I went to a house party over the weekend. Crawled home feeling close to death, and not just because of the vicious cocktails or the swampy August weather. My housemate Charlotte looks halfway between amused and disgusted when I crash through the door, with my knees grazed and hair dishevelled.

“Everything’s a drama with you, isn’t it?” she says.

And most of the time it is, although it’s not something I actively encourage. Must be what comes from working in a West End theatre. You get a taste for being theatrical.

Charlotte’s cosily ensconced in a duvet on the couch, with the cat snoozing on her feet. It’s not even one o’clock and she's been in her pyjamas for hours, patterned all over with Minnie Mouse in turquoise and pink. She’s watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show DVD and slurping lemon and cranberry tea from the polka-dot teapot. She’s so frustratingly wholesome sometimes; it makes me feel like Iggy Pop’s more misbehaved younger sister. But as we all know, appearances are often deceptive. Charlotte has her moments. You’d never believe it to look at her now, but she’s been known to be more rock’n’roll than all the Osbournes put together.

So, back to the story of my epic quest to get home. (They had less trouble than this in the Lord of the Rings...)

It’s quarter to midnight on the fucking Jubilee line, Saturday night and everyone around me is either heading home already, worse the wear from wine, a hard week at work and god knows what else, or else they’re only just heading out for the evening. Hysterical, overexcited chatter, loud and obnoxious. Eager to get going, to overindulge in cocktails, coke, sex or violence. Whatever floats your boat. This is London, capital of the entire world, and whatever you’re into you can bet it’s easily available not too far from the next station.

For tonight though, I’m in the former category and just want to make the last train back to Deptford from London Bridge before I faint with the combination of heat and noise and too much whiskey at a former crush’s house way out of my comfort zone in Northfields. The line back from Heathrow airport, so the aisles are clumsy and crowded with oversized suitcases and frazzled tempers as we rattle along slowly, chugging back towards the city.

By the time I’ve changed trains and am pulling into London Bridge, the carriage is bursting with bodies and I’m getting dizzy. Manage to stumble off the train and halfway down the gleaming hall that leads to the main station before I crumple into a heap. Tiles heave and lurch under my feet and the lights are over-bright and headache inducing. My vision is furred with black around the edges and all of a sudden, in the midst of all of this is a busker playing my favourite song.

Where Do You Go To, My Lovely by Peter Sarstedt. Denim legs stretched out on the corridor floor, guitar in his lap and voice all gravelly and glorious. Recollections unroll before I even know what’s happening. The soundtrack to The Darjeeling Limited, that’s where I know this song from. Watched it in an art-house cinema in Leeds with velveteen seats and rococo gold ornate curls on every surface, with someone who made my skin sing and fizz every time they came near. Owen Wilson with a strip of bandage across his broken nose and sun-bleached scenery flashing past the window as the long-distance train draws a lazy curling line across the land. "You talk like Marlene Dietrich, and you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire..."

Everything shifts, just slightly, and I have one of those surreal moments where you don’t quite know where you are or how you got there. How did I get to be traipsing the streets of this perverse underground maze in the middle of the night, barely conscious and being serenaded by a fabulously moustachioed man with a voice like gloopy amber honey? I scrape myself up off the floor, and dash for the train. Make it with just a second to spare and have that song stuck in my head the entire journey home. There are worse fates though, I’m sure.

Picture by  Jcornelius