Half-eaten Kebab

Have you ever been drunk?

I have – quite a few times, but thankfully not in recent years. Don’t get me wrong – I do like a pint or two but these days I tend to take it easy so that when I do drink I know I can wake up in the morning feeling reasonably fine.

Sadly, in my youth I was easily led and I thought that I was indestructible, especially when it came to the demon drink. I was rarely so drunk that I couldn’t remember anything but I have been in that position in my youth.

When you are in such a terrible state, weird thoughts go through your head, the biggest one being “I’ll be fine! I can handle another pint!”

Wrong! 

If you are drunk, that is the thought that you should totally dismiss because deep down you know for a fact that when you wake up in the morning your head will feel like Satan himself is hitting it with a lump hammer, your mouth will feel like you have just eaten the contents of a vacuum cleaner bag and your stomach will feel like it is about to explode in a tsunami of half-digested food.  If you have the strength to crawl to the toilet your entire world will spin like a demented spinning top and you will almost certainly be uttering the Hangover Mantra which is:

“NEVER AGAIN!”

Of course when you are in the throes of alcohol-fuelled ecstasy, you have lots of bad ideas. Logic doesn’t seem to enter into your thoughts. If you were sober then you would almost certainly say to your brain “You want me to do WHAT?? No bloody chance!”.

But when you are drunk, your response is “WHAT A GREAT IDEA!!!”.

Before I go on, there is something that any foreign readers must understand. Pubs and drinking are a massive part of British culture (and to a lesser extent Europe too). For example, when I have been to the US, I have been amazed that hanging out in a bar for an entire evening seems to be frowned upon – certainly more so than in the UK where such behaviour is commonplace.

So what good ideas have I encountered when drunk that are really terrible ones?

Have another drink

This is bad because, as I said above alcohol gives you the illusion of indestructibility. In this state you think you are utterly fine until the first light of day brings you back to reality with an enormous crash.

Go for a curry

Indian food is massively popular in the UK and drunk guys will flock to Indian restaurants after a night out because they think that it will satisfy the alcohol-fuelled hunger. Now the problem with a post-drink curry is that first of all Indian restaurants offer even more booze to add to your already saturated brain but worst of all, the bravado of being drunk means that you will almost certainly select the hottest curry on the menu because you think it is a fantastic idea. It isn’t because a hangover with a curry nestling in your stomach is not a good idea. Remember, a really hot curry burns twice; once on the way in and once on the way out.

Chat up a woman

I have fallen foul of this “good idea” many times and have been ritually humiliated. Worse, on one occasion I was out with workmates, including a female friend of mine. While in a pub, she started talking to a lovely young blonde woman who happened to teach her daughters ballet. Sadly, my mind told me to complement this vision of beauty. I walked up to her, in front of my female friend and a lot of workmates and said (I am not making this up): 

“First of all, I’m not coming on to you at all. But having said that, can I just say that you are ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS!!” 

Thankfully, she took it in good stead and said a polite “Thanks” before blanking me out completely. What followed was a tirade of abuse and piss-taking from my work colleagues and, worse, from my female friend who later said “What the phark are you on?” I am still reminded of this even to this day and it happened about twenty years ago!

Buy a kebab

 If you don’t go for a curry, you go for a kebab. Britain is filled with kebab shops, some better than others. When sober, I would never have one because I prefer healthier food. Yet when drunk, it has almost become the law. Kebab shops in the UK are filled with drunk people from around 11pm to much later and I am amazed that people know what to order. One of the problems is that your average kebab is huge and you are incapable of eating the entire thing. This has three possible consequences (and I have seen all three). 

Number one: you leave the half-eaten kebab on the sofa and crawl to bed, only to see it the following morning when your stomach is too delicate to deal with a now rancid stinking half-eaten mess. 

Number two:  Put the half-eaten kebab in the fridge to be finished off for breakfast. This is so wrong because the last thing you want to see when you go to the fridge to get a can of coke to help your hangover, is a half-eaten kebab stinking out your fridge with half-eaten fries that you felt you couldn’t do without. 

Number Three: you fall asleep while eating the kebab and wake up three hours later with your head resting in a mound of spicy meat, fries and rancid salad covered in spicy sauce.

Thankfully, I have grown up a bit and while I still drink, I no longer allow myself to have stupid ideas. That said, I have been known to indulge in a curry or a kebab but, thankfully, with a relatively sober head.

I’ll finish off with a song about a hangover from my collection. Check out the lyrics because they sum up most of the stuff I’ve said in this post.

The Meaning of Life - Time After Time

You will be pleased to know that this is the last post in the current series mirroring Karl Pilkington’s “The Moaning of Life”.

I think that this post needs a soundtrack – so here’s a good song to listen to while reading it.

Three weeks ago, I had a university reunion in Liverpool, the first one for twelve years and this included a man I hadn’t seen since leaving university in 1984, over thirty years ago.

Initially it was a surreal experience, seeing a bunch of blokes that I had been so close to. When I first met these guys I was 19 years old and, being young men, we were all desperate to make our mark on the world with a cocktail of alcohol, stupidity and a general sense of indestructibility that meant we were willing to do anything.

Of course, by the end of university we had matured slightly and were more prepared for life.

The problem is that when we all got together between 1981 and 1984, we did all of the stupid things that young men do.

Fast forward to a cold and rainy lunchtime November in 2015 at Lime Street Railway station in Liverpool.

I arrived first on a local train from Manchester and clutching a steaming coffee, I awaited the intercity train from London. Two of the guys got off the train and I recognised them immediately, a little greyer and a little chubbier but still the same guys I knew so well. I’ll call them Sam and Colin (to protect the guilty!).

We were expecting two more later, one from Birmingham and one from Liverpool  - this was the guy I hadn’t seen for over thirty years. I’ll call them Oscar and Andy (again to protect the guilty!).

Sam, Colin and I decided to be tourists and explore the city. I have been back to Liverpool often; after all it is only about 35 miles from Manchester. Sam married a Scouser (person from Liverpool) and he came back fairly regularly to visit family.

Colin had not been back to Liverpool since he left in 1984.

Oscar turned up an hour later. He had lost his hair completely apart from some grey bits at the sides. We didn't mention it.

The four of us spent the afternoon visiting the Tate museum, to avoid the heavy rain before having an afternoon snack in a coffee shop where we chatting about what we had all been up to, including, jobs, family, kids etc. over cups of coffee and tea. It was all very sophisticated.

We checked into our hotel and, as I was unpacking and freshening up for a mice meal, I was struck by one thing. Thirty years ago we were like rampant animals making fools of ourselves and acting as if we were indestructible.

Now, the four of us were talking about careers and kids, visiting museums and being totally sensible.

I felt a little sad; it was almost like being out with their dads.

Shortly afterwards, Andy rang and we arranged to meet him in a city centre pub that we had frequented as students.

It was still there and hadn't disappeared like a lot of the pubs from that time.

Andy turned up and he too hadn’t changed. It was really strange chatting to a guy I hadn’t seen for so long.

I looked at my watch as I supped that first beer. The time was six o’clock.

And this was the point that the sensibility disappeared.

“One more?” 

“Yeah – one more!”

Before I knew it, the alcohol had woken something up inside of all of us. We were sensible enough to find a restaurant but that’s about it. The rest of the evening descended into party time as five middle aged men wandered around the city centre, refuelling on beer, and becoming more and more boisterous. As more alcohol was imbibed, the years were stripped away and we became five young men again.  The dads were gone and my mates from the early 1980's were back.

I loved every second of it.

Tales of old were told and we guffawed like teenagers as we recalled the scrapes we got into all those years ago. Oscar's lack of hair was the main topic of raucous conversation for about twenty minutes. Don't worry - he gave as good as he got.

Thankfully, our ageing bodies protested enough to keep us in check – or at least I thought they had. We had wobbled out of the famous Cavern Club, where the Beatles used to entertain the Liverpool crowds, and into an Irish bar and somehow found a table where we could sit down. Before long, a barman came over and told us that the pub was closing. I checked my watch.

“It’s three in morning!” I yelled, although I think the words came out as “Ish three clocksh!”

We staggered back to the hotel and again I was saved by my body urging me to quaff as much water as my stomach could take before going to bed.

The next morning, we met for a late breakfast and, all a little fragile, made a pact to do exactly the same next year.

The whole episode made me think about time.

Although our bodies age around us, the deep inner core of our being remains. As we get older, our outlook on life changes but deep down inside all of us, the young person who wanted to unleash himself on the world, with a seemingly unlimited amount of energy, who existed all those years ago is still there.

The fire of my youth is definitely still  present under the sensible old git that I have become – and I’m delighted about that.

I can find him and I intend to take him out every so often for a breath of fresh air (though perhaps next time I will avoid using alcohol as the transport mechanism).

We can’t win the war against time – but we can win the odd battle - and have massive fun with our small victories.

How about you, dear reader?

Is there a young version of you hiding inside you?

Can you find him or her?

If so, how do you do it?