There’s a radio advertisment which announces that you could win three days all expenses paid in a pub for you and your mates. To win this questionable prize, not sponsored by Bupa, you have to send in drinking stories, telling the judges how stupid you’ve been while under the influence. The advert goes on to give examples to help refresh your gin soaked memory – flashing lights you’ve stolen, strange places you’ve passed out in – student-type antics.
I guess the competition isn’t open to homeless alcoholics, who have woken up after seven years of drinking in a pile of their own coal-black faeces with only three teeth left, and scabies. Something like not letting professional athletes compete in the olympics. But it got me thinking of stuff – road signs stolen, roads cordoned off, waking up in a workman’s hut at the side of the M69. And a colleague mentioned that he had broken into the St. Pancras hotel one night for a bit of an explore. I’m sure the competition sponsors would be only too pleased to find that my train of thought moved on to trying to get into trouble specifically to enter the competition.
I met a group of old friends in a high-ceilinged pub in Finchley, and started to put the foundation pints in. From such tiny acorns, all manner of trouble can sprout. The pub failed to throw us out for fetching take-aways in, and devouring them at our table. They didn’t say anything when we started trying to amuse ourselves with fire at the table. Putting lighter gas into empty bottles and then lighting them soon grew dull, so I decided to make a flamethrower with two straws and a beer bottle full of butane. With a degree in chemistry, Ramon pointed out that the carbon dioxide in my breath would stifle the flames. As any scuba diver will tell you, the body is quite crap at making carbon dioxide out of air, but the CO2 content wasn’t really an issue when I blew down one straw into the bottle, and held a lighter by the other straw sticking out.
For some reason, it didn’t occur to me that heat rises, flames hurt the eyes, and faces should not be burnt in public places. All of these things rushed through my mind as the burning butane rushed into my face and a fireball engulfed half of it. After a short silence from the assembled fans, and a fair bit of squinting on my part, I opened my eyes, pleased that I could still see, while the smell of burning hair permeated everyone’s nostrils. Maybe it’s Maybelline that gives me thicker lashes – maybe its the burning hair and the shrivelling effect of the resulting heat, as Maybelline doesn’t make your eyelashes shorter, with blobs of charcoal at the tips. Well, not if yuo apply it properly.
Still looking for high jinks, I tried to get through the emergency exit to the roof of the pub, but it was locked. Jinks had to wait. Struggling to find somewhere that sould serve booze after closing time, Ramon and I headed to Camden to a late bar which sold us donkey vodka in large measures, and gave us the opportunity to meet a couple from Peckham. Too drunk to focus, or to properly hear what the couple were saying, a round of Chinese shouts erupted – I had assumed that they had said I was ballsy, but the message finally got through via Ramon that they thought at least one of us had a palsy. It didn’t make much sense to me, so we moved on to the Electric Ballroom, looking for some morbid goths to point and shout at.
I was clutching my copy of Irvine Welsh’s Pawnoh – a book whose cover disguises it as an inflatable love doll in a box. Ho ho ho, those publishing wags at Random House, little did they realise that your average bouncer wouldn’t cotton on to the subtle disguise, and would assume it was, indeed, a blow up doll. The bouncer who discovered my ‘doll’ decided to have a long conversation with me about what he would do to me if he caught me in one of the toilets with my plastic lover, but finally let me in
And what a sight greeted mine eyes once inside. Goths. Hundreds of Goths. Smiling and dancing gaily, pilled up to the eyeballs on ecstacy. What ever happened to the moody Edgar Allen Poe reading miseryguts with the bangles and the ribbons? They decided to cheer up, that’s what happened. But despite this, the DJ refused to play Kylie, insisting that the other DJ in the booth wouldn’t like it. I find that hard to believe, given that the man in question had his guts and tattoos out, and had his arms outstretched at the crowd, with his head tipped back, and his eyeballs investigating the upper reaches of his skull. I think the man in question would have been happy if someone had mixed in a few bars of “The Theme from Ghostbusters“, and would have probably peed his leather pants with excitement if Kylie had been put on.
Not much trouble to be had in there, so after a bit more drinkin and dancin, we headed out to the street. It was time to try to up the stakes with the weed-pusher outside, so we demanded he sell us some crack. No, not over here, we made the little man accompany us to a dark alleyway, where he began to get a bit edgy, demanding to see our money.
Truth be told, I wasn’t really interested in buying any crack from the nasty man, but that didn’t seem to please him too much, so he started to follow us complaining about wasted time. “Opportunity cost, ” I muttered but he wasn’t being particularly entertaining or interesting any more, having exhausted his entertainment repertoire. To be honest, the delivery of the hackneyed dealer phrases was a bit lack-lustre – “the cameras, man,” “CCTV,” “nah the polis is coming,” “tenner deal,” “some nice green.” Sensing no more fun was on offer, we decided to leave, but our new found amigo insisting on sitting in the back seat of the minicab we had convinced to take us to Shepherd’s Bush for whatever price the driver had decided to charge us based on our drunkness, and not having a clue how far away it was.
Time to call in the old “stare the nasty man in the eyes” routine, with what I hope looks like menace, but probably looks more like blank cluelessness. Having to close one eye to stop him from moving about too much probably undermines the intent of the glare. It must have worked though because he got out, with only mild physical coercion, allowing us to drive away into the night.
Apart from a few bizarre SMS messages sent at 3:30 from my housemate’s mobile phone to most of the people in her address book, the opportunities for the kind of drunken larks which would win a competition were waning, along with our energy.We had to leave it to the Saturday session to finish off the job of collecting entry material…