Pissed

My friends, my dear, dear friends I am sorry but I am feeling slightly unwell. In a Jeff Barnard kind of way. Not that I have anything against Jeff. Oh no. I am sure he is a truly lovely man. I am just borrowing from the Jeff Barnard running gag that has been jogging, in a kind of relaxed manner, through Private Eye for a couple of decades.

Anyway.

Today’s random top fact is: if you drink enough of it, Champagne is really great! Don’t look at me like that. It’s true!

However something seems to have become corrupted (or as GW Bush would have said: ‘corruptetated’ – well he is, after all, the man who said that the French had no word for ‘entrepreneur’. Tosser) in the translation pertaining to the size of the drinking vessels for said alcoholic refreshment.

Instead of those piddly little ‘Champagne flutes’ – and who the fuck wants to drink booze out of a woodwind instrument anyway? – I can categorically state that the best container to drink Champagne out of is, in fact, a very, very, very large glass.

The larger the neck of the glass – and the larger the volume of the glass – the better.

You should also pour to the brim then let the glass stand for ten minutes (or two Clifford T. Ward tracks – I recommend ‘The Best is Yet to Come’ and ‘We Could be Talking’. That last is so pertinent – whichever is the sooner).

Sooner. Not longer.

And then drink as if it were mineral water.

See?

How good is that?

I also recommend that you download and install an English dictionary add-on to your Firefox web-browser.

That will save you a lot of backspacing. Seriously!

[pauses and glugs]

[glugs some more]

I need to open another bottle.

How come the only alcohol we have in the house is bottles of champers? WTF is that all about?

16.51.

Oh shit. I have recognised a problem.

The spell checker doesn’t recognise groups of numbers.

I had to type 16.51 three times before the number looked right to me.

Mind you, looking right to me, right now, might be looking very wrong to everyone else. Ah well. This is the price of something but I don’t know what just now.

[pauses and peers around looking for something interesting to discuss]

!

I have a bruise.

Just there, on the instep of my left foot. It’s about the size of a 20p coin which is very weird because I can’t remember the last time I had a 20p coin in my possession.

Have they all disappeared, the 20p coins?

Have they all emigrated to 20p-coinland, where they’ll live long and fruitful lives with lots of other 20p coins?

My spell checker didn’t like the word ‘coinland’ but I do so I’m leaving it there to piss it off. Take that you fucking spell checker. Yeah. Fuck you. Arse.

Do you know, I can’t really remember the last time I had a drink. Awww, I don’t mean when I had a couple of glasses of Pimm’s, I mean a serious ‘push you over the driving limit’ kind of drink.

Once upon a time I was in the All British Drinking Team you know. I made the seniors when I was in the forces. I, I say very proudly, have been pissed for Britain in many a foreign country.

And I have out-drunk people from many, many nations.

Most celebrated was the out-drinking of the US Navy Seals (bunch of pussies) teams (two of them) in a place I’m not supposed to talk about. Or maybe I am now. But I’ll err on the side of caution, just in case.

We used to play a game called ‘Colours of the Nations’ where we’d have to name a NATO member country (except when we were in Africa as part of the UN and our boundaries got expanded to UN member states), describe that country’s flag, name the colours and then drink, one after another, the colours of that nation’s flag.

I rocked at that.

It was after a Championship Head-to-head at Nellis AFB in Nevada that I accidentally became embroiled in a minor diplomatic incident between The Court of St James and The Office of the President of the United States.

Don’t look at me like that!

I was just on my way out of the bathroom at around 06.30 after a particularly heavy session the night before.

Well yes, I know I was in the house of the USAF Officer Commanding but that was a relatively minor detail. Wasn’t it?

See?

No sense of humour, the American military.

Anyway, we fucking thrashed the combined might of the USAF/US Army. It was an Exercise Red Flag, that’s why we were in Nevada. We were flying ground attack against their superior air defence.

I’m still laughing.

Stone me, I had to type the word ‘I’m’ six times before my picky spell checker accepted it! Bastard.

Anyway, where I’m going with this is that was the old me.

These days I really don’t drink (apart from this afternoon, natch) and like any skill (is it a skill?) the maxim ‘if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it’ applies.

Because here I am feeling decidedly pissed after what, in the good old bad old days, I would have barely considered a refreshing mouth-wash.

Lightweight.

Funny thing.

I can’t find a ‘category’ to allocate this post to. That underlines the point really, doesn’t it? I shall choose ‘family’ because it fits as badly as anything else does.

But my point is that I have created a category for ‘Food’ but not one for ‘Drink’ so that tells us something, yeah?

So what else am I doing, apart from getting rid of bottles of Champagne that should have been quaffed some time ago?

And listening to the eye-wateringly beautiful Clifford T Ward? Have I told you, mate, how much I love him? God I love his writing. And his orchestration. And his piano playing. But his voice… I love his voice. I have left copies of his ‘Home Thoughts’ album in many, many countries you know.

I am looking at wedding photographs.

She’s so beautiful, my lovely Sophie. And I am not. I always wondered what she saw in me. I still do, kinda.

Want to see them?

Click here (warning – this file is a PDF about 4Mb, so best get broadband in before you do yourself an injury, eh?)

I need another beer bottle of champers. But that would involve getting up off the couch. And I’m not too sure I could do that.

Cliff’s finished the beautiful ‘Not Waving, Drowning’ and gone straight in to ‘We Could Be Talking’. God I love that song. I should reproduce the words. Or you could google them but you wouldn’t get ten percent of the emotion behind his delivery. Which is peculiar because he’s not an emotional singer, though there is a massive amount of emotion behind his words.

I met him, you know. Clifford T Ward. Yeah, you probably do know; I’ve probably bored you with that story already. I don’t have many anecdotes about The Rich and Famous which must tell us something about how I view The Rich and Famous, eh?

It may be something outside, but in my heart it’s something else.

Oh my God. Half-remembered lyrics. I’ve got to that stage already? Already already?? Another bottle. Kettle. Another bottle. Kettle. Hmmm…. Tough call.

I’m thinking of going to Spain this weekend. See daughter, play, laugh, give her hiccups. Yes I know that now is this weekend so really I’d only be going for one night but… Shrug. It would be two days, right?

Actually? I think I’m very pissed. Which for some reason I find hilarious because I can’t stop laughing. Not giggling – note – but full on laughing out loud. Perhaps it’s hysteria. Not the Def Leppard album of the same name, no. Though it is quite good. I have it, you know.

Oh.

Soph’s arrived, the car is pulling in to the drive, up to the house.

Better finish this rambling off and smarten myself up and try not to fall off the couch. That last bit might be difficult.

I love you.

Three little words.

Mean so much.

Hope it’s true.

B.