Sirens wail repeatedly into the night. On the street, Geordie girls expose their stout arms and legs to the wintry air; groups of lads ignore the absence of any noticeable sport and roar out their football chants as they head, already well fuelled, for the next bar.
Welcome to the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne.
There is a slight air of menace, but a more marked impression of drunken incapability, as late-night Saturday turns to the small hours of Sunday and Tyneside takes its Neet on the Toon.
The run-up to my own rentrée, the return to France after months in the UK, has taken me back north on several occasions.
The weekend just finished was the last such visit before departure and involved a stay at the Royal Station Hotel, adjacent to the Central Station.
The hotel's general manager, Michelle Harle, has inserted a litte billet doux into the information pack in each room, acknowledging that "the level of noise from other Bar's sic in the vicinity of the Hotel" has been identified as a problem at weekends. Guests are invited to report "noise from the street" to the staff, so that appropriate action may be taken, conjuring images of the night porter venturing out to request rowdy, inebriated lads and ladettes to adopt Sunday best behaviour.
While she's concerning herself with problems for guests, Ms Harle might well address the issue of value for money: £124 for a modest room so far along the long corridors that even one of her employees joked that you needed a taxi to get there. Towels were apparently rationed, parking cost another £15 (not £12 as indicated in the hotel's pre-arrival confirmation e-mail) and breakfast - included in the price - required some patience in a slow, school canteen-style queue at the buffet counter squeezed into a corner of the restaurant.
Ms Harle could argue that no one forced us to stay at her hotel and pay her hotel's rates, to which I can say only that I expected rather more for the money she charges. As an earlier visit to the North East demonstrated, it is possible to offer better value.
The King's Hotel, Darlington, which I remember from my days at the neighbouring Northern Echo as the King's Head, cost £65 for a pleasant room.
Since its reopening following a serious fire in 2008, the hotel has had no cooking facilites and offers only continental breakfast. And even that stops dead at 9am. We had no recollection of being told about this rather early cut-off time and were 15 minutes too late to be served.
But the receptionist - who also seemed to have been responsible for serving breakfast and doing just about everything else that morning - did lop £10 off the bill to show that our protest was, however reluctantly, considered justified. Parking was free and coffee and croissants along the road at Binns left us with a decent profit on the arrangement.
Perhaps it is unfair to compare a functional city centre hotel and a small-town establishment that these days styles itself a "boutique hotel". I could not help noticing, all the same, that both belong to the same company, the Cairn Group.
If that comparison has an element of chalk and cheese, the King's Arms or, commonly, Middle House at Reeth, a gorgeous village in beautiful Swaledale, ought not even be mentioned in the same breath. But mention it I shall since, between those stays in Darlington and Newcastle, there was a night there.
It was just before Christmas and there had been a blizzard before we had even cleared the North Circular. Up in North Yorkshire, the voice at the hotel laughed off the suggestion that we should abandon the visit: "it's cold, but the sun is out, we've only had a light dusting and the forecast is fine."
So, on a weekend when planes could not fly and people in many parts of the country could barely move at all, we headed up the A1 as if weather was something that happened only to other people. It did get colder and colder, sinking to minus seven by the time we gingerly climbed into Reeth, wary of possible ice on the road. But at no stage did it seem we would have to turn back or abandon the car.
If the hotel bar looks strangely deserted for the Friday night before Christmas, I can assure you that the camera is not telling a lie. The only other guests had gone out for the evening and we dined alone by the fireside, all other tables unoccupied and the bar empty: at one point, the cook and barmaid popped outside for a smoke and we had the hotel entirely to ourselves.
It was a worrying snapshot of the decline of the English pub, for that is what the Middle House really is, a pub, despite serving also as a small hotel. Even the bitter cold, and serious competition from a comedy night at one of the village's other hostelries, should not have had quite that effect on trade. We have been there on winter Fridays in the past when the bar was heaving.
The stay cost £70, plus dinner, and this also seemed fair. I just hope that next time we go there, the place has regained a more familiar level of custom.
But before I leave the North East, a word of praise for whoever it was at the Royal Station who recommended dining at Sachins, 10 minutes by foot from the hotel. The advice coincided with a friend's assessment of it as the best Indian restaurant in Newcastle and the meal was superb, the ambience a delight and service exceptional.
Who said I had nothing good to say about the Toon?
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