The cocktail party: finding it.

I was blundering around Docklands looking for a place.

It took a while to find the place for two reasons. The first reason was that about thirty bars, restaurants and those odd places called venues were housed in a massive new steel-and-glass development that had only one street number, and my invitation didn't show the number of the actual venue. The second reason was that it was dark.

Other people were having the same problem, wandering around like lost sheep then clustering together and asking each other where to go. Arms were pointing in all directions, like those old crossroads signposts.

I asked a man in a blue shirt who was pushing a broom if he knew where I was. He knew. If you're lost, always ask the cleaner. Cleaners know everything about a place. He pointed to a glass door that opened onto a stairway leading towards a balcony. The glass door was only about three steps away and there was a large sign on it with the name of the place I'd been looking for in two-foot-high letters in yellow out of blue which I could have seen if I'd looked.

Not that you could blame me for getting lost. The problem with new developments is that everyone follows the same trends and all the restaurants, bars and venues sound the same. WaterFront. WaterCity. NewQuay. QuayViews. BeachView. I had to pull the invitation out of my pocket about six times to recall the name. Also, why does everyone jam two words together and leave out the space? That space had a perfect right to be there.

There was a security guy at the top of the stairs. I showed him my invitation and he let me in, opening a glass door onto a huge red-carpeted room lit with fairy lights arranged like a tree dangling upside down from the cavernous ceiling. The effect was Aladdin's Cave with sea views: the room opened out at one end onto a balcony that ran the length of the building and looked out over the water, which rippled and glistened in faint moonlight.

Of course, all of this wasn't even there a few years ago. The new Docklands precinct was built on the site of a neglected wharf that had been rotting into the harbour for fifty years. I visited the site in 2000, just before building commenced. It was closed off to the public. No wonder - entire sections of the actual wharf were missing and you would fall into the black, oily, evil-smelling water. The original sagging, creaking timber cargo warehouses were home to rats and even graffiti artists avoided the place. It must have looked a treat once, maybe when steam was still powering the ships that berthed there.

Now the place is alive again and the rats are gone, if you exclude gambling venue operators.