New Year's Eve and wasted youth

Our drive home at two this morning took us through some of London's party zones. The people they used to call "revellers" staggered through the streets like survivors of a major terrorist incident. At a zebra crossing in Islington my wife, who was the designated driver, stopped because she wasn't sure whether a group of two couples were planning to cross the road or continue their canoodling. One of them lost his footing on the slope at the edge of the pavement. As he fell he took his girlfriend with him. She tottered backwards into the other couple who fell down hard. All four of them were then lying on the crossing like beetles on their backs, their puzzlement and apparent pain picked out perfectly in our headlights. As they righted themselves, which took at least thirty seconds, nobody giggled or looked embarrassed. When they were eventually standing and I had pointed out that one of the girls had left her handbag in the road, they didn't apologise either. "Drunk" doesn't begin to describe it.