Age Discrimination

Apologies that it has taken me so long to write this. I would love to say that it is because I have been so busy since Christmas, but the God’s honest truth is I have just been far too lazy.

And this isn’t the story of New Year. New Year makes for a dull story – a tale of people not turning up, of heavy drinking, no phone reception, meeting random parents and hiccupping. No, this is the story of something that happened just before New Year. This is the story of a near miss. As far as Beverage is concerned, it is a missed opportunity. As far as I am concerned, it was a lucky escape. However what is clear is that last night we ran the real risk (or opportunity, depending on your perspective) of copping off with two women who had the combined age of around 80.

Now I will be honest here. I don’t like discrimination – I think it is a blight on the face of the human race. The age discrimination laws do have some validity. However, when it comes to personal relationships – even casual shags – I maintain some standards. I have to be vaguely attracted to the person, even when I am absolutely wasted. And, yes, one of the key factors is age. Ideally, I am interested in people who are similar in age to me (27, if you are interested). Say, five years difference either way. You can call me vain, you can call me shallow – fine. You are probably right, and I dare say I am missing out on a whole world of older women, but so be it. That is the way I am, and I am completely at peace with this. Beverage, however, does not see things in the same way. It is one of those differences of opinion that make us such unlikely, but also such strong, friends.

The evening started in the early afternoon. Beverage had just returned from Wales, and I was nursing a crippling hangover (the previous evening I had been out with friends from work from about 2pm to about 10:45pm – an incredibly drunken evening that included someone falling off their chair, the worst pub toilets in the world [ever] and the repeated phrase “will you write my book for me” followed by the repeated reply of “no”). We were joined by a variety of different friends throughout the afternoon, including a friend of ours call J who opened by calling me a cunt – something to do with getting his girlfriend really drunk. Now, I had no idea that H was in, as J put it, “such a state” – probably because I was in such a state too. But the beer wasn’t too flat and the banter was good – a nice relaxed afternoon that included the phrase “where the fuck did you get that shirt from?” and “how can you be downsizing your house when you are buying another house with the same number of fucking rooms?”

Then Beverage and I decided to move into another pub. Just for a bit of variety. On the way Beverage bumped into a girl he knows (the way I could tell this was because he bear-hugged this girl and lifted her into the air). We had a beer with her and after her departure to go dancing we resumed our normal conversational topics. Such as how great we are, how we like getting drunk, and how funny and clever we are when drunk. Nothing like a deluded drunken conversation to fill an evening in the pub.

I don’t remember when it happened, but at some point there was this tall blonde stood behind us. She was trying to get to the bar, so we let her through. And Beverage being Beverage, he could not help himself. He had to flirt with her. He will literally flirt with any woman. Any woman at all. As long as they are not fat.

Anyway, the woman got her drinks and wandered off. And we went on with our high-brow intellectual conversation about how drunk we were going to get on New Year’s Eve and how bad we would feel on New Year’s Day. And then I noticed it. The woman was back. And she had brought her friend with her.

The first woman turned out to be a married mother of two, whose first language was Finnish or Norwegian or some other Scandinavian dialect. She was on her first night out without her husband in a long time, and it turned out that she had the house to herself that evening as well. Her friend was very much English – in fact, if I was trying to place her within the UK, I would go with “Essex Chav”. Her friend was about 40, divorced with children. And was also on her first night out in ages. It became very clear very early on that these women were looking to get laid. Nothing wrong with that, I hear you say. No – just as long as it does not involve me. Unfortunately, there flirting was like a red rag to a bull for Beverage, so before I knew it he was chatting avidly to the Essex Chav. Leaving me with the Norwegian.

The conversation was not scintillating. Partly my fault, I will concede, because I really, really, really did not want to talk to the woman. She protested, saying I was being rude and ignoring her. She was 100% right, but the chivalrous part of me (oh, it is in me somewhere, believe it or not) did not allow me to admit this. Instead I blamed my taciturn and irritable conversational style on my crippling hangover. I looked to Beverage for support but he was lost in conversation with the Essex Chav. I realised I was trapped, desperately trying to avoid being chatted up by a Scandinavian married mum. Things looked bleak. Very bleak indeed.

And then I had a wave of genius. I texted my friend A, asking her to help me, begging her to save me from the attentions of this mad Scandinavian. And she obliged, asking me to join her whilst she smoked a cigarette ‘round the corner. And for at least five blissful minutes I was free – able to have a witty and intellectual with someone who was not a good 13 years older than me*. But the cigarette break/excuse ended, and I had to go back and face my Scandinavian nemesis.

Things had hotted up in the brief time I had managed to escape for. Beverage was doing very well with this Essex Chav woman, and the Scandinavian seemed to be very happy to see me. So happy, in fact that she started kissing my face randomly (no mean feat as she was half a foot taller than me). And from somewhere we had acquired a balding, tubby middle-aged man in a shell suit, who was whispering in my ear that “someone’s getting some tonight.” I wanted to reply “yes, but not me” but I now realised that I had descended into some sort of drunken, middle-aged nightmare that no amount of quipping could get me out of. So, to avoid being molested by a mum, I decided it was time for us to go and pick up Beverage’s bag from the first pub.

When it became clear that we were leaving the women wanted to follow us when they had finished their drinks. Like a fool (or someone who wanted them to follow us, depending on your viewpoint) Beverage told them where we were going, so I had to muddy the waters by naming another pub that we might go to. And then, wonderfully, we were free.

Of course, I had to spend the rest of the evening commiserating with Beverage about the fact that he was not going home with the Essex Chav. I pointed out that she was really old, and was a mother, and was divorced, and had a massive belly. But there was no consoling him, and instead I had to counsel him against returning to the pub for a second pop at the ladies in question. Mainly through using the time-honoured phrase “if you go back then you are on your fucking own.”

I am sure there is a moral to this story. I just don’t have a clue what it is.

*Well, I say witty and intellectual conversation – I probably just gibbered at A in a drunken and incoherent manner. But I stand by my second point – at least she is a similar age to me.

'Twas The Night Before Christmas

Actually, it wasn’t. It was last night – a Friday. But it was the last time that young Beverage and your humble author would be going out before Christmas in each other’s company, so in some respects it was the night before Christmas. Besides, it makes for a topical title.

The evening started early. At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, to be precise. Two reasons for this – Beverage had to leave the pub early to go home to pack and wrap his presents and then get across to his sister’s ready to disappear to the land of Male Voice Choirs early this morning, and also because I finished work at about 2.

Well, I say *work* - as always the day before breaking up before Christmas was not that productive. At about 11am my boss sent a colleague and me out to buy wine – a mission we accomplished with some aplomb, even if we did come back with a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale as well as the plonk. As soon as the wine was uncorked (well, unscrewed – we went for quantity rather than quality) any chance of doing any work went straight out the window. From that point, I managed to accidentally form a band called The Drunken Bakers (after the characters in Viz, of course) and persuaded a colleague to spray Savlon disinfectant spray into his mouth (which, even though it cost me a fiver, I class as my sole achievement of the day).

I met Beverage in the pub and had a couple of beers in his lunch break, before he returned to the office to ring his mates to arrange New Year’s Eve drinking session. I chose this sacred time to get something to eat and dump my bag back at my flat. We had arranged that Beverage would call me when he finished up work for the day, week and year. And so he did – his timing was absolutely uncanny, and he called whilst I was having what I believe cockneys would call a Richard the Third. He left a message, asking me to call him back. Which, of course, I did – only to find that he has wandered away from his desk leaving his phone behind. After a little bit of telephone tennis (it turns out that we struggle to organise a piss up in a brewery) we arranged to meet back at the pub we had been in for lunch.

When I arrived back there I saw the landlord, S, on the door. I asked him how everything was going, and the reply came back “fucking ridiculous”. Roughly translated from the Canadian, this means “my pub is really busy, making loads of money, thanks for asking.” I am not saying S doesn’t like his job – what I am saying is that he is amazingly good at hiding it.

Beverage turns up and we proceed with the evening’s main activity – binge drinking. We were supposed to be joined by a friend, A, but unfortunately she had to work (she redeemed herself totally by buying us Christmas presents). However, in one of life’s arbitrary moments, we were joined by H.

Now, H used to be the Assistant Manager in the pub we were in. And to say that she didn’t like her job would probably be an understatement. She lived and worked in a quiet, vicious rage against her staff, the customers, and the world in general. She has perfected a stare that can chill the blood – despite the fact that she is short and slight, I would never, ever see her losing a fight. She could take on King Kong, Jason Voorhees and the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan and win without even breaking a sweat. If you want a dictionary definition of feisty, then H would be your girl.

And, as always, a lot of her of caustic vitriol was directed against Beverage. I kept a tally throughout the evening of all the put downs and insults that hit the mark – the final score was H - 79, Beverage - 3.

The evening proceeded as you might expect with people getting slowly twatted. There was some controversy over my failed attempts to buy a round – whenever I tried, the landlord paid for them. There was talk about Daniel Craig, which led to the legendary line from H that Daniel was “grrr”, whilst her boyfriend was “lovely”. I sense that her boyfriend would be kicked out of bed for Mr Craig, but I could be wrong… Owing to Beverage’s native land there was some talk of sheep shagging – it was all in good taste, and not at all racist. And H mentioned that of the pair of us, I was the quieter one. Apparently this is because I am “intellectual” – which I think is a fucking result, frankly, because I thought I was the quieter one because I just don’t have a lot to say.

At some point we moved pubs. I have no idea of the reason(s) why, or any real recollection of the journey between venue. Alcohol induced amnesia is a blessing in disguise, and one of my lasting fears is one day all the horrifically stupid and embarrassing things I have done in one nerve shredding, and soul-destroying, moment. But this is an aside – the real reason why I mention the change in venue is because it was at the second pub where Beverage made a new friend – and a new enemy.

The enemy was partly H’s fault – mainly because she was smoking the gayest cigarettes in the world. Ever. Now I know that one should not use the word gay in an insulting way, but there is no other way to describe these cigarettes. Called Vogue, they were long, thin, and menthol. I never thought H would ever look camp, but smoking her way through those fags, she managed it. And when she finished the pack, Beverage showed his disdain by throwing the empty packet behind him. Sadly, on top of some bald headed fucktard.

The fucktard decided to come over to ask what Beverage thought he was doing. We thought it was a joke at first – after all, you can’t do a whole lot of damage with an empty carton of gay cigarettes. But no, alas, the fucktard was serious. By the time we realised that he was threatening Beverage, he had wandered off back to his embarrassed looking mates. We barely had time to discuss the fucktard before he came back, apologised and left the pub in a strop. We may have been to full of the Christmas spirit(s), but he could have done with being a bit less like a pissed up version of Scrooge.

Beverage’s friend was a different kettle of fish. Tall, middle-aged, with really bad hair and the rosey red cheeks that can only come after years of binging it, he ended up having quite a long conversation with Beverage. About what I could not tell you, partly because I was having an in depth conversation with H (in *no way* about what CDs her boyfriend could burn for me) and partly because I could tell that this was the sort of gentlemen that you could not lose for love nor money once you had acknowledged his presence. As H and I found out…

Beverage left the pub after his conversation with his new friend. I am not saying his new friend drove him from the pub, but it may well have been an opportune time for Beverage to leave as he had planned (prior to the boozing) that he would leave at 8pm, and it was now 9:15pm. So, after a good bye that took forever (mainly because we kept on getting distracted and forgetting that Beverage was trying to leave) H and I continued with our conversation. Fuck knows what it was about, but it seemed relevant and entertaining at the time.

However, Beverage’s new friend would not leave us alone. It is difficult to know exactly why he kept on pestering us, but I think he might have taken a wee shine to H. I doubt it was me that he had taken a shine to, but my butt cheeks were clenched just in case. It became clear that we would struggle to lose this fucker, so H and I decided that we were actually a happily married couple enjoying a pre-Christmas drinks. Eventually, after some blatantly unfriendly body languages, we parted company with Beverage’s new friend with a surprisingly emotional good bye from him, given we had only just met the bastard. Last time I saw him, Beverage, your new friend was lurching off into the night, no doubt to irritate the living piss out of some other poor bastard.

There is nothing more to add to this story, other than I have a terrible head this afternoon, which feels not unlike some sort of evil gremlin has crawled into my head through my ear and is now taking a lot of pride in bashing the living crap out of my cranium and my eyeballs. I’m going to go and have a bit of a lie-down, but Notes From A Drunken Evening will return in the New Year…

Merry Christmas!

The Wit And Wisdom of a Drunk

"The most important thing to remember about drunks is that drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks. They spend a lot of time talking in pubs, unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions, who never develop their higher spiritual values, who never explore the insides of their head like a drunk does."

Shane MacGowan

"Great Ideas"

At long last, I get round to describe the concept of the “great idea” that makes up the other half of the fundamental reasoning behind this blog. Now you may think you can define a "great idea", but you would be wrong. Because there are two different versions of the "great idea".

The first one is a genuinely great idea. Like the caveman deciding that the wheel is actually quite a good invention. Or the Greeks deciding that the Trojans actually were fucking stupid enough to accept the gift of a large wooden horse, big enough to contain the Greek army, after years of war. Or the decision to bring back Doctor Who. These ideas tend to be made by sober people after periods of discussion, debate and reflection.

Then there is the other type of great idea – the great ideas that occur after a prolonged period of heavy drinking. These can include walking over cars whilst singing “Show Me The Way To Amarillo”, propositioning strippers, telling your boss exactly what you think of him/her, ringing the girl you have just dumped and not remembering the content of the conversation (and only really knowing that you have had the conversation owing to the fact that you have a text message from her saying “you arrogant cock”), and thinking “I’ll go for it, she’ll still look alright in the morning”. This type of “Great Idea” tends to be made by slightly drunken people, who are unable to string coherent sentences together and often sway unnervingly, even though they are stood still. For a recent example, there is the recent discussion about the problem of obesity and how the best solution is to turn really fat people into soap.

Needless to say, Beverage and my good self are very experienced in coming up with the second type of great idea. Many a morning (or, indeed, early afternoon) has seen us exchanging text messages and e-mails that say “what the fucking hell were we jabbering on about last night?” It is far rarer for us to come up with a genuinely great idea that stays great in the harsh, unforgiving and sober(ish) light of day. However, one day (I think it was a Monday, but I could be utterly wrong about that) Beverage came up with a gold plated, 100% great idea. He came up with the idea of JT1.

When he first told me he had had a truly great idea, I didn’t believe him. In fact, I am not sure he entirely believed himself. But when we met in the pub to discuss, it turned out that he had been struck by a moment of (fleeting) genius.

The idea is simple – a gaggle of borderline drunks go into pubs, take some photos, drink a lot, and then write reviews of the evening the next day on the website. That way, you slowly build up a proper pub guide – not with shit like “oh, the ambience was a little bit nouveau riche” but rather the basics like “the beer was cheap, the staff were friendly and tolerant and the toilets didn’t make you want to dry retch”. And if the website took off, then we would accept challenges of pubs to review and would also start selling advertising space on the site. A genuine pub guide, written by people who aren’t complete cocks.

I think it could have really taken off. But real life intervened, Christmas came along, then Beverage had to go away travelling with work (he was working the world’s longest notice period at the time) and stuff just kept on happening. And it all fell away to nothing.

Until I was discussing the blogosphere with Beverage one evening (when he wasn’t being chatted up by the red-haired bar maid). And suddenly I realised that we could set up a blog that followed exactly the lines of JT1 but was much easier to access and amend. So we set this up. When I can be bothered, I will download site meter and if we find that Notes From A Drunken Evening has an audience, then we can revert to JT1 and turn this into more of a professional pub guide/website.

So… enjoy. There will be stupid stories to come, and hopefully we can give you a good idea of where to drink in London. And as for an opening story, I would just like to point out that I got four free pints last Saturday. And how many did Beverage get? Precisely zero… The moral of this totally rubbish story is I rule. Oh yeah. Go Team Me!

The Night of the Drug-Dealing Tramps

A little bit of background on this. So, why does this blog exist? What is the point of spending time on this?

There are two answers to that – firstly, we wanted to share some of the compellingly surreal things that happen (like a pissed up version of Dave Gorman or Danny Wallace) when you get utterly twatted. And secondly, this is the result of a *great idea*. I’ll explain about the *great idea* side to this another time. But at this stage let me give you an example of the stupidly surreal things that happen when the beer has flowed freely.

It is the story of the evening on the steps of St Martin’s in the Fields. It is the story of Night of the Drug Dealing Tramps.

Now, Beverage was unusually drunk. Don’t get me wrong, he is often wasted – but he is a seasoned drinker who can hold his own against the very best; in fact, a police man friend of ours once noted that Beverage was able to out drink even a policeman, which was rare, as normally those who could out drink him were members of the “street community”. However this night his level of inebriation had reached unusual heights. We later discovered the reason for this – the measures of vodka he was drinking was actually 35cl rather than the 25cl… but at the time our focus lay elsewhere. Because Beverage had decided he was going to go back to his ex-girlfriend.

Now this would be a really stupid idea. In fact, it is difficult to explain just how stupid an idea this would be. However, once someone has drunk their body weight in vodka and red bull, they really don’t listen to reason. But given I had drunk my body weight in Fosters I had forgotten this golden rule and thought with my clever reasoning and banter (or drunken, slurred rants) I could convince him otherwise. And what better venue than the steps of St Martin’s in the Fields?

I suppose we should have noted the large number of homeless persons also using the steps as a temporary refuge, but as I have already hinted at, we were wasted. So we sat there, merrily talking away whilst the people around us wondered which park bench they were going to sleep on that night.

And two people wander up to us. A short, fat man and a tall, lanky guy who we later realised was supposed to be the heavy – the man who was supposed to intimidate us. Just a quick note for any Drug Dealing Tramps who might be reading this – a strong man should look, well, strong. Not like someone who has contracted some sort of wasting disease. This strong man looked as if a strong gust of wind would have seen him flying across Trafalgar Square and down Parliament Street.

The short fat guy opened our conversation by saying he knew somewhere where we could sleep for the night, and then pointed down a dark alley. Which prompted derisive laughs from both of us and a comment along the lines of “do you really think we are going to walk down a dark alley with two people we have just met? How wasted do you think we are?!”

Then a crucial question crossed my mind. And being half pissed, I did not hesitate in asking it.

“I’m sorry, do we look like tramps or something?”

The short fat man didn’t reply, but you could tell from the look on his face that the answer was a resounding “yes”. And in retrospect, who could blame him? I hadn’t shaved all weekend, we were both dressed badly and we were slumped on the steps of a London landmark at midnight on a Sunday evening. Frankly if I had seen us I would have looked the other way and crossed the road.

Instead the short fat man came up with another question.

“So, do you want something to keep you awake?”

Before I could indignantly protest that I hadn’t just spent a small fortune on eight pints of sleep-inducing lager just to go and buy something else to keep me awake, Beverage intervened.

“How d’ya mean?”

Beverage backed up the urgency of his question with an aggressively pointing finger and a slurred delivery.

The short, fat man looked a little confused but decided to plough on anyway.

“You know, something to keep you awake. Speed or something.”

Great. Having realised that he could not convince us to wander down a dark alley so he could mug us, the short fat man had fallen back on Plan B. He was going to fleece us by selling us (no doubt poor quality) drugs.

Now I was stumped at this, but fortunately Beverage was on form. Again, with the pointing finger and the drawled delivery, he posited a cogent question.

“How d’ya know we aren’t undercover police?”

With masterful understatement, the short, fat man said
“You don’t really look like undercover police.”

“Ah-hah! But what do undercover police look like?” explained Beverage, with the iron certainty in his statement that only the utterly wasted can achieve. “Surely if we were properly undercover you wouldn’t be able to tell?”

A valid point, I think you will agree. A valid point made even more remarkable when you consider the levels of inebriation Beverage had achieved. I was stunned at his logic, not least because I was compellingly arseholed as well. Had I not been quite so wasted then I might have been able to see what the short, fat man was getting at - because whilst Beverage’s point may have been valid, it would have been equally valid to point out that had we been undercover policemen that we probably wouldn’t be quite so drunk…

But at this stage the short, fat man realised he was fighting a losing battle with us. And so he glanced at his emaciated strong man for some support – but that support was not forthcoming. In fact, the *strong* man was looking around nervously. Like he wanted to anywhere other than where he was. And like he wanted to run away as quickly as possible.

Never one to pass up on an opponent’s weakness, Beverage seized the moment.

“What are you looking at him for? Is he supposed to be your tough guy or something? He’s fucking useless. The worst strong man in the world. Ever!”

At this stage the strong man started to back away. Realising this, the short, fat man decided it was time to give up.

“You have a good evening, guys…”

And for the rest of our time sat on the steps we felt smug, having out-witted the Drug-Dealing Tramps.

This sort of thing happens to us a lot. And from now on it will be shared with the world. Partly for the therapeutic elements, and partly for shits and giggles…

Stories about what happens when you get drunk

The title of this post says it all - stupid, drunken but hopefully funny stories about drinking. Not swearing about politics or The Daily Mail.

Enjoy...