKDs or some other blue or pink drink, on a Friday or Saturday night, and gotten an STI from another scumbag, then gone outside, puked on the pavement and started a fight. Of course, you’ll be friends with the local chav constabulary, the members of which you will have no doubt been drinking and fighting with, and you’ll get driven home and tucked in, while students and decent folks trying to navigate their way across the city will be picked up for no reason except to even out the numbers and make the pigs look good.

A walk to work in the early hours, from the decency and relative civility of the West End, to the centre for reluctant employment, requires walking past the doors of these foul smelling dives, housed in ornate and ostentatious old relics of the city’s days as more than slumsville. The pavements are covered in vomit, there are tacky souvenirs of the previous night’s degrading shenanigans – party hats, balloons, everything pink shaped like penises, bought from places like Poundland – and still all smelling like cheap aftershave and perfume.