When you arrange to have a sensible, sober person carrying heavy, expensive musical equipment through a throng of drunken, lairy, revellers, it tends to rarely turn out the way you would want it to.
I try to leave the packing up until the majority of folk have gone, although I remember one occasion when we were setting up and the pub was packed with students. We struggled like hell to erect our musical masterpiece with bodies everywhere. As soon as we finished, we got up to play and almost to a man, they left and we played the whole evening to about five people. The manager was raging because he had booked us to play for these students, he had put out a big pot of free chilli on for them and they all pissed off. Students, eh?