Waking up in your underwear on a sofa belonging to someone you met the night before
So, yeah, Arkady invited me to this pub in Lincoln, the Traveller's Rest, which didn't seem a particularly fitting name, if I'm honest, to see his band perform for the first time in about three years, at a punk night. He is the guitarist and leadsinger of The Suicidal Ducklings. They were on second of the night, after I Did Last Night, who did this great song about a snake, and despite having only about two hours rehearsal that morning and everything sounding "like it was about to fall apart", I thought they were really good. They opened with Riot Music ("Let's start a riot, riot/ Let's start a riot, riot/ Let's start a riot now!"), which didn't actually start a riot, but apparantly it did once. And I created a scene by jumping on stage and briefly getting off with their fourth member, Arkady's four-foot inflatable penguin. The video will appear on youtube.
Despite never having been a punk, or even listenng to punk music, Arkady said I did a pretty good job of looking the part. I was wearing a shirt that says "Death Kitty" on the back covered in safety pins (fiver from the union market- bargain!) and dungarees with the top down, and a ripped fishnet gauntlet with some hair bands on my wrists. Imageism:
Admittedly rather crap self-taken imageism. Tho the expression looks a bit like a punkish sneer of you squint.
In actual fact, it was me trying to see the picture on the screen in the mirror. The idea to actually take a photo of the mirror never occured to me. As is becoming a habit, I was quite drunk.
Arkady and the landlady, Dawn, I believe is her name, got me onto this Scrumpy Jack stuff, and I know I have been quoted as saying that "cider is lager's wussy cousin", but erm... not this cider. It was actually very nice. And potent. Each can was equivalent to a pint and a half, and cheaper than a pint. At this point, I'd had two cans and a pint of Carling, and I'd just got back from helping the band and Tim the bassist's girlfriend Charlotte load the equipment and the penguin into a car. Deflating the penguin was quite an interesting experience, as it involved me, Arkady, and I think it was Chris, the drummer, pushing this penguin against a wall. Apparently, there was thrusting.
But this is where the night started to take a bad turn. The others wanted to leave after their set, but I was really enjoying myself. Normally, I'd have stayed, but I'd never been to Lincoln before and I didn't know how to get to Chris' house. So I had to leave with them, which I was pretty pissed off about. And since I was pretty pissed as well as pissed off, I must have been an absolute nightmare. We went into an offy to get some cans, and I started talking very loudly about getting a lad's mag, and precisely why I wanted one. On the way back to Chris' we walked past a pond, and I decided to try and freak out Arkady (I do that a lot, it's quite fun) by musing aloud on what it would be like to copulate with a swan. Painful, I'd imagine.
We got back to Chris and started drinking Fosters, and it was his birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHRIS!) so there was cake, and so I ended up very drunk, wound up throwing up, but at least I made it to the toilet this time, and then passed out in a chair.
Arkady woke me up a while later with a sleeping bag, telling me that we were getting the sofas.
And apart from the time I spent unconscious, I can remember all of this.
So Arkady and I slept in till about quarter to twelve, we went to buy lunch from a Co-op, I tried on Arkady's hoodie:
It smelled.
Men's extra large. We thought it was funny. My own uni hoodie is pretty big on me, and that's only men's extra small. None of my female friends have the women's hoodie. We all prefer the men's.
So Charlotte drove me, Arkady and Tim back down to Sheffield, Arkady got a text from Harry, the president of USLES, the light entertainment society, saying he wanted us both for a rehearsal for the RAG week sketch show at four, which we were just on time for, and that's when I realised that a) Arkady's amp is bloody heavy, and b) my extremely loose dungarees, which slipped so low at one point that I must have given a passing stranger an eyeful, were chafing quite badly. I sat down through most of the rehearsal, which wasn't really a rehearsal, we just went through the songs and listened to Dan playing the ukelele, which was hilarity in itself, so I didn't have to feel it.
Harry gave me some more roles. As well as the groped mother in an incesty sort of sketch, I will be playing a customer in The Bank Robbery Opera, where I sing a few lines in the tune of Memory from 'Cats', and Carol Vorderman in Pirate Countdown. Which should be fun.
After that, I wanted to go to Last Laugh but Arkady didn't, and as it was 6:30 I didn't see the point in going home, so I wound up hanging around by myself in the food section of Bar One at the union for a bit reading Uncut (David Bowie special! Without that much Bowie in it...)
Last Laugh was great though. The compere was Andy White, and I sat right at the front so he picked on me. I told him I'm an English Lit student, so he asked me the fairly standard question of what my favourite word was. I have been hoping for a fair while that a comedian would ask me that. My answer: "Copulation". And he called me a slut because I didn't know the lad I was sitting next to. Which was nice. I was slightly disappointed at first because the compere that night was meant to be Jason Cook, who's a Last Laugh regular, and however many times he comes, he never repeats material, and he's one of my favourite comedians ever, but Andy White made up for it. And then there was Sol Bernstein, who was fantastic, and has the same accent as Dustin Hoffman. Wow. He looked at me and said "And you must be the slut," then turned to three other girls in the front row, who were dressed up much nicer than me and said "And there are the whores". It's amazing how only comedians can ever be allowed to get away with this. But because they're comedians, we don't just let them say it, we love them for it. Or at least I do. I also found it quite funny that they both told me how beautiful I was looking, when I looked like what I was- an imitation punk who'd been wearing the same knickers for well over 24 hours. Sol Bernstein was great though. I'd have made him an icon ("Make me scream, Sol Bernstein") if he was actually a real person and not someone's comedy persona, so I made one for Andy White instead. The headliner was Seymour Mace, who opened his act by looking at one of the girls Sol Bernstein had labelled a whore and saying "Hello. I'm that man that stands outside of your house", and then did a routine full of things that most people would consider very very WRong. With a capital WR.
And when I got home my inner thigh was sore and I had a blister on my heel from broken shoes, but I refused to put the top up on my dungarees because it would have looked crap with my shirt. I can be a fashion ditz like that when I want to be.
This post was meant to be just about that, and considering the length it probably should be, but I felt like mentioning last night. Just because I am actually starting to worry about how much I'm drinking. I went to Phat Beatz, the annual show for the street and breakdancing society. It was meant to be a gospel choir social, because the former president of the committee, Kwandi, is also a member of street and breakdance. But not many people turned up. And I felt a little uncomfortable, because street dance is really not my scene. I tried it once, and apparently I wasn't shit at it, but this was compared to a rather shit class who didn't give two hoots, so chances are I was shit. But hip hop is definitely not my scene, and while punk isn't really my scene either, I know it and I'm comfortable enough with it to blag it pretty well. It's not like that with hip hop, I really know nothing about it, and I was getting paranoid that people could tell. Which led to me getting drunk in the wrong mood, which is NEVER GOOD. I was drunk and depressed. Very depressed. At Population afterwards, I had five pints again, despite swearing to myself that I wouldn't get drunk again. I got my tits out three times, which is something I have done before and never had a problem with, but after the third time, when I saw a girl looking at me with the most disgusted expression I've ever seen on her face, I went to finish my last pint while hiding behing a pillar.
I was so depressed I left early, which normally I refuse to do, mentally yelling at myself that I was a "filthy alcoholic whore". And being drunk and depressed, I believed myself.
Which is why I'm starting to think that at least where there's a bar involved, I might actually be an alcoholic, which is a worrying thought.
But I hate to leave a post on a depressing note, so here's some nice pictures:
The gospel choir in Paris, where I managed to blag myself a spot in the centre on the front row courtesy of being low alto, being a midget and having no shame
And us in a more natural pose.
Jazz hands! Jazz mouth!
With these three French brothers who are musical geniuses or something.
We had the gospel choir awards on Friday, and I won the commitment and attendance award, because I very rarely miss rehearsals or socials. And twas this that got me drunk that night too, on wine cocktails.
That was the few days that was. I am an odd sort of person, I think, looking at all this.