Saturday Night Sauce

Bevvy, booze, bracer, brew, dram, firewater, grog, hooch, lotion, nip, potion,  sauce , shot, slug, snifter, spirit, swilker, tincture, tipple, wackjuice - all synonyms for a drink or several of the alcoholic variety (though that last one sounds a bit dodgy to me).

Yes, I know it's only a couple of weeks since I was blogging about whisky, but I've done sauces (most recently in June of this year, onion Sauce Soubise; and before that Catsup, way back in August 2015 if you'd like to sample it: "happiness can be a Catsup state of mind") and so tonight I'm going to stand you all a round of tales of mystery and inebriation. Pull a stool up to the bar.

I've only thrice in my life been really drunk  - and I'm not sure whether that's something to be proud of or not. I'll regale you with the details shortly. I grew up in a tee-total household and although I like a drink it does unnerve and upset me to see people getting totally paralytic. I expect there's a residual puritan lurking in my make-up. An ex-brother-in-law literally drank himself to death (acute alcoholic poisoning) and an ex-sister-in-law nearly burned her house down because she passed out from too much white wine while she was cooking dinner. More generally in my experience, many people once they get beyond the funny/happy/mellow stage of being inebriated start to become quite unpleasant; and if they stop short of turning nasty, they are still likely to be a danger to themselves and a liability to others; though admittedly such escapades can have their funny side in retrospect - and it's the funny side we need right now, agreed?

Let's get my own tales of extreme inebriation out of the way to begin with. They all occurred when I was in my twenties, by the way. The first was at a New Year's Eve party when I made the mistake of drinking on an empty stomach. After several hours, pints, whatever, the room was spinning and I realised I was outrageously drunk and was going to throw up. Finding the bathroom occupied I did the sensible next-best thing and staggered into the back garden where the cold air merely intensified that reeling feeling and I proceeded to re-empty my stomach into the fish pond. (I never did find out if there was an aftermath.) 

A couple of  years later I was invited back by 6th formers at the school in Devon where I'd done my teaching practice, to their Christmas Party in ye olde village pub. When everyone in your A-level class wants to buy you a pint and a whisky chaser for introducing them to the delights of William Blake, it's rude to refuse. At some point late in the evening I went to the Gents across the pub yard but somehow got lost on my way back to the bar (I hadn't even realised I was drunk) and just curled up behind some beer barrels in the quadrangle for a while to converse with angels. Everyone thought I must have gone off, alone or with somebody. When I woke up at four in the morning it was extremely cold, for I was minus the fur coat that I'd worn to the pub. (It was never seen again, by the way. Someone must have taken a shine to it.) At least I managed to remember where and who I was staying with in Okehampton and they'd kindly left their front door on the latch for me.

The final sorry tale dates from circa 1980 when my girlfriend and I met up with Frances Barber, then just an up-and-coming young actress, and her date for a few beers at our local pub in Hackney (London Fields to be precise). When I let slip that I'd written a school play I was sent home to fetch the script and we proceeded to entertain the few regulars who were in the Albion that night with an impromptu reading fuelled by pints of London Pride. My recollection is hazy but apparently by closing time I was lying with my head in Frances' lap as she stroked my hair and told me we were going to be famous one day. It turns out she was partly right (and my girlfriend forgave me the next morning).

I'm saving the best two till last and they are not about me, but concern work colleagues. I've changed their names just on the long-shot that someone reading this might know them. The first concerns 'Andrew' who worked with me at Kodak in Harrow in the 1990s. 'Andrew' used to commute to work by train and therefore going for a few bevvies on a Friday after work didn't present any logistical problems for him. He usually called it a night after a couple of hours and four or five pints and off he'd go to catch the train back to his long-suffering (her words) wife. On the occasion of his 40th birthday however, he made a real night of it and staggered off to the station at closing-time on auto-pilot. He stumbled out of the train at Leighton Buzzard (this is going to give it away) some time after midnight  and tottered home only to struggle fitting his key into the lock. Befuddled, he rang the bell expecting his wife to come down and let him in, when an upstairs window opened and a man shouted down "What the fuck do you want?" Unfortunately for 'Andrew', auto-pilot had led him to the house he used to live in until they'd moved to Hemel Hempstead six months earlier. It ended up being an expensive taxi-ride home, especially as he was charged extra for being sick in the cab. (Thanks Jenny for telling all later at his expense.)

Finally, let me introduce 'Baxter'. 'Baxter' was working for me when we were implementing a project in Paris just after the millennium. We were all staying in one of those chic city-centre Novotels for a couple of weeks during cut-over. On the night in question, after too much French 'sauce' (Kronenbourg 1664) in the hotel bar, 'Baxter' awoke in a drunken stupor dying for a pee. In his inebriated state he turned the wrong way in heading for the bathroom and opened the door into the corridor by mistake. Before he realised this error of orientation, the door closed behind him and he stood naked in the passage. His chief imperative being to empty his bursting bladder, he wandered along until he found a door marked exit, depressed the bar and went out onto the fire-escape to relieve himself. Of course that door closed behind him in the process, leaving the unfortunate 'Baxter' only one option as he gazed unsteadily into the Parisian night. He had to climb down three flights of fire-escape stairs in the altogether before presenting himself sheepishly at reception, hands clasped in front of him, with a cock-and-bull story that he was prone to sleep-walking, He couldn't remember his room number but he hadn't forgotten his name so the receptionist was able to check the system and issue him with a new room key. 'Baxter' didn't re-surface until the afternoon. When I was told of his exploits (because by the evening he thought it was hilarious), I went to apologise to the receptionist and she very matter-of-factly told me that it happened all the time, men en deshabille getting locked out of hotel rooms. Only in France, I thought to myself.

To conclude this Saturday night on the sauce, here's something slightly more light-hearted than the recent end-of-the-world angst poetry. This latest is from that quarter of the Imaginarium marked party central. It's not strictly autobiographical (just to clarify), though I'm sure many of us have been there or thereabouts in our more tender years...

Morning After

That was some crazy party!

Last thing I remember...

...talking with two girls in the garden

about astral projection. Was it possible?

The dreamy one drawled

we are so small between the stars

so large against the sky;* and now

I've woken up in a strange bed

with tight skin and a fogged head. 

I'm hoping that it's Sunday.

Hello you with your hair strewn across

both pillows. I can't remember your name

if ever I knew. You're not the dreamy one

but you're still sleeping, or else doing 

a good job of pretending. Here you go.

Awkward smiles exchanged and a sigh.

I ask if I made it with you last night.

(I really can't remember). You feel

between your legs and say

well somebody did.

And later over eggs and coffee

in that ashtray of a kitchen I smile again

across the table, though it hurts my face

and say I'd like to know you better.

You jump up muttering I need to go,

my Mum's at home looking after baby;

and I'm left sitting there alone,

a trace of your stale Chanel in the air

wondering whose house this is

and hoping that it's Sunday.

*I am indebted to Leonard Cohen for those two wonderful lines (from 'Stories of the Street' ).

Thanks for reading. Be of good cheer, S ;-)