QUOTE : I looked at the groups forming and breaking up, at the couples lost in each other’s eyes, at the tentative first conversations, at the loners standing at the bar or sitting at little tables, at the hubbub and hullabaloo of desire and fulfilment, of cruising and conversing, of courtship and companionship. I listened to the hum and drone of conversation, the clinking of glasses, the jangle of the slot machine, the odd burst of hilarity or profanity. I smelt the fug of spilt beer and fresh sweat and stale aftershave. And I thought, all we mortals can do, in the end, in the absence of the numinous, is to settle for one another.