I must confess that I’d kind of forgotten places like this exist.

You know me. I like a pint. Of real ale. Ideally from the Midlands. And I like it a pub. A proper pub, that has pumps and stools and wood, but not too much. I’m not adverse to a bit of spit and sawdust on the floor, indeed I prefer it to the sheen of blandness like many of the indenti-kit pubs up and down the country.

There was a time, however, when on a Friday night there was a reasonable chance of finding me in a Spanish bar drinking that horrific Estrella stuff that gives you wind, somewhere in the shadows of Canary Wharf (this being a summer’s evening, obviously). Or perhaps I’d be in one of the warehouses converted into a cavernous experience of faceless computerised music and impossibly tall and thin glasses of Guinness.

But I was never that comfortable so far away from the things I understand. It was a relief, in 2004, to discover that the guys I’d gone to work for shared a similar suspicion of organised fun. Far more preferable was putting the world to rights over pint after pint of high-quality ale before inexplicably finding ourselves in the arse-hole Irish pub on the Holloway Road at the time when the trains have long stopped running.

Sigh. Good times.

So, it was something of a surprise when on Friday night I found myself gingerly descending marble steps into a red splattered tapas bar deep underneath Charing Cross Road. Video monitors showing footage of Salvador Dali frolicking with bikini-glad impossibly breasted women masqueraded as pictures; in the centre, a table was set within a gazebo; elsewhere other tables came complete with curtains for diners to seal themselves off. On the furthest wall there was a panel of glass that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Cathedral and in front of it a Japanese ankle height table with what might have been pom-poms scattered across.

Needless to say there wasn’t any bitter on tap, not even Guinness or a half-decent lager. In fact, there weren’t any taps, just bottles of the Newcastle brewed so-called Spanish beer, San Miguel. It was dark except for when it was too bright. It was loud. There was a bloke in the toilet who took up far too much space by insisting on turning the taps for everyone. There was even a god-damned cloakroom.

But, you know, I thought, this is what other people like. It’s probably me that’s more than a little unusual. It was certainly busy enough. The food was okay. There was nothing unpleasant as such. The people I was with seemed to like it and that was why I was there, after all.

Except, after we had eaten, they wanted to dance. Right on cue the volume jumped several notches and the quality nose-dived. The disco ball began to turn and people flocked to strut their stuff.

I hesitated. For about thirty minutes. I quite wanted to be sociable, but wasn’t sure whether I could bring myself to dance to Beyonce, or a succession of other pop songs I vaguely recognised and were probably recorded by failed contestants in television programmes I’ve never watched.

In the end, there was just the four of us left. Two guys and two girls. The girls danced smoothly in time to the music whilst I stumbled along about two beats behind. I gave up and reduced myself to little shuffles with the occasional head-bob and/or raised arm. I was watching the blonde, who kept glancing at the other guy, who was looking at the dark-haired girl I’d never seen before who seemed to be peering closely at me. It was like pass the parcel, but with glances bouncing around in sequence throughout our lopsided rhombus of hopeless gyrating bodies.

Time was getting on and on, arduously shuffling into the night. I remembered, with a groan, that the place stayed open until three and wondered whether I should just make my excuses and leave.

‘No’ a voice in my head ordered, ‘you’re a newly single man. Dancing with girls is what you’re supposed to be doing. Isn’t it?’

So, I battled on until, finally, a particularly trite song came on. So bad, in fact, that I currently have zero recollection of exactly what it was, but for arguments sake, let’s say it was something by Pink. I looked around and all about me people surged joyously. One youngish guy with what looked like a drizzle of puke down his shirt opened his mouth wide, his yellowy teeth reflecting in the neon and his eyes swirling with excitement. I was felt simultaneously sober, yet not.

Nor, indeed, was I enjoying myself.

“I think I’m off,” I said, adding something about last trains.

“Yeah,” the blonde perma-beamed, “I think I’ll call in a night too.”

‘Oh, aye?’ said the voice in my head.

‘Shut up,’ said the rest of my consciousness.

We chatted in the inexplicably long and slow moving coat queue about this and that.

Outside the rain was streaming down and the city shimmered in its damp overcoat. We said goodnight on the street corner as a rickshaw careered past.

As I walked towards Charing Cross the voice said: ‘What was that? Why didn’t you-‘

“That was nothing. Just shut up, you twat,” I growled back and got a funny look from a passing tramp.

I had, thanks to cloakroom inefficiency, missed the last train home. The voice and I argued the whole time on the long route back via Lewisham.