The Loneliness of a Long Distance Drinker
By Dominic Horton
I was weary of the
festivities long before Christmas Day and I will be relieved when it is all
over and the seasonal drinkers in the Flagon & Gorses have swanned off with
their puritanical attitudes to the gym leaving us regular inmates to have a bit
of peace and quiet so we can wallow in our miseries. It will be pure bliss. The only day really worth going to the pub
during the festive period is New Year’s Day (the earlier the better) as it is
deathly quiet with most revellers nursing hangovers after staying up past their
bedtimes. One can sit quietly and
celebrate the relief of the passing of another Christmas and contemplate the
impending year ahead with the hope and optimism that it will be no worse than
average.
The sooner the odd
Christmas behaviour of fellow Flagon internees ends the better. On Christmas Eve people heartily shake your
hand and wish you all the best for the big day as if you are about to set off
on a sea voyage to Australia whereas in actuality you will see them again in
less than twenty four hours for a drink on Christmas Day lunchtime.
Slowly the humdrum of
pub life will get back to normal and although the regiment is always a little
depleted in January the stalwart foot soldiers will fight the good fight in
order to keep a few much needed pennies flowing into the Pirate’s needy
coffers. As discussed in this column
this time last year some heretics abandon ship in January and don’t go to the
pub or drink at all but they are forgetting that a pub is for life and not just
for Christmas. Don’t abandon your
landlord in his desperate time of need.
The poor old Pirate at the Flagon & Gorses is desperate enough as it
is without having to suffer a downturn in custom.
Some people flirt with
alcohol without ever forming a meaningful and long lasting relationship with it
and good luck to them as it is a good approach if you can get away with
it. Many years ago the inimitable
Alexander Sutcliffe told me that I am a career drinker and I was too busy
ordering another round to disagree with him.
But it is nothing to be boastful about, far from it. It would be better to be swimming in a sea of
p*ss than one of booze as at least with the former you can quickly wash it off
and restore purity but the latter is a more devious and evasive mistress whose
cunning and trickery knows no bounds: “come to me and I will comfort you” she
whispers seductively and more often than not I fall for her alluring words only
to find that by morning she has fled leaving me forsaken and in need of her
succour more than ever.
Every festive season I
think to myself that things will be better this time next year but of course
they never are. In many ways things can
only get worse as at least at present I am fortunate enough to have a home, a
job and the welcoming retreat of the Flagon & Gorses. Maybe Mother Teresa is right and that I need
to find myself a good woman this coming year. I don’t think I will need to ask
ladies to form an orderly queue outside Codger Mansions as any self-respecting
women that have read this column will be giving me a wide berth if they value
their sanity and I don’t blame them. At
least my faithful teddy bear Alfie remains staunchly loyal though I do get odd
stares when I take him out for Sunday lunch.
Funnily enough a
couple of people have tried to thrust ladies on me recently, not literally I
hasten to add, but I have thus far resisted given the disaster at Philly the
Gent’s 50th birthday party in the summer. Philly had been telling me for a while that
his wife Olivia had a single friend who might be suitable for me so at his
party the Gent pointed the lady out and I duly introduced myself. We pleasantly chatted while I supplied her
with drinks and we even had a stumble to music, which would have qualified as a
dance if it were not for my lack of co-ordination. Anyway I eventually plucked up the courage to
ask the potential suitor if she would like to have a date sometime to which she
replied, “I don’t think my boyfriend would be very happy about that.”
At
least I have the Flagon but visits there are not without their challenges,
especially when I converse with acquaintances of a certain age. The youthless have a tendency to say things
twice and drinkers generally have a penchant to repeat themselves so as far as
ageing drinkers are concerned one tends to know their stories and reminiscences
off by heart. But I would imagine that
I am as much of a broken record as anybody else in the Flagon and I am sure you
could easily find at least a dozen Flagoners who would testify to this; the
poor blighters wouldn’t mind but the anecdotes that I tell them are not even
funny in the first place. I could make
it a New Year’s resolution to stop repeating myself but I gave up making resolutions
long ago because the more you make the more you break.
Luckily
all the Christmas gifts that people kindly gave me were decent and things of
use so the only Christmas turkey was on my dinner plate. Ung Pirat bought his father the Pirate a DVD
of the film Hitchcock, being a biopic
of the legendary film director starring Anthony Hopkins, and Jolly D explained
to me that when his father went to the cinema to see the Hitchcock thriller Psycho in the 1960’s the manager
announced to the audience that the cinema doors were locked so viewers could
not leave if the suspense got too much for them. I suggested to the Pirate that he should
lock us in the Flagon so that we can’t escape even if we wanted to. Once news of our unlawful imprisonment gets
out I can just see Amnesty International turning up to get us released and
Jolly D shouting out of the letterbox (“f*ck off and leave us alone”.)
Sadly the presents
that I really wanted for Christmas didn’t materialise: an E-Lite pipe and a
pair of Superman wellies, the latter of which I saw a toddler wearing in the Cornbow
Precinct in Halesowen. Although I am not
trying to give up smoking I would like an E-Lite pipe to enable me to ponder
matters like Sherlock Holmes and also point with it when someone asks me
directions. I can’t remember Christopher
Reeves sporting a pair of wellies in Superman
though any competent superhero would be wise to be dressed suitably if the
weather turns inclement as if Superman gets his foot wet in a puddle it could
severely hamper his mission to save the world. Kryptonite is the one thing that that has a
detrimental effect on Superman and makes him feel dreadful but it is another
radioactive material that has such an effect on me in the form of beef fried
rice and curry sauce from the Rhareli Peking.
However, I am glad to report that despite over eating like everyone else
that I have managed to give the Baby Faced Assassin and Mr Ping at the Peking a
wide berth during the festive period. I
am sure normal business will be resumed in the New Year and I will once more be
ruing the evil offerings of Ping the Merciless.
Getting off the train
to work on Monday morning was even more demoralising than usual but a kindly
pre-recorded voice cautioned me, “when you alight please mind the gap between
the platform and the train” but if the owner of the voice had been a student of
the psychologist Edward Tory Higgins she might have more usefully advised,
“when you get off the train please mind the gap between your perceived self and
your actual self.” In his self-discrepancy theory
Higgins explained that if the way a person views himself is different to the
way others view him then it can cause psychological distress. That being the case I should be fine as the
Pirate thinks I am a **** and as it happens so do I.
© Dominic Horton, December 2013.
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