The Drink for Drunks
The stupidity of drinking alcohol, and the way in which it affects normal, rational people has always staggered me. Last night I went out and drank lots of beer - crappy, cold cheap beer. I met some French military personnel and spoke drunken French to them. Making the universal sign for "Big tits", they enquired as to where they could get laid in Elgin, and where the highest concentration of "mouches" (slags, I think) could be found. I told them that women don't wear many clothes in Elgin. They thought I was telling them that women get naked in the nightclubs. They seemed excited at this. I told them to go to Joanna's, the local shithole.
On the way home, I decided to walk along the railway line. I forgot that there was no real way to get back up off the tracks (nearest station: Keith, 16 miles), so I clambered through undergrowth, over somebody's wall and crunched up their driveway as the sun started to come up. I stopped off at the graveyard near my house, touching the tombstones of my two friends that died almost 12 years ago to the day. They were 17 - killed by a boy racer over-taking on a bend doing 100 miles per hour. Their car caught fire with them in it, burning them to death. My two friends Scott and Andrew, themselves classmates of Euan and Grant, ran from their houses nearby to watch the blaze. They didn't know who was in the car, but the news spread through school the next day. We had all left school by then. I would spend my 18th birthday in Paris two weeks later, smoking Camel cigarettes on the 17th floor of an apartment in the 17th arrondissement and trying not to cry since I had just got contact lenses and didn't know if they would slip out of my eyes.
Something of that summer came back to the drunken brain last night, and there was no-one about, so I took off all my clothes, stacking them in a neat pile on Euan's grave, and lay on my back staring up at the stars. I walked the 5 minutes home like that, naked, through the estate. It felt liberating until a taxi rolled up on Quebec Place, 50 yards from home, disgorging a gaggle of drunken ladies, one of whom yelled in incredulity, "Is he naked?!" I thought I'd just try and look casual, like walking through the streets at 2AM sans vêtements is just the most natural thing in the world. I got home and fell into bed, leaving my neat little pile of clothes, now covered in leaves and dirt, at the foot of the bed.
Today was Fathers' Day, and I wrapped Dad's copy of the Rough Guide to the Western Isles and the Highlands in a page ripped from a magazine. We went fishing in the afternoon. It was vaguely meditative, staring out and over the water, following the ripple of the line snaking its way into the loch, the end sinking slightly with the garish lure I had put on. The silence was punctuated every half an hour or so by the crushing of little fishes' skulls. The little truncheon you use to bash in its brains is called a Priest. Ha! No need for the Priest for us, though. Not a bite for 2 hours, but distractions of 6 ducklings and humorous locals. Happy Fathers' Day, Dad.
On the way home, I decided to walk along the railway line. I forgot that there was no real way to get back up off the tracks (nearest station: Keith, 16 miles), so I clambered through undergrowth, over somebody's wall and crunched up their driveway as the sun started to come up. I stopped off at the graveyard near my house, touching the tombstones of my two friends that died almost 12 years ago to the day. They were 17 - killed by a boy racer over-taking on a bend doing 100 miles per hour. Their car caught fire with them in it, burning them to death. My two friends Scott and Andrew, themselves classmates of Euan and Grant, ran from their houses nearby to watch the blaze. They didn't know who was in the car, but the news spread through school the next day. We had all left school by then. I would spend my 18th birthday in Paris two weeks later, smoking Camel cigarettes on the 17th floor of an apartment in the 17th arrondissement and trying not to cry since I had just got contact lenses and didn't know if they would slip out of my eyes.
Something of that summer came back to the drunken brain last night, and there was no-one about, so I took off all my clothes, stacking them in a neat pile on Euan's grave, and lay on my back staring up at the stars. I walked the 5 minutes home like that, naked, through the estate. It felt liberating until a taxi rolled up on Quebec Place, 50 yards from home, disgorging a gaggle of drunken ladies, one of whom yelled in incredulity, "Is he naked?!" I thought I'd just try and look casual, like walking through the streets at 2AM sans vêtements is just the most natural thing in the world. I got home and fell into bed, leaving my neat little pile of clothes, now covered in leaves and dirt, at the foot of the bed.
Today was Fathers' Day, and I wrapped Dad's copy of the Rough Guide to the Western Isles and the Highlands in a page ripped from a magazine. We went fishing in the afternoon. It was vaguely meditative, staring out and over the water, following the ripple of the line snaking its way into the loch, the end sinking slightly with the garish lure I had put on. The silence was punctuated every half an hour or so by the crushing of little fishes' skulls. The little truncheon you use to bash in its brains is called a Priest. Ha! No need for the Priest for us, though. Not a bite for 2 hours, but distractions of 6 ducklings and humorous locals. Happy Fathers' Day, Dad.
posted by Albie Clark | 10:41 pm
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