I have been invited to the woods of lost people, mostly young, their speeches slurred by platitudes, their hair tangled like bracken. The words `hope', `accept', `love me,' tattooed firmly on their napes. A strawberry-haired girl hands me a banana shaped offer to a salon.For security I tread close to my shadow, this is designer squadron territory. Land of battery operated friends, reckless desire, of seeds not sown. A subway of make- believe success.

In the north-east corner of the room, the music is struggling hard to be heard above the shouts. Up against the wall with the awkward guile of a carnivorous plant waiting for its feed of innocents, a makeshift stage of wood and reed, crowned with electronic splendour attracts the fly-like swarms. I tap into a conversation between a man stuck under a Stetson with silver snake motifs and a twenty-something in pink plastic.

Man Stuck Under The Stetson: `You're hot.'
The Twenty-Something In Pink Plastic: `No, you are hot.'
Man Stuck Under The Stetson: `No. You are hot. Will you stop being so hot'.

Every passing minute heralds the unfurling of yet another banner of hollow admiration, its bearers walking towards the pinnacle of vanity like members of an expedition set to conquer emptiness. Free from the vagaries of normalexistence tonight, they have chosen to feel good...Lost in a whirl of hubris that blurs the reality outside, patiently waiting to spring rude surprises and real questions to which they have no answer or defence.

Love, I suspect, in this environment devoid of nutrients like honesty, truth, loyalty, has faint chance of survival. I anticipate stumbling upon it gagging at the feet of people responsible for creating monsters entirely of their carving, unable to appreciate the nobility of one sentence spoken with affection, free from accents and pretensions. In the time I have between noise and smoke I wonder what courses through the heads. Thin laces of smart drugs creating a cinerama of ghostly images? Soundbites from a vaguely recollectable anthem? I do not ask and they lack the ability to display.

Time is now flowing through the hardworking bar on the extreme right of the room, past a young man who used to be devoted to the surprises life flung at him till he flipped sunny side down and chose to announceimpending music on a television station. The night is stretching elastic like. The spinners on stage are spinning, the uninvited are grinding through clouds of weakening smoke. I wind around a wordless couple, who I suspect are, on the brink of inexplicable emotional savagery arising from deceit, or betrayal. Only one, I presume will survive the night.

On my way out I see a group of people surrounding a boy throwing up what looks like a combination of vodka and cheese quiche. Whatever the contents they all smell like teen spirit to me, and all that holds him from keeling over schooner like in a squall of bile is a thread of vomit that connects his dripping nose to the complex Persian carpet. On this slender line of human insides, I see all the new young with their hard drives, and their sex, and hair, and compulsions, diets, hope, nipple rings, swinging like strippers on a greasy pole.

Outside, wreath-like against the arches, I see a girl standing struggling against the upward rush of alcohol. From somedistant box of memories her face jumps out at me like an excited Jack. I am forced to recognise her.

Another face in an overcrowded sea of faces. Another mass of hopes and expectations. I hug her briefly, her body warm from the sensation of social acceptance. I then walk past sleeping gargoyles and cobblestones huddled like migrants, and the questions that lie in wait like exterminating angels, thinking someday these people will accidentally discover truth.