AUSTRALIA, ANY CITY, Saturday night: red unsteady men in pastel shirts and designer sneakers have groping sweaty fists and angry eyes; bored tall thin men in black jeans, pointed leather shoes and structured mullets stand in copses holding conspicuously cheap beer. Lone middle-aged men in tight shirts with tattooed biceps stretch jewelled fingers and survey the crowd. Eighteen-year-old men travel in excited, sexed-up packs.

Crowds breathe in and out, and the air is flammable with alcohol and fucking and angry, tense excitement as people reel and jolt through the night. Around three in the morning they begin to fall into taxis. The drivers are patient and change the radio if requested. They are the feeder fish in this alcoholic mire. They decipher garbled addresses and shrug off drunken slurs. They take the long route if they can.