2001-12-16 - 9:40 p.m.
”Smoke…lingers round your fingers…Train…heave on to Euston…do you think you’ve made the right decision this time?”
I’m happy to cope with most of the regrettable side effects that go along with getting really drunk all the time. The debilitating cost, the ill-advised conversations with people you love or hate, the dancing to the Bee Gees, the waking up with scant memory but a vague impression that you’ve ruined another potential romance / friendship / drug-fuelled romp around my futon involving little in the way of clothing. That’s all good. I’m fine with all that.
But I just wish that my decision making faculties, such as they are, would remain relatively intact. The last three nights, for instance, I’ve called someone “management scum” in a far less jokey way than I’d really planned to and thrown a cork at a friend’s (sorry, you) undeserving head. Then last night I for some reason thought that taking a forty-five minute taxi ride at 2am to the complete opposite side of the city was the best idea I’d had since the time I thought of trimming my pubic hair with the electric clippers resulting in a series of intimate nicks and a bruised toe. All for just one more glass of wine and a chance to render an unfortunate female resolutely unimpressed. As my hosts vanish to their bedrooms, I’m left cursing the fact I couldn’t just get on a nightbus like a normal person. I suppose we should call it karma for the cork incident.
”You’ve left your tired family grieving, and you think they’re sad because you’re leaving, but did you see the jealousy in the eyes of the ones who had to stay behind? And do you think you’ve made the right decision this time?”
My New Year’s resolution is definitely to stop waking up on other people’s couches. This year I mean it. Especially weird parts of South London. I woke up, foraged for breakfast (fizzy water and a bag of Cheesy Wotsits – the breakfast of chumpions), got my friend to mumble directions to the nearest station (overland of course – we’re way out of tube territory) from the annoying comfort of his bed and set off on my merry way. It takes me ten minutes to negotiate the doorstep, as I’m stopped on it by a man with a clipboard who needs to take details of some utility or other and won’t believe I’m not a resident, though I’m not sure why anyone would lie about not knowing where electricity meters are.
Of course, I get lost within seconds of turning off their street and I seem to be in some kind of weird village populated solely by people in jogging suits begging their pram-bound mewling cabbages to do be quiet because mummy’s feeling very tired. Well, aren’t we all, frankly? I duck down a likely looking avenue and am glad to discover that my ability to locate dead-ends is reassuringly unwavering. The rain is driving the psycho parents indoors, and the only person left to get directions from is a wizened, toothless old crone of indeterminate gender that greets me with a cheery “Good morning” but then spends a fair amount of bemusing minutes trying to cajole their dog into doing the same thing. After a predictable lack of success, I’m given directions, but as this character is obviously as mad as a badger, I’m none too confident. Thankfully, though, they turn out to be kosher and a mere two hours later, I’m collapsing onto my bed and vowing to make some fundamental changes in my life.
I’m never leaving the house again, of course.
”You left…your girlfriend on the platform…with this really ragged notion that you’ll return…but she knows…that when he goes…he really goes…So do you think you’ve made the right decision this time?”
Back to the old house
