A brawl broke out as we left the party, on a small patch of grass by the newly-moored boat.
I might have joined in if I'd had a little more to drink. As it was, I simply stood back and admired the efficiency with which the evening was ruined.
No-one in the mob of enthusiastic spectators seemed to know quite what it was all about. We agreed that someone had done something to someone at some point between Putney and Hammersmith, but who had done what to whom when was not clear. Whatever the excuse, it no longer mattered: we were all taking far too much pleasure in the violence to care.
James and I vicariously enjoyed the ruckus throughout its opening exchanges: small pockets of participants slugging away, sometimes three on three, occasionally five on one; a young man with spiky blond hair crawling out of the battle, shirt bloodied, face blackened, trying hopelessly to light a cigarette; a young woman with ponytail half-undone, mud smeared harshly across her cream dress, standing on the deck of the boat and throwing a table, with a guttural howl, off onto the hordes below...
Once the adrenalin of the pugilists had begun to give way to shame, James and I sloped away for the bus, passing and briefly consoling the devastated birthday girl on the way.
At the stop we sat and we waited and we quietly reminisced, smiling in awe at the frenzy that we'd seen. The occasional shout could still be heard in the distance, and, approaching from afar, the faint sound of a siren. We had had our fill - it was time to go home.
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