Everybody’s looking for something. Me, I’m looking for my cell phone. It’s journeyed faithfully in my pocket to a dozen different countries. It’s taken photos of many things it shouldn’t have. It’s a well travelled and street smart phone, that never leaves my side. Well not until the early hours of this morning. Of all of the lousy places to lose your phone, I lose it in the town I grew up in. This is how it happened.
Three old school friends decide to hold a mini reunion in Loughborough. We met and decided that we would sooner gnaw off our own limbs than end up at the end of the evening in Echos – the sticky-floored nightclub where we misspent the weekends of our youths, and set about drinking and reminiscing. The texture of the night out started to change at about 9:30pm, when we decided that lager was too bloating to present a long term drinking option.
“I got us a jug of nasty blue cocktail. And I slapped in a quintuple vodka,” said R, thoughtfully. Good attention to detail. When it came to my turn to get a round in, I realised that I had never asked for a quintuple before. I didn’t feel up to the task, and resolved to order a jug of “nasty” with two extra double rums as I swayed at the bar.
A student came up to me and asked me for my autograph. This was a first for me, but I tried to play cool and not slur too much.
“You are him aren’t you?”
“Yes. Of course.” I nodded and tried to look modest.
“Why did you quit?”
“It was time.” I realised that I had absolutely no idea who this student thought that I was. He probably didn’t want to know why I quit my job as a pub gardener when I was 15, but thought I might be able to get a drink out of whoever he thought I was.
“Can I have your autograph?” he asked.
“Sorry, I don’t do autographs.” Especially when I don’t know what name I am supposed to be signing.
“Look, it’s Alexi Lalas!” he pointed me out to some of his friends.
My friends explained that Alexi Lalas was an accomplished US footballer, and paid me some sort of weird compliment by saying that Alexi Lalas looked like General Custer too. People asking for autographs, and looking like Alexi Lalas and General Custer was all too much for one evening. I celebrated with some more Cuba Libres – the unblue cocktail of choice.
It wasn’t just the texture of the evening that was changing by this point. R didn’t so much fall off his chair as fall through it as it spontaneously fell apart under him. He had a lumpy moment in the car park as he regurgitated some Cuba Libre. Shortly afterwards we predictably found ourselves in Echos – the floor was still sticky. Having conveniently forgotten our vows never to return, we showed off our still-attached limbs, teaching the mix of students and townies the art of disco-dancing.
Several people approached me as I was busting moves. The word had spread that Alexi Lalas was in town. Lots of nodding and winking and thumbs up. It was all a bit strange. I’m used to being praised for my unorthodox dance techniques, but not for my imaginary football skills. The fame must have gone to my head. By 3:30am I realised that I was without phone. My lovely phone. I had a chicken shish to commiserate, before we took a taxi away from the fans and my lost phone.
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