Well, this is totally pointless. Even going to the office, meaning I was surrounded by guys puffing away at regular intervals, inviting me to the pub for lunch etc, I still went the whole day without even considering the consumption of either snouts or pints. Sorry about that; sort of makes the whole blog idea a bit pointless.
There were some corkers on VieDeMerde though, including this:
Aujourd'hui, je teste un nouveau gel douche (cadeau d'une copine) : anis étoilé de Chine. Arrivée au travail, je fais la bise à un collègue qui s'exclame "Et bien, tu ne perds pas de temps toi, au pastis à 8h du matin !" Le patron qui passait par là n'a pas attendu mes explications... VDM
Roughly:
Today, I thought I'd try out my new shower gel (a gift from a girlfriend): Chinese Aniseed Glitter. Upon arriving at work, I kissed a colleague who said, "Blimey, you don't mess about, do you? 8 in the morning and already on the pastis?" My boss, who was walking by at the time, wasn't interested in my explanation. Life sucks.
Marvellous stuff.
After work, Luca was most excited to take me over to Ciao Bella Scooters in town. It was a nice little showroom with just seven bikes inside, all classic 1960s style and immaculate with extra chrome all over the place. There was a brief discussion about prices, mostly revolving around whether the "27495" on the number plate panel of one scooter was in fact missing a decimal point and, if so, where it should go. When the owner appeared and told us they were only 3 to 4 thousand each, I nearly choked. Apparently they pick up genuine, classic scooters for a song in Europe, make sure the engine works and then strip the bodywork right back and repaint them. The result? Essentially a brand new 1966 scooter, tax exempt and eligible for classic insurance.
If I was a little more flush I think I might have bought one on the spot; they're just lovely. Might have to ask them about their website though as it is, frankly, rubbish.
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
Fags, Booze and Reddit - Day 4
As I said, I wrote a lot last night and finally got to bed about 3am. However - and this is important - I didn't do any pointless surfing of inconsequential web pages. Not one page of lawyer jokes or cat pictures. I fully intended to lie in like a bastard by way of a reward.
I woke at 8 to the melodious sounds of the recycling truck. Peering out of the window I realised that both Luca and I had forgotten to put the box out so I leapt from my bed, donned a dressing gown and sandals and hurried outside. Sadly, I was too late; the bottle rattling was a red herring and only the normal bins were now being collected. However, it soon transpired that we'd both forgotten to empty those too so at least it wasn't a wasted trip. I felt awful, if virtuous, and stumbled back to bed. It was only 8; five hours' sleep is no way to prepare a man for Tuesday.
Laid back in bed, heart pounding with the exertion, it occurred to me that I was now fully awake and surely incapable of going back to sleep. Besides, I had work to do and wasn't that.. what's the word.. erm.. and with that, the grey mist descended, my head filled with sugarplum cans of lager and I was carried away on a RAT-A-TAT-TAT! Oh God, the front door. Up I got again, wondering which idiot had left my dressing gown on the floor, and why the angles of all the walls had changed so I kept barging into them as I made my way downstairs. I wasn't even fast enough for the poor delivery guy either; he was rapping again before I reached the door. God, I felt awful. He took one look at me as I opened up and simply said, "Woah; sorry mate."
"Nhrrnanglebubyrre.. ooh," said I as he handed me a large, flat cardboard envelope. Realising quite suddenly that my blood pressure was crashing I retreated with as much speed as I could muster and returned to bed. The cardboard thing was weird; it was sealed well in from the edge leaving only the very centre to bulge out in a roughly CD-sized area and it was perforated from the middle of one edge to the centre of the opposite edge. I attempted to tear it open but lying in bed with blurry vision I could not muster the strength and ended up twisting it like you're supposed to do with a telephone directory.
Inside was the Imogen Heap album that I ordered about a million years ago from Amazon and assumed had got lost in the post when the dinosaur extinction occurred. I resolved to get up just as soon as I felt ready and listen to it but first started reading the sleeve notes, observing to my amusement that she is a London-based artist which makes my time-consuming purchase of the American pressing even more ridiculous.
I woke up at about ten with the sleeve notes on my nose and a soggy, too-many-fags head which felt like a combination of heavy screen fatigue and the after effects of somebody hosing the inside of your ear with expanding insulation foam. I fully intended to take it easy but, wouldn't you know it, the phone rang within seconds of my being upright and started yapping at me in a voice curiously reminiscent of one of my clients, asking where her site updates were up to. God, some mornings a man needs a chemical barrier between his tender sensibilities and the unrelenting demands of the outside world. I'm not sure I'm psychologically equipped for a life of sobriety.
It was another productive day, which is good. I'm becoming quite the designer, if only because the girl to whom I normally farm such work out has the hump and hasn't been talking to me. I caught myself several times attempting to dial up Reddit but managed to distract myself with boingboing. I have decided that I simply cannot remove this one distraction from my day; to take breaks from work is so ingrained that it is counterproductively stressful to attempt to force myself to stick with the current problem if I need to switch focus away for a moment.
I was fully involved with work right through until about 2pm when I suddenly realised I hadn't eaten yet and cycled off to the shops. It was a very sudden departure as evidenced by the fact that I brought neither a bag nor the cheque I needed to deposit. I am a moron. I am also pretty sure that I don't make mistakes like that normally and wonder whether I'm under-compensating because I think I'm going to be sharper now that I've quit booze for nearly half a week. Maybe the sad truth is that I'm just a useless git and I need my little coping strategies not because I'm constantly hung over but because my brain function is just, well, substandard.
At least there were some tasty strawberries at the shop, which was a bonus. I scoffed them while I cooked and then sat by the computer to eat, reading the entire front page of boingboing to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Apparently there is a new iPhone coming, twice as good and one third of the price. Apple has now graduated to full cult status by ripping its faithful off more than everyone else without so much as a squeak of complaint in evidence from anyone. They're just excited about the 3G upgrade. Reminds me of another industry which, frankly, could name their price despite the product being essentially useless (and toxic) to its purchasers. Although NOT ME! Not this week at any rate.
Luca came home about ten after dinner and drinks with colleagues and beat me 2 games to 1 at ping pong, the rat bastard. Even my sporting ability is impaired by this abstention. I need to end this experiment as quickly as possible before I do permanent damage to myself.
I woke at 8 to the melodious sounds of the recycling truck. Peering out of the window I realised that both Luca and I had forgotten to put the box out so I leapt from my bed, donned a dressing gown and sandals and hurried outside. Sadly, I was too late; the bottle rattling was a red herring and only the normal bins were now being collected. However, it soon transpired that we'd both forgotten to empty those too so at least it wasn't a wasted trip. I felt awful, if virtuous, and stumbled back to bed. It was only 8; five hours' sleep is no way to prepare a man for Tuesday.
Laid back in bed, heart pounding with the exertion, it occurred to me that I was now fully awake and surely incapable of going back to sleep. Besides, I had work to do and wasn't that.. what's the word.. erm.. and with that, the grey mist descended, my head filled with sugarplum cans of lager and I was carried away on a RAT-A-TAT-TAT! Oh God, the front door. Up I got again, wondering which idiot had left my dressing gown on the floor, and why the angles of all the walls had changed so I kept barging into them as I made my way downstairs. I wasn't even fast enough for the poor delivery guy either; he was rapping again before I reached the door. God, I felt awful. He took one look at me as I opened up and simply said, "Woah; sorry mate."
"Nhrrnanglebubyrre.. ooh," said I as he handed me a large, flat cardboard envelope. Realising quite suddenly that my blood pressure was crashing I retreated with as much speed as I could muster and returned to bed. The cardboard thing was weird; it was sealed well in from the edge leaving only the very centre to bulge out in a roughly CD-sized area and it was perforated from the middle of one edge to the centre of the opposite edge. I attempted to tear it open but lying in bed with blurry vision I could not muster the strength and ended up twisting it like you're supposed to do with a telephone directory.
Inside was the Imogen Heap album that I ordered about a million years ago from Amazon and assumed had got lost in the post when the dinosaur extinction occurred. I resolved to get up just as soon as I felt ready and listen to it but first started reading the sleeve notes, observing to my amusement that she is a London-based artist which makes my time-consuming purchase of the American pressing even more ridiculous.
I woke up at about ten with the sleeve notes on my nose and a soggy, too-many-fags head which felt like a combination of heavy screen fatigue and the after effects of somebody hosing the inside of your ear with expanding insulation foam. I fully intended to take it easy but, wouldn't you know it, the phone rang within seconds of my being upright and started yapping at me in a voice curiously reminiscent of one of my clients, asking where her site updates were up to. God, some mornings a man needs a chemical barrier between his tender sensibilities and the unrelenting demands of the outside world. I'm not sure I'm psychologically equipped for a life of sobriety.
It was another productive day, which is good. I'm becoming quite the designer, if only because the girl to whom I normally farm such work out has the hump and hasn't been talking to me. I caught myself several times attempting to dial up Reddit but managed to distract myself with boingboing. I have decided that I simply cannot remove this one distraction from my day; to take breaks from work is so ingrained that it is counterproductively stressful to attempt to force myself to stick with the current problem if I need to switch focus away for a moment.
I was fully involved with work right through until about 2pm when I suddenly realised I hadn't eaten yet and cycled off to the shops. It was a very sudden departure as evidenced by the fact that I brought neither a bag nor the cheque I needed to deposit. I am a moron. I am also pretty sure that I don't make mistakes like that normally and wonder whether I'm under-compensating because I think I'm going to be sharper now that I've quit booze for nearly half a week. Maybe the sad truth is that I'm just a useless git and I need my little coping strategies not because I'm constantly hung over but because my brain function is just, well, substandard.
At least there were some tasty strawberries at the shop, which was a bonus. I scoffed them while I cooked and then sat by the computer to eat, reading the entire front page of boingboing to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Apparently there is a new iPhone coming, twice as good and one third of the price. Apple has now graduated to full cult status by ripping its faithful off more than everyone else without so much as a squeak of complaint in evidence from anyone. They're just excited about the 3G upgrade. Reminds me of another industry which, frankly, could name their price despite the product being essentially useless (and toxic) to its purchasers. Although NOT ME! Not this week at any rate.
Luca came home about ten after dinner and drinks with colleagues and beat me 2 games to 1 at ping pong, the rat bastard. Even my sporting ability is impaired by this abstention. I need to end this experiment as quickly as possible before I do permanent damage to myself.
Monday, 9 June 2008
Fags, Booze and Reddit - Day 3
Well, wouldn't you know it? Today I felt the roughest yet when I woke up. No, really. Headache, joints feeling unlubricated, skin tight with sunburn from yesterday, the works. I didn't get properly dressed until two largely because I couldn't face the stairs.
Ah, what it is to be self employed and say things like that without feeling guilty about doing no work! I spent the morning tidying up some bits and pieces from Saturday and doing some rudimentary accounts, my head slowly clearing in between. The real struggle was the Reddit-reflex; I caught myself at the ctrl-t stage twice while waiting for Internet banking to log in and again waiting for Blinksale.. and again when I was trying to remember the CSS property for small-caps (font-variant, in case you're wondering). It was fascinating; my entire day seems to be punctuated by Reddit triggers. It might actually be more annoying to quit than the other two put together. This weekend has lulled me into a false confidence and now the truth is going to sink its evil teeth into my unsuspecting buttocks. CURSES.
Lunch was reheated chilli from Saturday and very tasty it was too. I honestly didn't even consider a ciggie afterwards, which isn't really amazing for lunch but was in contrast to yesterday. Frankly, it should all be downhill from here if I can just keep a handle on the bookmarking. I did sneak a quick look at boingboing but felt that didn't count as it is, at least, edited by a team with marginally better judgment than the youtube/4chan crossbreeds at Reddit. I know I'm kidding myself because I then let this thin end squeeze in a wedge which proved to have b3ta and blogwars written on it but I'm pretty sure I only wasted, I mean spent, about half an hour on it all. I must adjust the rules to include all of this sort of thing, at least for the week. It's an experiment, not an exercise in bending my own rules. God, Carl; cheating yourself? That's low even for public school boy.
About four I decided I'd had enough of the computer screen and took off into the park on my bike which was highly agreeable, rushing along in the sunshine with a big floppy hat on (sunburn, you see) and the cool breeze blowing in my face. I felt energetic and virtuous, after yesterday's 150 mile round trip in the car, and flew past the other wimpy cyclists along my path, laughing royally into the open, blue sky like a pirate knowing the deep joy of being master of all I could see, HUH HUH HAAAAArrr! In fact, I had indeed made great progress and was soon right at the far end of the park and down a steep hill. No matter, I thought, for a fit young fellow such as myself, I'll be right back up in no time!
Ah, That Hill in the Park, shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? All hot and sticky, sapping energy like an industrial pump drains fuel from a tanker? Shall I perhaps mention the buzzing bumblebees and flies congregated over the carcass of ambition and resolve? Or merely discuss at length the utter, miserable exhaustion that came crushing down on my every sinew long before I reached that lonely summit? Either way, nothing can possibly communicate the humiliation of being re-overtaken by an elderly gent on a bike with a basket on the front after buzzing him on the way down at great speed and laughing like a pirate. I now felt more like Tom the cabin boy, all ragged trousers and pre-pubsecent spindliness. My ego had truly written several cheques which were now bouncing all over the bank of Carl's Body. I was a broken, broken man.
I've read that the worst time to be a smoker is the two weeks after you quit because that's when all the accumulated crap comes out of your lungs but that wasn't it; I could breathe just fine. The problem was simply a sensation of there being no fuel in the system. Curses and drat, thought I. I wonder if this is somehow connected to the drinking? Perhaps the vast influx of calories normally associated with the weekend is so regular that my system cannot cope without it? Perhaps that article I read ages ago about alcohol keeping your arteries clear has somehow evolved in my brain to become a psychosomatic sensation of clogged bodily thoroughfares. Or maybe I'm just making up a load of stupid bollocks as an excuse to have a beer later.
Either way, it's definitely significant.
What is still more significant is that I have, truth be told, written everything on this blog so far in the last three hours and I have not once even thought to check a certain website which shall remain nameless. Could it be that yapping on at length about myself holds my attention better than mere web development? Christ, there's a surprise, eh?
Ah, what it is to be self employed and say things like that without feeling guilty about doing no work! I spent the morning tidying up some bits and pieces from Saturday and doing some rudimentary accounts, my head slowly clearing in between. The real struggle was the Reddit-reflex; I caught myself at the ctrl-t stage twice while waiting for Internet banking to log in and again waiting for Blinksale.. and again when I was trying to remember the CSS property for small-caps (font-variant, in case you're wondering). It was fascinating; my entire day seems to be punctuated by Reddit triggers. It might actually be more annoying to quit than the other two put together. This weekend has lulled me into a false confidence and now the truth is going to sink its evil teeth into my unsuspecting buttocks. CURSES.
Lunch was reheated chilli from Saturday and very tasty it was too. I honestly didn't even consider a ciggie afterwards, which isn't really amazing for lunch but was in contrast to yesterday. Frankly, it should all be downhill from here if I can just keep a handle on the bookmarking. I did sneak a quick look at boingboing but felt that didn't count as it is, at least, edited by a team with marginally better judgment than the youtube/4chan crossbreeds at Reddit. I know I'm kidding myself because I then let this thin end squeeze in a wedge which proved to have b3ta and blogwars written on it but I'm pretty sure I only wasted, I mean spent, about half an hour on it all. I must adjust the rules to include all of this sort of thing, at least for the week. It's an experiment, not an exercise in bending my own rules. God, Carl; cheating yourself? That's low even for public school boy.
About four I decided I'd had enough of the computer screen and took off into the park on my bike which was highly agreeable, rushing along in the sunshine with a big floppy hat on (sunburn, you see) and the cool breeze blowing in my face. I felt energetic and virtuous, after yesterday's 150 mile round trip in the car, and flew past the other wimpy cyclists along my path, laughing royally into the open, blue sky like a pirate knowing the deep joy of being master of all I could see, HUH HUH HAAAAArrr! In fact, I had indeed made great progress and was soon right at the far end of the park and down a steep hill. No matter, I thought, for a fit young fellow such as myself, I'll be right back up in no time!
Ah, That Hill in the Park, shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? All hot and sticky, sapping energy like an industrial pump drains fuel from a tanker? Shall I perhaps mention the buzzing bumblebees and flies congregated over the carcass of ambition and resolve? Or merely discuss at length the utter, miserable exhaustion that came crushing down on my every sinew long before I reached that lonely summit? Either way, nothing can possibly communicate the humiliation of being re-overtaken by an elderly gent on a bike with a basket on the front after buzzing him on the way down at great speed and laughing like a pirate. I now felt more like Tom the cabin boy, all ragged trousers and pre-pubsecent spindliness. My ego had truly written several cheques which were now bouncing all over the bank of Carl's Body. I was a broken, broken man.
I've read that the worst time to be a smoker is the two weeks after you quit because that's when all the accumulated crap comes out of your lungs but that wasn't it; I could breathe just fine. The problem was simply a sensation of there being no fuel in the system. Curses and drat, thought I. I wonder if this is somehow connected to the drinking? Perhaps the vast influx of calories normally associated with the weekend is so regular that my system cannot cope without it? Perhaps that article I read ages ago about alcohol keeping your arteries clear has somehow evolved in my brain to become a psychosomatic sensation of clogged bodily thoroughfares. Or maybe I'm just making up a load of stupid bollocks as an excuse to have a beer later.
Either way, it's definitely significant.
What is still more significant is that I have, truth be told, written everything on this blog so far in the last three hours and I have not once even thought to check a certain website which shall remain nameless. Could it be that yapping on at length about myself holds my attention better than mere web development? Christ, there's a surprise, eh?
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Fags, Booze and Reddit - Day 2
Sunday. Luckily, another day of non-work. Twenty four hours without Reddit. I have no idea what the global LOLcat situation is, what the ten funniest brands of coffee are or even how stupid Hillary Clinton supporters are. I mean, I have a good idea but a lot can change in a day and it's more than that since I last got a fix.
I got up reasonably early because we'd planned to go to the seaside for the day. Thinking I'd have no trouble waking up without a hangover I left the blinds up and relied on the sun to wake me bright and early so I could rouse my passed-out boozer of a flatmate and drag him down to the car in good time. I woke up when Luca banged on my door to announce he was going for a shower. My head felt like it was full of cottage cheese and from the state of my mouth at least a pound of it had dried out on my tongue in the night. I was so exhausted I felt paralysed for a good five minutes, almost as if my blood wasn't flowing properly to my muscles. Carbon monxide poisoning, I thought to myself. Have.. to get.. outside.. I dragged the covers back and rolled one leg onto the floor, head throbbing heavily. Fuck, if I feel this bad without booze I'll drink just to avoid it and bugger any other teenage girly leg-related consequences.
I plodded dizzily into the office and checked my email. Gmail takes a while to load up these days, so I ctrl-t'd and had got as far as typing a lone 'r' when I caught myself. Crumbs; it's a reflex like scratching my nose. Get a grip, man! Nothing much to report so I stumbled down to the shower. I really didn't feel well. Perhaps I was sick or something.
A quick blast sorted me right out of course and before I knew it we were cruising down the M25 with the roof down. Every now and again I'd feel a cue for a cigarette but Luca was gentleman enough not to taunt me by smoking in the car and it was bearable. He hadn't smoked in the restaurant either but had done so everywhere else which leads me to the conclusion that the only two things that will get between him and a fag are the law of the land and being in a speeding car with a twitchy ex-smoker at the wheel. Makes sense when you think about it; neither gaol nor ICU are as much fun as the motorway on a sunny day and you can't smoke in either of them anyway.
Brighton is a great little place; I have many fond memories there. We parked near town and wandered down the North Laine for some breakfast. I had been aiming for the seafront (Buddies for the win!) but Luca spotted an "eat as much as you can" buffet so, clearly, we stopped there. And here was another surprise; stuffing my face just wasn't fun suddenly. Being able to taste my lunch was nothing new - in fact I rarely smoke in the mornings - but somehow this holiday vibe with the sun warming us and the Big Issue already stuck jauntily out of my shorts pocket, the morning was redolent in every way of smoking cues and the anticipation would normally have cheered me as I crammed in slice after slice of hot pizza. Yet of anticipation felt I none for the post-coital cuddle of a swift smoke was not forthcoming and I knew it.
It's a bitch, that anticipation thing. I remember once deciding to quit in college and deciding I would cut down to smoking only after meals. That didn't work because my definition of a 'meal' started to wander somewhat and before long all that was required was a single slice of bread which, on occasion, I had barely swallowed before the tasty dessert was on my lips. My second strategy was craftier but when my girlfriend cottoned on that I wasn't coming round looking for hot loving twice a day out of uncontrollable desire but rather as an excuse to fuel a rather sad chemical dependence, we had a fight and I ended up breaking my own regime just to cope with the breakdown of my regime.
We sauntered down between the shops and made it to the beach. I took a few photos while Luca dozed in the sunshine with the waves slapping at the stones. I still felt a little woolly to be honest; a far cry from the fresh, airy head I had anticipated. Might as well, I thought, have been smoking if I wanted to feel like this. We decamped to the pier.
There was a brief discussion about whether Luca could smoke on the pier. Obviously there were a few girls in facelift haircuts and tracksuits who were dusting ash over kids in pushchairs but that's rarely a sign of legitimacy and we decided after a brief chat that the wooden deck precluded sensible people from using sources of ignition for recreational.. oh wait, there's an ash tray on top of that dustbin.
It occurred to me suddenly that smoking had been an issue already a couple of times. I had found myself waiting for Luca to finish a snout so he could enter a shop and now I was wasting my time looking for "No Smoking" signs on his behalf. This, I thought dolefully, must have been what it was like for all of my nonsmoking girlfriends over the years.
We shopped for various things and wound up back on the beach, grabbing a table outside one of the split personality pub/clubs. Everyone, it seemed, had light, bubbly pints in front of them with picture-perfect drips of condensation tracing delicately down the sides. My mouth was dry, my forehead crusty with dessicated sweat. I would, and I choose my words carefully, have throttled a puppy for a pint of cool lager at that moment. I sent Luca to the bar under the pretext of him choosing his poison (might as well drink for free if I'm not drinking, eh?) and he returned shortly with.. a Red Bull.
"To be honest, man," he said. "I can't drink a beer in the sun."
Have you ever seen an Italian man beaten to death with loose stones and a folding chair? About fifty people in Brighton on Sunday nearly did.
It was interesting; unlike the mineral water last night I really didn't enjoy my drinks as much as I should have done. Strange, really; normally I greatly enjoy healthy doses of soft drinks when I am dehydrated and even once I'd got Luca onto more manly drinks I was tucking my pints of coke or soda away faster than he. It was an empty drinking though, like eating a Pot Noodle. It's all fine while it's in your mouth but then nothing happens afterwards to prove you swallowed any of it.
This, then, I was not expecting. Rather than the outright cravings that I have experienced in the past, today's experience has been more of a nebulous sensation that something is missing, that experiences that do not necessarily involve alcohol or nicotine don't have the substance that they used to because of the absence. Odd, but bearable. I'm also coping surprisingly well with Luca's indulgences and have even inspired him to announce he will quit smoking Monday to Friday this week in solidarity.
We ate dinner in St James and Luca realised he had run out of snouts. Annoyed that he had not brought some of his duty free stash from the house he tried to scab one from first the waiter (who didn't smoke) and then a customer outside (who said no).
"Fuck, I hate this things," he spat as we walked down the street. "When people ask me for a cigarette, I always give them one. In Italy is the same. But here.. this guy.. he has three packets on the table. Fuck, man. Just one." He disappeared into an off licence and reappeared thirty seconds later, lighting a cancer stick. He took a long draught. "You know, maybe I just didn't like the way he said it. Very.." he moved his hand limply, dismissively.
"Yeah," I said. "I mean, they are over 25p each now. Quite the investment." And of more than just money, it would seem.
I got up reasonably early because we'd planned to go to the seaside for the day. Thinking I'd have no trouble waking up without a hangover I left the blinds up and relied on the sun to wake me bright and early so I could rouse my passed-out boozer of a flatmate and drag him down to the car in good time. I woke up when Luca banged on my door to announce he was going for a shower. My head felt like it was full of cottage cheese and from the state of my mouth at least a pound of it had dried out on my tongue in the night. I was so exhausted I felt paralysed for a good five minutes, almost as if my blood wasn't flowing properly to my muscles. Carbon monxide poisoning, I thought to myself. Have.. to get.. outside.. I dragged the covers back and rolled one leg onto the floor, head throbbing heavily. Fuck, if I feel this bad without booze I'll drink just to avoid it and bugger any other teenage girly leg-related consequences.
I plodded dizzily into the office and checked my email. Gmail takes a while to load up these days, so I ctrl-t'd and had got as far as typing a lone 'r' when I caught myself. Crumbs; it's a reflex like scratching my nose. Get a grip, man! Nothing much to report so I stumbled down to the shower. I really didn't feel well. Perhaps I was sick or something.
A quick blast sorted me right out of course and before I knew it we were cruising down the M25 with the roof down. Every now and again I'd feel a cue for a cigarette but Luca was gentleman enough not to taunt me by smoking in the car and it was bearable. He hadn't smoked in the restaurant either but had done so everywhere else which leads me to the conclusion that the only two things that will get between him and a fag are the law of the land and being in a speeding car with a twitchy ex-smoker at the wheel. Makes sense when you think about it; neither gaol nor ICU are as much fun as the motorway on a sunny day and you can't smoke in either of them anyway.
Brighton is a great little place; I have many fond memories there. We parked near town and wandered down the North Laine for some breakfast. I had been aiming for the seafront (Buddies for the win!) but Luca spotted an "eat as much as you can" buffet so, clearly, we stopped there. And here was another surprise; stuffing my face just wasn't fun suddenly. Being able to taste my lunch was nothing new - in fact I rarely smoke in the mornings - but somehow this holiday vibe with the sun warming us and the Big Issue already stuck jauntily out of my shorts pocket, the morning was redolent in every way of smoking cues and the anticipation would normally have cheered me as I crammed in slice after slice of hot pizza. Yet of anticipation felt I none for the post-coital cuddle of a swift smoke was not forthcoming and I knew it.
It's a bitch, that anticipation thing. I remember once deciding to quit in college and deciding I would cut down to smoking only after meals. That didn't work because my definition of a 'meal' started to wander somewhat and before long all that was required was a single slice of bread which, on occasion, I had barely swallowed before the tasty dessert was on my lips. My second strategy was craftier but when my girlfriend cottoned on that I wasn't coming round looking for hot loving twice a day out of uncontrollable desire but rather as an excuse to fuel a rather sad chemical dependence, we had a fight and I ended up breaking my own regime just to cope with the breakdown of my regime.
We sauntered down between the shops and made it to the beach. I took a few photos while Luca dozed in the sunshine with the waves slapping at the stones. I still felt a little woolly to be honest; a far cry from the fresh, airy head I had anticipated. Might as well, I thought, have been smoking if I wanted to feel like this. We decamped to the pier.
There was a brief discussion about whether Luca could smoke on the pier. Obviously there were a few girls in facelift haircuts and tracksuits who were dusting ash over kids in pushchairs but that's rarely a sign of legitimacy and we decided after a brief chat that the wooden deck precluded sensible people from using sources of ignition for recreational.. oh wait, there's an ash tray on top of that dustbin.
It occurred to me suddenly that smoking had been an issue already a couple of times. I had found myself waiting for Luca to finish a snout so he could enter a shop and now I was wasting my time looking for "No Smoking" signs on his behalf. This, I thought dolefully, must have been what it was like for all of my nonsmoking girlfriends over the years.
We shopped for various things and wound up back on the beach, grabbing a table outside one of the split personality pub/clubs. Everyone, it seemed, had light, bubbly pints in front of them with picture-perfect drips of condensation tracing delicately down the sides. My mouth was dry, my forehead crusty with dessicated sweat. I would, and I choose my words carefully, have throttled a puppy for a pint of cool lager at that moment. I sent Luca to the bar under the pretext of him choosing his poison (might as well drink for free if I'm not drinking, eh?) and he returned shortly with.. a Red Bull.
"To be honest, man," he said. "I can't drink a beer in the sun."
Have you ever seen an Italian man beaten to death with loose stones and a folding chair? About fifty people in Brighton on Sunday nearly did.
It was interesting; unlike the mineral water last night I really didn't enjoy my drinks as much as I should have done. Strange, really; normally I greatly enjoy healthy doses of soft drinks when I am dehydrated and even once I'd got Luca onto more manly drinks I was tucking my pints of coke or soda away faster than he. It was an empty drinking though, like eating a Pot Noodle. It's all fine while it's in your mouth but then nothing happens afterwards to prove you swallowed any of it.
This, then, I was not expecting. Rather than the outright cravings that I have experienced in the past, today's experience has been more of a nebulous sensation that something is missing, that experiences that do not necessarily involve alcohol or nicotine don't have the substance that they used to because of the absence. Odd, but bearable. I'm also coping surprisingly well with Luca's indulgences and have even inspired him to announce he will quit smoking Monday to Friday this week in solidarity.
We ate dinner in St James and Luca realised he had run out of snouts. Annoyed that he had not brought some of his duty free stash from the house he tried to scab one from first the waiter (who didn't smoke) and then a customer outside (who said no).
"Fuck, I hate this things," he spat as we walked down the street. "When people ask me for a cigarette, I always give them one. In Italy is the same. But here.. this guy.. he has three packets on the table. Fuck, man. Just one." He disappeared into an off licence and reappeared thirty seconds later, lighting a cancer stick. He took a long draught. "You know, maybe I just didn't like the way he said it. Very.." he moved his hand limply, dismissively.
"Yeah," I said. "I mean, they are over 25p each now. Quite the investment." And of more than just money, it would seem.
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Fags, Booze and Reddit - Day 1 evening
Well I can say one thing is improving, namely my ability to survive my little runs in the park, which is good considering the first one two weeks ago put my legs almost completely out of action for the rest of the week. Seriously, haven't known muscle to tear like that since the first time I had sex. No, wait, the second time. No, wait; you don't want to hear about it. Sorry.
As if that wasn't strenuous enough, Luca announced his need for a squash racquet and suggested we cycle over to Argos and pick one up that he'd seen online. Not a bad idea, with the sun shining and a brisk breeze. We went the back route, avoiding my buddy's posh gallery opening because, well, I went to the Wednesday one and there's only so much rhubarb champagne you can drink in one week. Wait, maybe that should be the next challenge; I'll give up not drinking champagne every day. Ugh. We rolled down through fields and down towpaths, over the motorway and towards town. I felt positively sprightly but Luca was sweating freely behind me.
"Shit, man; this is the long road."
"No dude, you'll see; we'll come to the industrial estate just now."
"What about Argos on the high street?"
"..there's an Argos on the high street too?"
Balls. I'd dragged the poor guy about five miles out of his way for nothing. Not only that, when we finally arrived Argos was out of stock and even the sports shop next door had sold out of squash racquets. It wasn't all bad though; I was doing surprisingly well considering my earlier exertions and had even begun to feel hungry after all this exercise. We stopped in at McDonalds for a large Coke and planned our next move. Luca made to light up but, not knowing whether the 'No Smoking' sign on the door applied to the garden or not, and being surrounded by kids, decided against it. I felt curiously liberated from worrying about permission to slurp my drink and waved it belligerently at a small child.
The one thing I didn't really think through about starting this experiment on a Saturday morning was of course that Saturday night would be the first thing to happen next. In a literary sense this is probably foolish because what you guys want to read about is all the dull minutiae of me getting through the week and then the grand challenge - can Carl go out in town without the social lubricant of beer to keep him afloat? Well, shit. Too late now; I've already been out.
To be honest, it was disappointingly similar to how I expected, which is again a bit of a downer given that the entire point of this blog was to expose the truth about how my dependence on stupid unnecessary crap was further out of control than I had feared and subsequently perhaps to morph into a diary about some drying-out clinic for social bookmarking sheep. Christ, I actually had to delete the 'le' there. Maybe the real challenge is ahead, on Monday.
But it's Saturday, or rather it was, and you want to hear about it. I was out with my long-suffering flatmate who, in between being honked at with a vintage klaxon and beaten mercilessly at ping-pong, manages to quell his murderous rage long enough for me to get him aimable-drunk. He was in the mood for a pizza so we took in dinner at Zizzi's. It was remarkable, I'll be honest, how pleasant my large bottle of Spellegrino was. Out with the vino, in with the.. no, wait, too early for that nonsense. Oh no wait, it will always be too early if I never get drunk! Holy cow, here's an unanticipated pitfall; without the chemical excuse my sense of humour is laid bare, honest and uncoloured for others to endure neat and undiluted. Is the world ready for such torment? Evidently, Luca was well ahead as he ordered a bottle of Peroni so large it might actually have held more beer than I had mineral water. He kindly wafted it under my nose and I stabbed him in the eye with a breadstick.
The salad was excellent. I can't face having anything more substantial in this weather, especially not at Zizzi's which manages to be stiflingly hot in February, never mind June, because it's underground on the high street. Does mean you're below eye level while ogling the girls on the high street though which gives you the vital half second edge if you realise you need to look away before being caught by her muscular chaperone. Dismemberment might well have encroached on my enjoyment of the delicate parmesan dusted leaves in my bowl. Anyway, it was excellent but not filling and as I reached the end I felt an entirely unfamiliar and yet irritating sensation of dissatisfaction.
I was definitely no longer hungry - the portions at chain Italian restaurants around here are rarely stingy unless you go for a steak - but somehow I didn't feel like I'd eaten. It was rather like reading a SomethingAwful forum thread of a story in progress - I'd wasted half my evening as expected but I didn't know how whether the Zerg had dished out his ass-kicking to the aggressive customer or not. I'd parked the meat van in the tradesmen's alley but not unloaded my lard. It was the beer, I was sure of it. All the cues were there - evening, restaurant meal, good conversation, hot Italian man.. erm, no wait, scratch that, let's say.. okay, the prospect of a night out, and yet there was no velvety hand stroking the back of my neck and telling me to relax, that I was full, that the meal had been excellent and, most importantly, that I was funny. Alcohol aids digestion, I have often opined, but I had been unaware that might only be because my body had forgotten how to digest a meal that wasn't swimming in a half gallon of local ale. Fiddlesticks, I thought. Nothing like realising your digestive system is broken for ruining your night.
We walked into town from the restaurant and Luca smoked, taking special care to moan with pleasure so that I might share in his enjoyment, the rat bastard. I bought him a beer, nontheless, and partook of a lemonade and soda. It's a good one because it looks like a pint of gin and tonic so people think you just got back from safari. In Victorian times. Actually, it's just that it's more bearable than the sickly over-sweet diabetic's piss they normally pass off as lemonade. I took a sip and, amazingly, it was sweeter than a baby tapir in a tutu. In fact, there was so much sugar in it I immediately began to hallucinate baby tapirs in tutus. No wait, sorry; that's normal. I think a full pint of their neat lemonade would stop even the most hardened candy-addicted, sweet-toothed eight year-old dead in her tracks. Perhaps literally, if any got on her shoes.
It wasn't very early so most people were fairly well oiled by this point and, as we stood on the terrace, I could take in a number of scenes. Over Luca's shoulder I spotted a very attractive girl being dragged almost against her will over the watershed of amusement by two guys in short sleeved shirts. Her not unattractive friend was completely sidelined and, without the benefit of
sobriety, her face was a window to her utter despair as she stared mournfully into the middle distance while her companion fielded quips and comebacks from the pitchers to one side. John Nash wouldn't have come up with any theses around this group, I can tell you. I was distracted by whatever Luca was talking about but as I sensed a lull coming up I considered asking her if she was alright but when I looked at her again she was talking animatedly with one of the blokes, flashing a lovely smile and pointing animatedly at the garden below as he leaned in, fingertips in the small of her back. Blimey, that was quick.
Even quicker than that, her friend decided it was time to go and they left, much to the guys' disappointment. It was fascinating to me to be able to see this rollercoaster of intimacy unencumbered by the blurry goggles of my own inebriation and I would have grilled the boys a bit but they were already too busy hitting on two overly made-up fortysomethings at the next table. "No, no, it's not like that," one was saying as he struggled to punch numbers into his mobile. "I just don't want to go to Indiana Jones tomorrow on my own.."
I did feel a certain obligation to chat to somebody I didn't know, to see how shallow the waters of my social interaction truly were without a layer of booze laid on top but for some reason I just couldn't find anyone I wanted to talk to. Girls walked by that I'm sure would have been gorgeous if it weren't for the makeup, applied from an Early Learning Centre range of colours, seemingly with brushes better suited to recolouring a ballroom than a twenty year-old's face. There were actual crumbs of.. something, cracking off the creases outside their eyes and balancing on the ends of weird, freakishly long lashes. Lips were lurid and looked like they were sealed in car lacquer, edged so harshly it could even have been done with masking tape. It was weird; with booze or without this farce of gilded lilly insanity these girls could well have been real stunners but I'd entered a forbidden twilight zone where I coasted, alone, bewildered by the array of familiar yet terrifyingly strange and unpleasant sights.
The worst part was that I had begun to develop a headache. That might have been the sugar of course.
On the way to our local we passed the hippest bar in town in the old station. I say 'hippest' in the sense of 'most full of people who can't make up their own minds and just go wherever the most people are'. It seemed, even for Saturday night, to be weirdly over-full both inside and out. It looked more like the front row at Glastonbury on a sunny day than a classy drinking establishment. Normally, this is a good sign. If a set proportion of girls are attractive then it's simple maths that a greater number of people increases the chances of hot women being present, unless there's a drinks promotion on for people who don't wash, or a quiz where all the questions are about Hollyoaks and Britain's got braindead twerps but those would hardly make good business sense so I can safely assume that's not the case. I'm sure I'd seen this exact sight many times before but on this occasion I didn't see my normal increased crumpet availability but rather a mildly frightening throng of rowdy drunkards, all pressed up against one another and spilling drinks. I could not actually see myself getting in through the door, much less to the bar, without serious elbowing and frankly I didn't fancy my chances. This, I must stress, is not normal in the slightest.
As we descended from the station, I noticed that the Italian restaurant by the steps was hosting some sort of traditional feast. Animatedly, I read the board aloud and it sounded pretty good (although that may just have been my voice, I'll admit) in fact so good that I was saying how lucky we were to have seen the sign and that we should book until I got to the price, £65 a head. At that precise moment a vague memory bubbled up in my brain. I'd been through this exact sequence before; I was sure of it. I wondered for a moment how many times but couldn't put a fix on even one precise occasion.
"Perhaps," I said, "it's just deja vu." We kept walking. "I can't remember anything else, which might well be a si.." It was like somebody had pressed pause; over to the right, by a fire escape and out of the sight of the hordes in the station were two of the longest legs I'd seen since I got back from photographing giraffes on safari. Not only that, they were utterly beautiful and by some kind of wizardry they appeared to be getting longer. Oh no, wait a minute, they weren't. The pissed-up owner of said legs was hiking up her skirt to show her rear to a snorting friend with a camera. Marvellous. There were four of them in total (girls, not legs) and at this range they could have been anyone - well, anyone under the age of 20. All at once the visual hook was swamped by feelings of pity, concern, irritation both with them and myself. Balls to it. I kept walking.
"Hey, man; have you seen?" Luca was still stood, gawping. "I've never seen this things."
"Dude, I'm walking. Stay if you like."
"With men, sure, but not with women." Or girls, I thought. "This one, the skirt is right up, hey?" He caught up with me. "Never this things."
The strangest part was that afterwards I thought maybe I should have gone back. I've often thought that shying away from any experience or social situation is a wasted opportunity but when I think about it now I can't really see where that would have gone. A flash of an arse may look good - in a purely aesthetic sense - but once you've seen that are you going to make the effort to buy drinks and talk your way into seeing it again? Had I been merry, might I have attempted to do so, become impatient and tried it on a little too strongly while under the impression that they were right up for it, subsequently ending up in custody? Most importantly, would I have forgiven myself such an indescretion while drunk when, sober, I passed it up entirely? Should I feel bad about that?
Christ, no wonder I slept badly.
As if that wasn't strenuous enough, Luca announced his need for a squash racquet and suggested we cycle over to Argos and pick one up that he'd seen online. Not a bad idea, with the sun shining and a brisk breeze. We went the back route, avoiding my buddy's posh gallery opening because, well, I went to the Wednesday one and there's only so much rhubarb champagne you can drink in one week. Wait, maybe that should be the next challenge; I'll give up not drinking champagne every day. Ugh. We rolled down through fields and down towpaths, over the motorway and towards town. I felt positively sprightly but Luca was sweating freely behind me.
"Shit, man; this is the long road."
"No dude, you'll see; we'll come to the industrial estate just now."
"What about Argos on the high street?"
"..there's an Argos on the high street too?"
Balls. I'd dragged the poor guy about five miles out of his way for nothing. Not only that, when we finally arrived Argos was out of stock and even the sports shop next door had sold out of squash racquets. It wasn't all bad though; I was doing surprisingly well considering my earlier exertions and had even begun to feel hungry after all this exercise. We stopped in at McDonalds for a large Coke and planned our next move. Luca made to light up but, not knowing whether the 'No Smoking' sign on the door applied to the garden or not, and being surrounded by kids, decided against it. I felt curiously liberated from worrying about permission to slurp my drink and waved it belligerently at a small child.
The one thing I didn't really think through about starting this experiment on a Saturday morning was of course that Saturday night would be the first thing to happen next. In a literary sense this is probably foolish because what you guys want to read about is all the dull minutiae of me getting through the week and then the grand challenge - can Carl go out in town without the social lubricant of beer to keep him afloat? Well, shit. Too late now; I've already been out.
To be honest, it was disappointingly similar to how I expected, which is again a bit of a downer given that the entire point of this blog was to expose the truth about how my dependence on stupid unnecessary crap was further out of control than I had feared and subsequently perhaps to morph into a diary about some drying-out clinic for social bookmarking sheep. Christ, I actually had to delete the 'le' there. Maybe the real challenge is ahead, on Monday.
But it's Saturday, or rather it was, and you want to hear about it. I was out with my long-suffering flatmate who, in between being honked at with a vintage klaxon and beaten mercilessly at ping-pong, manages to quell his murderous rage long enough for me to get him aimable-drunk. He was in the mood for a pizza so we took in dinner at Zizzi's. It was remarkable, I'll be honest, how pleasant my large bottle of Spellegrino was. Out with the vino, in with the.. no, wait, too early for that nonsense. Oh no wait, it will always be too early if I never get drunk! Holy cow, here's an unanticipated pitfall; without the chemical excuse my sense of humour is laid bare, honest and uncoloured for others to endure neat and undiluted. Is the world ready for such torment? Evidently, Luca was well ahead as he ordered a bottle of Peroni so large it might actually have held more beer than I had mineral water. He kindly wafted it under my nose and I stabbed him in the eye with a breadstick.
The salad was excellent. I can't face having anything more substantial in this weather, especially not at Zizzi's which manages to be stiflingly hot in February, never mind June, because it's underground on the high street. Does mean you're below eye level while ogling the girls on the high street though which gives you the vital half second edge if you realise you need to look away before being caught by her muscular chaperone. Dismemberment might well have encroached on my enjoyment of the delicate parmesan dusted leaves in my bowl. Anyway, it was excellent but not filling and as I reached the end I felt an entirely unfamiliar and yet irritating sensation of dissatisfaction.
I was definitely no longer hungry - the portions at chain Italian restaurants around here are rarely stingy unless you go for a steak - but somehow I didn't feel like I'd eaten. It was rather like reading a SomethingAwful forum thread of a story in progress - I'd wasted half my evening as expected but I didn't know how whether the Zerg had dished out his ass-kicking to the aggressive customer or not. I'd parked the meat van in the tradesmen's alley but not unloaded my lard. It was the beer, I was sure of it. All the cues were there - evening, restaurant meal, good conversation, hot Italian man.. erm, no wait, scratch that, let's say.. okay, the prospect of a night out, and yet there was no velvety hand stroking the back of my neck and telling me to relax, that I was full, that the meal had been excellent and, most importantly, that I was funny. Alcohol aids digestion, I have often opined, but I had been unaware that might only be because my body had forgotten how to digest a meal that wasn't swimming in a half gallon of local ale. Fiddlesticks, I thought. Nothing like realising your digestive system is broken for ruining your night.
We walked into town from the restaurant and Luca smoked, taking special care to moan with pleasure so that I might share in his enjoyment, the rat bastard. I bought him a beer, nontheless, and partook of a lemonade and soda. It's a good one because it looks like a pint of gin and tonic so people think you just got back from safari. In Victorian times. Actually, it's just that it's more bearable than the sickly over-sweet diabetic's piss they normally pass off as lemonade. I took a sip and, amazingly, it was sweeter than a baby tapir in a tutu. In fact, there was so much sugar in it I immediately began to hallucinate baby tapirs in tutus. No wait, sorry; that's normal. I think a full pint of their neat lemonade would stop even the most hardened candy-addicted, sweet-toothed eight year-old dead in her tracks. Perhaps literally, if any got on her shoes.
It wasn't very early so most people were fairly well oiled by this point and, as we stood on the terrace, I could take in a number of scenes. Over Luca's shoulder I spotted a very attractive girl being dragged almost against her will over the watershed of amusement by two guys in short sleeved shirts. Her not unattractive friend was completely sidelined and, without the benefit of
sobriety, her face was a window to her utter despair as she stared mournfully into the middle distance while her companion fielded quips and comebacks from the pitchers to one side. John Nash wouldn't have come up with any theses around this group, I can tell you. I was distracted by whatever Luca was talking about but as I sensed a lull coming up I considered asking her if she was alright but when I looked at her again she was talking animatedly with one of the blokes, flashing a lovely smile and pointing animatedly at the garden below as he leaned in, fingertips in the small of her back. Blimey, that was quick.
Even quicker than that, her friend decided it was time to go and they left, much to the guys' disappointment. It was fascinating to me to be able to see this rollercoaster of intimacy unencumbered by the blurry goggles of my own inebriation and I would have grilled the boys a bit but they were already too busy hitting on two overly made-up fortysomethings at the next table. "No, no, it's not like that," one was saying as he struggled to punch numbers into his mobile. "I just don't want to go to Indiana Jones tomorrow on my own.."
I did feel a certain obligation to chat to somebody I didn't know, to see how shallow the waters of my social interaction truly were without a layer of booze laid on top but for some reason I just couldn't find anyone I wanted to talk to. Girls walked by that I'm sure would have been gorgeous if it weren't for the makeup, applied from an Early Learning Centre range of colours, seemingly with brushes better suited to recolouring a ballroom than a twenty year-old's face. There were actual crumbs of.. something, cracking off the creases outside their eyes and balancing on the ends of weird, freakishly long lashes. Lips were lurid and looked like they were sealed in car lacquer, edged so harshly it could even have been done with masking tape. It was weird; with booze or without this farce of gilded lilly insanity these girls could well have been real stunners but I'd entered a forbidden twilight zone where I coasted, alone, bewildered by the array of familiar yet terrifyingly strange and unpleasant sights.
The worst part was that I had begun to develop a headache. That might have been the sugar of course.
On the way to our local we passed the hippest bar in town in the old station. I say 'hippest' in the sense of 'most full of people who can't make up their own minds and just go wherever the most people are'. It seemed, even for Saturday night, to be weirdly over-full both inside and out. It looked more like the front row at Glastonbury on a sunny day than a classy drinking establishment. Normally, this is a good sign. If a set proportion of girls are attractive then it's simple maths that a greater number of people increases the chances of hot women being present, unless there's a drinks promotion on for people who don't wash, or a quiz where all the questions are about Hollyoaks and Britain's got braindead twerps but those would hardly make good business sense so I can safely assume that's not the case. I'm sure I'd seen this exact sight many times before but on this occasion I didn't see my normal increased crumpet availability but rather a mildly frightening throng of rowdy drunkards, all pressed up against one another and spilling drinks. I could not actually see myself getting in through the door, much less to the bar, without serious elbowing and frankly I didn't fancy my chances. This, I must stress, is not normal in the slightest.
As we descended from the station, I noticed that the Italian restaurant by the steps was hosting some sort of traditional feast. Animatedly, I read the board aloud and it sounded pretty good (although that may just have been my voice, I'll admit) in fact so good that I was saying how lucky we were to have seen the sign and that we should book until I got to the price, £65 a head. At that precise moment a vague memory bubbled up in my brain. I'd been through this exact sequence before; I was sure of it. I wondered for a moment how many times but couldn't put a fix on even one precise occasion.
"Perhaps," I said, "it's just deja vu." We kept walking. "I can't remember anything else, which might well be a si.." It was like somebody had pressed pause; over to the right, by a fire escape and out of the sight of the hordes in the station were two of the longest legs I'd seen since I got back from photographing giraffes on safari. Not only that, they were utterly beautiful and by some kind of wizardry they appeared to be getting longer. Oh no, wait a minute, they weren't. The pissed-up owner of said legs was hiking up her skirt to show her rear to a snorting friend with a camera. Marvellous. There were four of them in total (girls, not legs) and at this range they could have been anyone - well, anyone under the age of 20. All at once the visual hook was swamped by feelings of pity, concern, irritation both with them and myself. Balls to it. I kept walking.
"Hey, man; have you seen?" Luca was still stood, gawping. "I've never seen this things."
"Dude, I'm walking. Stay if you like."
"With men, sure, but not with women." Or girls, I thought. "This one, the skirt is right up, hey?" He caught up with me. "Never this things."
The strangest part was that afterwards I thought maybe I should have gone back. I've often thought that shying away from any experience or social situation is a wasted opportunity but when I think about it now I can't really see where that would have gone. A flash of an arse may look good - in a purely aesthetic sense - but once you've seen that are you going to make the effort to buy drinks and talk your way into seeing it again? Had I been merry, might I have attempted to do so, become impatient and tried it on a little too strongly while under the impression that they were right up for it, subsequently ending up in custody? Most importantly, would I have forgiven myself such an indescretion while drunk when, sober, I passed it up entirely? Should I feel bad about that?
Christ, no wonder I slept badly.
Fags, Booze and Reddit - Day 1
It's Saturday, which means precisely fuck-all when you're self-employed. These days even the banks are open on Saturday morning so if you can shake off the hangover and drag yourself into town there's plenty of time to bank a few cheques. Or, as it more often the case, buy yourself the largest sausage baguette in town and hope that, by sheer volume, will displace the toxins in your system.
But what's this? Carl started his week of clean(er) living last night so he's up bright and early, lifting the blind like the scales from his blinkered, alcoholic eyes and basking in the tremendous joy of being alive and free of his most destructive addictions! Well, that was the plan. As it happens, I woke up this morning feeling as rough as I would normally expect after a heavy night. As I said, I have no weekdays, hence by implication no weekend, so the presence of the hangover doesn't necessarily mean it is Saturday any more than the planned absence might have fooled me into thinking it wasn't. What bothers me is, whichever damn day of the week it's supposed to be, I am not supposed to have a head like a half deflated volleyball and a left lung that is definitely half full of cottage cheese when last night comprised only of a quiet movie, dinner and just one snout, I promise!
It was during said coffin nail that I decided this week was going to be free of my three nastiest habits. The trio of vices which keep me from fulfilling my potential, even if that potential is simply to get up before nine in the morning without feeling like some unforgivable crime has been committed against nature. Firstly, obviously, reddit.com. Seriously, whoever the hell came up with that site should be ashamed. If you're reading this and you work at Reddit, are you ashamed? You should be. I'm incapable of taking even a five second break in my workflow without checking Reddit to fill the gap. Rather than waste time waiting for Dreamweaver to boot up I'll wait for Firefox to load a new tab (which lately takes just as long) and then read half an hour's worth of stupid links about Ron Paul, that guy who was never going to be anything other than a footnote in an election in a country I haven't even visited in nearly two years. I reddit while I'm eating, I reddit while I reach for the mouse. I'll reddit while the phone rings - at my end. It's come to a pretty pass when addictive, pernicious, destructive drugs like that are unleashed on an unsuspecting public without even a Government health warning. I it wasn't for Reddit I strongly suspect would have been a millionaire by now. So I'm quitting it for a week which should, I've worked out, put me £25,000 in the black at least.
What else? Oh yes, beer. I keep going on about how beer doesn't really matter to me but I'm beginning to suspect that might not be the case. Back in 1998 I spent a short time at a school in New Hampshire, where I learned from their counsellor that if you drink more than ten units a week you're probably an alcoholic. At the time, I was drinking ten units every Saturday afternoon. I mean, come on. Not only have I been dining out on that story for ten years but I have also quite seriously used it as evidence that nobody knows anything about alcoholism, least of all my own which of course doesn't exist. Yeah, it took a bachelor's in psychology and seven years of thinking about it for me to realise that I might just be deluding myself very slightly. So I "won't miss it", eh? "I regularly don't drink for a week or more just by accident"? Prove it, you old soak. So I will. One week without beer. Or Reddit. Or cigarettes, just to make it worthwhile.
But I won't miss those, I barely smoke a pack a month. Coughcoughcough.
Anyway, like I said, first day not going well. I'm going to go for a run and see whether I start feeling better then. I'm also not going to think about how I didn't have a beer after lunchtime yesterday and how that might make the week that bit shorter. I read a certain website and smoked at midnight and that's that. No, honestly. It is.
But what's this? Carl started his week of clean(er) living last night so he's up bright and early, lifting the blind like the scales from his blinkered, alcoholic eyes and basking in the tremendous joy of being alive and free of his most destructive addictions! Well, that was the plan. As it happens, I woke up this morning feeling as rough as I would normally expect after a heavy night. As I said, I have no weekdays, hence by implication no weekend, so the presence of the hangover doesn't necessarily mean it is Saturday any more than the planned absence might have fooled me into thinking it wasn't. What bothers me is, whichever damn day of the week it's supposed to be, I am not supposed to have a head like a half deflated volleyball and a left lung that is definitely half full of cottage cheese when last night comprised only of a quiet movie, dinner and just one snout, I promise!
It was during said coffin nail that I decided this week was going to be free of my three nastiest habits. The trio of vices which keep me from fulfilling my potential, even if that potential is simply to get up before nine in the morning without feeling like some unforgivable crime has been committed against nature. Firstly, obviously, reddit.com. Seriously, whoever the hell came up with that site should be ashamed. If you're reading this and you work at Reddit, are you ashamed? You should be. I'm incapable of taking even a five second break in my workflow without checking Reddit to fill the gap. Rather than waste time waiting for Dreamweaver to boot up I'll wait for Firefox to load a new tab (which lately takes just as long) and then read half an hour's worth of stupid links about Ron Paul, that guy who was never going to be anything other than a footnote in an election in a country I haven't even visited in nearly two years. I reddit while I'm eating, I reddit while I reach for the mouse. I'll reddit while the phone rings - at my end. It's come to a pretty pass when addictive, pernicious, destructive drugs like that are unleashed on an unsuspecting public without even a Government health warning. I it wasn't for Reddit I strongly suspect would have been a millionaire by now. So I'm quitting it for a week which should, I've worked out, put me £25,000 in the black at least.
What else? Oh yes, beer. I keep going on about how beer doesn't really matter to me but I'm beginning to suspect that might not be the case. Back in 1998 I spent a short time at a school in New Hampshire, where I learned from their counsellor that if you drink more than ten units a week you're probably an alcoholic. At the time, I was drinking ten units every Saturday afternoon. I mean, come on. Not only have I been dining out on that story for ten years but I have also quite seriously used it as evidence that nobody knows anything about alcoholism, least of all my own which of course doesn't exist. Yeah, it took a bachelor's in psychology and seven years of thinking about it for me to realise that I might just be deluding myself very slightly. So I "won't miss it", eh? "I regularly don't drink for a week or more just by accident"? Prove it, you old soak. So I will. One week without beer. Or Reddit. Or cigarettes, just to make it worthwhile.
But I won't miss those, I barely smoke a pack a month. Coughcoughcough.
Anyway, like I said, first day not going well. I'm going to go for a run and see whether I start feeling better then. I'm also not going to think about how I didn't have a beer after lunchtime yesterday and how that might make the week that bit shorter. I read a certain website and smoked at midnight and that's that. No, honestly. It is.
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