Life
...is a funny old game, isn't it.
I think I am getting the January blues at last, and we're actually into the start of February.
Maybe my mind was taken off the depression by keeping "busy" at work. Well, at least I had something to focus on; getting up in the morning / afternoon / evening, getting to the station on time etc etc. It was good to see some familiar faces back in the office for another series. It was also quite good not to see some familiar faces returning.
Now the fireworks are over, the smoke has cleared and everything is settling back down to a snail's pace. Just the way I like it, usually, but at the moment, I feel restless, agitated and depressed.
By the end of last year, I had become a big, big drinker. I know I've gone too far, because lately, I can't get pissed on three pints anymore like I used to, it takes more and more. I was actually sitting at the bar, thumbing through a little drug-education pamphlet, and there it was; entry number one - Alcohol.
I took a sip of my ale and read on.
Apparently if you have too much on a regular basis, your tolerance levels go right up, and you can stomach more and more of the stuff. Makes sense, really.
I was at a family funeral recently, where an uncle commented that one of my obese cousins commonly sank 10 pints in a half-hour sitting. 10 pints.
I should keep my diary open to pencil-in another family funeral sometime in the near future.
Things came to an absolute head when, one night, I had ventured down to the bar to watch a game of football, have a couple of cokes and go home. A perfectly reasonable thing to do. In January, they were running a promotion where pints were only 2 pounds until one of the teams scored in the footie. I wasn't particularly tempted, but some people were absolutely getting stuck in like all the pubs in England would be shutting for good at the stroke of twelve.
My mate Graeme, the Australian guy, had been sitting with an old gangster from the Krays-era and the gangster's kid, and they'd been sinking pints all afternoon. He kindly (or drunkenly) bought me a pint from the other end of the bar, which the barmaid presented to me, and said "It's from Baldy."
I didn't want it, but I said thanks and accepted anyways. I mean, it had already been poured and paid for, right?
Graeme comes over, sloshed out of his brain, complaining that he shouldn't have let the gangsters buy him so many drinks. He *told* them he had a date lined up, and he wanted to stay somewhat compos mentis.
He nicked off just after the football to meet this Bolivian girl, whom he had said was "guaranteed sex." Apparently he had suggested a meal and a movie, and she'd said they wouldn't have time for that because they'd be too busy shagging, or some other unlikely thing that maybe happens in your world but not in mine.
I finished off my pint (God, I hate it when you get to the bottom of the pint...why is it that the final dregs always taste absolutely disgusting? In theory, you should be more drunk and therefore less able to taste how appalling it is, but it always makes me screw up my face and shiver like a baby eating a lemon) and looked at my watch.
Just then, Graeme called.
"Fucking bitch CANCELLED on me!!" he wailed.
I dunno about you guys, maybe it's just the twisted bastard in me, but I get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside when a buddy gets jacked out of free, guaranteed sex...even if he *did* just buy me a pint.
I always have visions of him sweating, slurping and slobbering uncontrollably over some unfortunate young foreign woman with very low self esteem, already planning in his head how he will be describing it in intricate detail to his friends and workmates, first thing on Monday morning.
For me, finding a partner is the most difficult thing in the world. I want nothing less than a soulmate, someone I can bond with on every level, someone I can be tender with, someone I can entirely trust with my deepest, darkest thoughts and secrets...
For him, it's like a fishing trip. He just casts his rod out there and hopes he will get a bite. He's either telling you how big they were, or lamenting the ones that got away.
I suppose we find each other equally bemusing. The only trouble occurs when he tries to rope me in to going fishing with him. In nightclubs, I'm like a size-zero model at an all-you-can-eat buffet. There's absolutely no point.
Anyroads, the Bolivian girl, the sure-thing, cancelled on him. He refused to come back to the pub, as he was trying to avoid the Polish girl behind the bar (one of his previous big-game catches)...so I offered to take him to the more sophisticated bar down the road.
We got there, and it was great. Much better than the stinky "Old mans' bar" we had been frequenting for the past year or so.
We're there for a while and we've already struck up a rapport with the suave Dutch barman and some of the locals, and I'm already developing a bit of a fondness for one of the girls behind the bar (I know - when will I learn?)...when in walk a couple of bums from the bar up the road.
Graeme is so pissed he starts talking to them and inviting them over. Turns out, it was cause he wanted to have sex with Becky, the Indian girl who inexplicably hangs out with those two old codgers, despite being about 15 or 20 years younger than them and (even more surprisingly) quite attractive.
He found out that she'd be meeting up with them later that night at another scummy old Irish bar down the road, so he upped sticks with those two old geezers and headed down there, leaving me, already quite sauced by now, at the bar to finish my pint.
I was at that stage of the evening where a pint could quite conceivably last for an hour and twenty minutes, and perhaps this one did. I don't know where the time went, but soon I was getting messages from Graeme on my phone. "I knew you wouldn't be coming down tonight, have a safe trip home."
Well, I should have taken his advice, but I didn't.
Determined to prove him wrong, I headed out of the bar at midnight and made my way down to the grotty old pub down the road.
They were all still there, Graeme and Kev and Mark, and there was little Becky, borrowing someone's barstool to stand on, so she could put her money in the jukebox.
I don't know much of what happened next. Someone put How Soon is Now on, and Kev and I cheered.
Kev is about 40.
I remember having a lengthy debate with Mark about how there is no tomorrow, and you should live for today. Typical, beer-based conversation. Mark is 47, and he was the one trying to argue that we've got to build today for our futures. WHAT fucking future, mate? You're 47! WAKE UP CALL FOR MARK, YOUR LIFE HAS PASSED YOU BY, MATE.
Geez.
All the while I was protesting that we should live for the here-and-now and enjoy every moment, I was becoming increasingly aware that I myself was failing to enjoy every moment. THIS MOMENT in particular, I was having trouble with. You know that point of the evening where you just hit a brick wall and everything that was fun and games one minute becomes shit on a stick the next?
Soon I find myself only with Mark and Becky, and Graeme and Kev have had enough and called it a night. I hate that, when people rope you into doing stuff, then they fuck off and leave you in a place you didn't even want to be in the first place, with cunts you never wanted to know.
I used to have mates that would do that all the time. "Oh Neil, Neil, we have to go to the club tonight, it'll be excellent..."
As soon as you get past the cloakroom, they get that unmistakable whiff of poontang pie and they're off like whippets, never to be seen again for the remainder of the evening. In the meantime, I have to make do with trying to dance on my own and protesting to hoards of cackling dancefloor witches "No, I am NOT gay, now would you kindly fuck off?!!"
Next thing you know, some old bastard is singing songs about the IRA and all that carry on. I sit there and try to manage a smile, whilst actually thinking "Hang on...come Sunday afternoon, I'll be in a bar on the other side of the city, with union flags on the wall, with people singing about killing the likes of you..."
After that is over and done with (and believe me, it took it's time....Becky, the self-professed coconut (brown on the outside, white on the inside...) kept on asking for more and more...I couldn't figure out if she just liked it, or if she felt some kind of kindred spirit with the Irish) we spill out onto the street. It's roughly 3.30am, and Christ knows where all the time went.
Mark tries to convince Becky and I to join him at his place, he says he has a spare bed and a sofa bed for us to crash on, and some snacks and whatnot. Now, me being me, I like to get to my own bed when it's all said and done, unless I am hanging out with someone I really trust (or actually want to stay over with)...so I kind of didn't answer him. He turned his attention to Becky, who was past the point of reason and started wandering off, strafing the Holloway Road in a drunken stupor.
Mark finally had enough, and suggested that I see her home properly because she couldn't even walk straight. He nicked off, and I had to run up the road and get a hold of her to stop her getting killed.
After walking around town with her for about 20 minutes whilst she sobbed and wobbled and made drunken phonecalls to ex's and whathaveyou, I finally managed to escort her up the road to the ladycabs office, where they get women like her a ride home from another lady, to minimise the risk of her being taken advantage of when she is in such a state.
And then she is gone. Everyone is finally gone. There's no-one but me, standing alone in Archway, waiting for an N20 bus at 4 in the morning.
I wasn't happy with people after that. Graeme is such an opportunist. He'll stab you in the back at the drop of a hat. Doesn't even sit with me at the bar anymore, since he's started hanging with the gangsters. They are more his type of people - loud mouthed, drunken braggarts. In a way, I am somewhat relieved.
I spotted Becky in the bar a couple of weeks later. I looked her in the face and she smiled, probably remembering who I was after a while. I still never got a thank-you, but I don't suppose I should even expect one.
Ah well, there you go. Another little peek into my less than spectacular life.
Needless to say, when it comes to pubbing, I'm now on the cokes. For now, and the forseeable.
I do apologise for this, but hey...I couldn't sleep. Now it must be around 6am, and my eyes are just finally beginning to close.
I don't know what I will do today. I'm really depressed right now and pretty much everything seems pointless to some degree. I'm not connecting well with most people anymore, I'm not even really trying to. When opportunities arise for me to do so, I often find myself just wishing the moment would pass, so I can be on my own again.
I was in McDonalds the other day (yeah, I know, it adds to your depression..) and someone came in and slapped the back of my head. What's up with that? Is it just me, or do you guys have "friends" that can't just greet you by saying "hi" or tapping your shoulder or even giving you a surprise hug? I always get slapped or punched or put in some kind of headlock, like I'm the class goof in some kind of American teen movie.
I assumed it was Graeme, but it wasn't, it was Gabriela, the girl I used to like from the bar.
Wow, talk about awkward. On the few dates that we had, things never were that easy to begin with, but this time was even worse. I mean, when you sit down with some girl from Slovakia who likes ludicrous music and field raves and all this wacky shit that you've never heard of, what the hell could you possibly have in common? The only thing we had in common at that point was that we both happened to be in London at the same time. That doesn't help you get very far in conversation.
She made some comment about how I had chosen the worst seat in the house. I thought it was a good seat. Granted, I could see my ugly face reflecting back at me a little bit in the glass, but I like to sit at the window and watch the world go by.
"Vhat time is it?" she asked.
"7.40," I replied.
"Then my break is over," she said.
I was very glad.
"Vould you like a chewing gum?" she asked.
"Yes please."
She opened the chewing gum wrapper, and put one down on the table.
"Thank you," I said, picking it up. "Oh...it's not in there. That's just...the end of the packet."
"You're an idiot," she said, handing me the chewing gum, and getting up to go to work.
Yeah. She's got a point.
Until next time, keep it sociable.
NJ "Chewing Helps Me Concentrate" McLean xxx
I think I am getting the January blues at last, and we're actually into the start of February.
Maybe my mind was taken off the depression by keeping "busy" at work. Well, at least I had something to focus on; getting up in the morning / afternoon / evening, getting to the station on time etc etc. It was good to see some familiar faces back in the office for another series. It was also quite good not to see some familiar faces returning.
Now the fireworks are over, the smoke has cleared and everything is settling back down to a snail's pace. Just the way I like it, usually, but at the moment, I feel restless, agitated and depressed.
By the end of last year, I had become a big, big drinker. I know I've gone too far, because lately, I can't get pissed on three pints anymore like I used to, it takes more and more. I was actually sitting at the bar, thumbing through a little drug-education pamphlet, and there it was; entry number one - Alcohol.
I took a sip of my ale and read on.
Apparently if you have too much on a regular basis, your tolerance levels go right up, and you can stomach more and more of the stuff. Makes sense, really.
I was at a family funeral recently, where an uncle commented that one of my obese cousins commonly sank 10 pints in a half-hour sitting. 10 pints.
I should keep my diary open to pencil-in another family funeral sometime in the near future.
Things came to an absolute head when, one night, I had ventured down to the bar to watch a game of football, have a couple of cokes and go home. A perfectly reasonable thing to do. In January, they were running a promotion where pints were only 2 pounds until one of the teams scored in the footie. I wasn't particularly tempted, but some people were absolutely getting stuck in like all the pubs in England would be shutting for good at the stroke of twelve.
My mate Graeme, the Australian guy, had been sitting with an old gangster from the Krays-era and the gangster's kid, and they'd been sinking pints all afternoon. He kindly (or drunkenly) bought me a pint from the other end of the bar, which the barmaid presented to me, and said "It's from Baldy."
I didn't want it, but I said thanks and accepted anyways. I mean, it had already been poured and paid for, right?
Graeme comes over, sloshed out of his brain, complaining that he shouldn't have let the gangsters buy him so many drinks. He *told* them he had a date lined up, and he wanted to stay somewhat compos mentis.
He nicked off just after the football to meet this Bolivian girl, whom he had said was "guaranteed sex." Apparently he had suggested a meal and a movie, and she'd said they wouldn't have time for that because they'd be too busy shagging, or some other unlikely thing that maybe happens in your world but not in mine.
I finished off my pint (God, I hate it when you get to the bottom of the pint...why is it that the final dregs always taste absolutely disgusting? In theory, you should be more drunk and therefore less able to taste how appalling it is, but it always makes me screw up my face and shiver like a baby eating a lemon) and looked at my watch.
Just then, Graeme called.
"Fucking bitch CANCELLED on me!!" he wailed.
I dunno about you guys, maybe it's just the twisted bastard in me, but I get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside when a buddy gets jacked out of free, guaranteed sex...even if he *did* just buy me a pint.
I always have visions of him sweating, slurping and slobbering uncontrollably over some unfortunate young foreign woman with very low self esteem, already planning in his head how he will be describing it in intricate detail to his friends and workmates, first thing on Monday morning.
For me, finding a partner is the most difficult thing in the world. I want nothing less than a soulmate, someone I can bond with on every level, someone I can be tender with, someone I can entirely trust with my deepest, darkest thoughts and secrets...
For him, it's like a fishing trip. He just casts his rod out there and hopes he will get a bite. He's either telling you how big they were, or lamenting the ones that got away.
I suppose we find each other equally bemusing. The only trouble occurs when he tries to rope me in to going fishing with him. In nightclubs, I'm like a size-zero model at an all-you-can-eat buffet. There's absolutely no point.
Anyroads, the Bolivian girl, the sure-thing, cancelled on him. He refused to come back to the pub, as he was trying to avoid the Polish girl behind the bar (one of his previous big-game catches)...so I offered to take him to the more sophisticated bar down the road.
We got there, and it was great. Much better than the stinky "Old mans' bar" we had been frequenting for the past year or so.
We're there for a while and we've already struck up a rapport with the suave Dutch barman and some of the locals, and I'm already developing a bit of a fondness for one of the girls behind the bar (I know - when will I learn?)...when in walk a couple of bums from the bar up the road.
Graeme is so pissed he starts talking to them and inviting them over. Turns out, it was cause he wanted to have sex with Becky, the Indian girl who inexplicably hangs out with those two old codgers, despite being about 15 or 20 years younger than them and (even more surprisingly) quite attractive.
He found out that she'd be meeting up with them later that night at another scummy old Irish bar down the road, so he upped sticks with those two old geezers and headed down there, leaving me, already quite sauced by now, at the bar to finish my pint.
I was at that stage of the evening where a pint could quite conceivably last for an hour and twenty minutes, and perhaps this one did. I don't know where the time went, but soon I was getting messages from Graeme on my phone. "I knew you wouldn't be coming down tonight, have a safe trip home."
Well, I should have taken his advice, but I didn't.
Determined to prove him wrong, I headed out of the bar at midnight and made my way down to the grotty old pub down the road.
They were all still there, Graeme and Kev and Mark, and there was little Becky, borrowing someone's barstool to stand on, so she could put her money in the jukebox.
I don't know much of what happened next. Someone put How Soon is Now on, and Kev and I cheered.
Kev is about 40.
I remember having a lengthy debate with Mark about how there is no tomorrow, and you should live for today. Typical, beer-based conversation. Mark is 47, and he was the one trying to argue that we've got to build today for our futures. WHAT fucking future, mate? You're 47! WAKE UP CALL FOR MARK, YOUR LIFE HAS PASSED YOU BY, MATE.
Geez.
All the while I was protesting that we should live for the here-and-now and enjoy every moment, I was becoming increasingly aware that I myself was failing to enjoy every moment. THIS MOMENT in particular, I was having trouble with. You know that point of the evening where you just hit a brick wall and everything that was fun and games one minute becomes shit on a stick the next?
Soon I find myself only with Mark and Becky, and Graeme and Kev have had enough and called it a night. I hate that, when people rope you into doing stuff, then they fuck off and leave you in a place you didn't even want to be in the first place, with cunts you never wanted to know.
I used to have mates that would do that all the time. "Oh Neil, Neil, we have to go to the club tonight, it'll be excellent..."
As soon as you get past the cloakroom, they get that unmistakable whiff of poontang pie and they're off like whippets, never to be seen again for the remainder of the evening. In the meantime, I have to make do with trying to dance on my own and protesting to hoards of cackling dancefloor witches "No, I am NOT gay, now would you kindly fuck off?!!"
Next thing you know, some old bastard is singing songs about the IRA and all that carry on. I sit there and try to manage a smile, whilst actually thinking "Hang on...come Sunday afternoon, I'll be in a bar on the other side of the city, with union flags on the wall, with people singing about killing the likes of you..."
After that is over and done with (and believe me, it took it's time....Becky, the self-professed coconut (brown on the outside, white on the inside...) kept on asking for more and more...I couldn't figure out if she just liked it, or if she felt some kind of kindred spirit with the Irish) we spill out onto the street. It's roughly 3.30am, and Christ knows where all the time went.
Mark tries to convince Becky and I to join him at his place, he says he has a spare bed and a sofa bed for us to crash on, and some snacks and whatnot. Now, me being me, I like to get to my own bed when it's all said and done, unless I am hanging out with someone I really trust (or actually want to stay over with)...so I kind of didn't answer him. He turned his attention to Becky, who was past the point of reason and started wandering off, strafing the Holloway Road in a drunken stupor.
Mark finally had enough, and suggested that I see her home properly because she couldn't even walk straight. He nicked off, and I had to run up the road and get a hold of her to stop her getting killed.
After walking around town with her for about 20 minutes whilst she sobbed and wobbled and made drunken phonecalls to ex's and whathaveyou, I finally managed to escort her up the road to the ladycabs office, where they get women like her a ride home from another lady, to minimise the risk of her being taken advantage of when she is in such a state.
And then she is gone. Everyone is finally gone. There's no-one but me, standing alone in Archway, waiting for an N20 bus at 4 in the morning.
I wasn't happy with people after that. Graeme is such an opportunist. He'll stab you in the back at the drop of a hat. Doesn't even sit with me at the bar anymore, since he's started hanging with the gangsters. They are more his type of people - loud mouthed, drunken braggarts. In a way, I am somewhat relieved.
I spotted Becky in the bar a couple of weeks later. I looked her in the face and she smiled, probably remembering who I was after a while. I still never got a thank-you, but I don't suppose I should even expect one.
Ah well, there you go. Another little peek into my less than spectacular life.
Needless to say, when it comes to pubbing, I'm now on the cokes. For now, and the forseeable.
I do apologise for this, but hey...I couldn't sleep. Now it must be around 6am, and my eyes are just finally beginning to close.
I don't know what I will do today. I'm really depressed right now and pretty much everything seems pointless to some degree. I'm not connecting well with most people anymore, I'm not even really trying to. When opportunities arise for me to do so, I often find myself just wishing the moment would pass, so I can be on my own again.
I was in McDonalds the other day (yeah, I know, it adds to your depression..) and someone came in and slapped the back of my head. What's up with that? Is it just me, or do you guys have "friends" that can't just greet you by saying "hi" or tapping your shoulder or even giving you a surprise hug? I always get slapped or punched or put in some kind of headlock, like I'm the class goof in some kind of American teen movie.
I assumed it was Graeme, but it wasn't, it was Gabriela, the girl I used to like from the bar.
Wow, talk about awkward. On the few dates that we had, things never were that easy to begin with, but this time was even worse. I mean, when you sit down with some girl from Slovakia who likes ludicrous music and field raves and all this wacky shit that you've never heard of, what the hell could you possibly have in common? The only thing we had in common at that point was that we both happened to be in London at the same time. That doesn't help you get very far in conversation.
She made some comment about how I had chosen the worst seat in the house. I thought it was a good seat. Granted, I could see my ugly face reflecting back at me a little bit in the glass, but I like to sit at the window and watch the world go by.
"Vhat time is it?" she asked.
"7.40," I replied.
"Then my break is over," she said.
I was very glad.
"Vould you like a chewing gum?" she asked.
"Yes please."
She opened the chewing gum wrapper, and put one down on the table.
"Thank you," I said, picking it up. "Oh...it's not in there. That's just...the end of the packet."
"You're an idiot," she said, handing me the chewing gum, and getting up to go to work.
Yeah. She's got a point.
Until next time, keep it sociable.
NJ "Chewing Helps Me Concentrate" McLean xxx