People often ask in the
chatterbox what the purpose of
daylogs are. The answer's simple - it gives people like me a chance to
whine without creating a real
node.
And yes, this is a whine.
Yesterday/today has been quite mad, and still is. I'm writing this from a cybercafe, and not the comfort of my own home. Why? It's a long story...
I blame it all on football. Colin and I woke up at 2.30, ran straight out to the pub, got some beer and breakfast and watched Ireland V Portugal. It was a nail-biting game, and a large amount of alcohol was required to soothe our nerves. Large amounts. When Ireland scored, it went absolutely nuts. It was all weird and homoerotic - grown men hugging complete strangers and crying. And there wasn't even any dance music playing. When the match ended (a 1-1 draw) I was well on my way. The bad mix of beer and adrenelin had my head reeling - all I wanted to do was drink more, dance and have sex with impressionable women.
The guys I met up with afterwards weren't quite up for it. Various excuses about being tired, or broke, or tired and broke were bandied about. Nightclubs didn't look likely to figure in our future.
But my philosophy has always been - when the going gets tough, the tough get weird. So I did something uncharacteristic of me - I dropped a pill in the pub. Unusual for me cause I don't usually engage in such things. But I had one on me, and I felt it was the only way to talk them into it.
I sat there very quietly, while they talked about wrestling. After about 10 minutes I looked up, pupils spinning outwards into infinity. "Guys," I said, "let's go to a goddamn nightclub." When they stopped being stunned, and then stopped laughing, they agreed.
By the time I got there, I was already liquid. The music was great. Actually no, it wasn't, it was shit, but it had a beat, which was enough. I gave my jacket to a friend to throw in the cloakroom and I went headlong into the dancefloor. The night went great. It went even better when this cute black girl started dancing with me. She seemed kind of innocent and naive, and didn't realise that I was out of my mind. But she gave good hugs, and I was all tingly for ages.
She was really sweet. She started talking about how she was worried about being different in Ireland - that Irish guys just wanted to try it with a black girl for novelty. I grabbed her by the face and spent about ten minutes telling her how amazingly beautiful and incredibly special she was.
Of course, I really feel bad about that now, cause I think she thought that I had fallen in love with her. In actual fact, about ten minutes later I was telling Darragh, this big tub of lard, that he was a babe. She was cute, but I think I really overdid it.
We exchanged phone numbers - because that seemed like a REALLY good idea at the time. Then I went back to Morgan's place and smoked lots to come back down. Second bad idea of the night happened there. Morgan offered to shave my head. I replied by saying, "why Morgan, that's a great idea". Which means that in the space of about two years, I've gone from a two-foot pony tail to a Number 2. My head is really cold.
As we were smoking and playing Playstation, I started thinking about the girl in slightly less chemical-tinged ways. I realised that she had given me her phone number after about 30 seconds of conversation. She'd also been in Ireland for a week. She seemed really needy. Having put up with that shit so much, that scares the crap out of me. So I crossed my fingers, thinking "please, please, please, don't let her phone."
Which led to the question - "Dude, where is my phone?"
There was no sign of it anywhere. I, still being quite mellow, said fuck it and left without it, confident that it would turn up eventually. I decided that I could walk from Morgan's place back to mine with no problems. I still had lots of energy left. I probably would have made it too, if I had walked even vaugely in the right direction. Here's a hint kids - went you want to walk into the center of a city and you don't know how to get there, DON'T walk towards the mountains and farmlands. It means you're leaving civilisation and entering banjo-twanging, cousin-loving territory. And getting a taxi out of there is a bloody nightmare.
I did eventually flag one down. By the time I got back to my house, it was 6.30 and I was feeling pretty damn tired. I just couldn't wait to get into bed and sleep for three days...
And that's when the big problem hit me. I'd lost my keys as well.
The muppet I had given my coat to had obviously just dropped everything out of the pockets. About the only survivor was - thank christ - my ATM card. I sat outside my building trying to think. I realised the easiest thing to do would be just to ring someone and ask if I could crash in their place.
Grade A plan, but sadly one that demonstrates one of the inherent problems of mobile phones. Because I just store all my phone numbers in there, I have no idea what anyone's number actually is. Seriously. Combine that with the fact that I can never remember anyone's apartment number, and it leaves me pretty screwed.
So I had to form a plan B. Obviously, my only chance of getting somewhere to sleep was to wait for the pub above the nightclub to reopen and try to reclaim my stuff. But that still meant killing the time between 6.30 and 11.30. Five goddamn hours. And I was exhausted.
I seriously considered breaking into my place of work and sleeping under my desk. Nothing was open in the entire city. By 7.30 I had given up trying. I ended up standing outside McDonalds with all the bums and weirdos (not that I stood out from them that much). It's quite unusual - McDonalds first customers are always smelly old men who want to steal paper cups, UHT milk and toilet roll. I have no idea why.
I sat down with a newspaper and a large coffee. It went fine for all of five minutes, but then I started falling asleep. Not just drifting, but like every time I blinked, my eyes would shut and fail to reopen and I'd just be dreaming all of a sudden. After an hour and a half or so, I couldn't take any more. I had to sleep. My brain hurt. I decided to sleep in the park.
Except of course, me being such a classy guy (ahem). I couldn't just go down the park, curl up on a bench and pass out like a bum. No, I had to do it in such a way that said, "hey, I'm a cool, crazy, sophisticated guy. I'm sleeping in a park because I choose to. My apartment is fantastic, y'know". Hey, you never know when your career guidance teacher might pass by.
So, the plan was to wait until it got vaguely sunny, and then make it look like I was sunbathing and fell asleep. Going into the park at 9.30 was quite scary. It was still full of scraggy old men drinking cans of Dutch Gold. Everything smelled like piss.
But the center of the park was okay. Tourists were begining to walk through it. I set myself up on the bench - shades on, paper spread out on the seat next to me. I curled up and fell asleep, looking like I was actually reading intensely. The perfect crime.
For 10 minutes anyway. It so damn difficult to sleep outdoors in public. Every single footstep, every yelling child, every yapping dog was like a sledgehammer to my skull. Eventually I just stopped trying. I was still tired, but the edge had been taken off it a bit. I spent about another hour and a half sitting there, genuinely reading the paper. Eventually, I got up and went looking for my stuff.
The person in the bar listened to what I had lost, and went searching. She came back with my phone but no keys. Which is why now I'm sitting in a cybercafe, with enourmous red eyes, willing to kill and/or maim for somewhere to sleep, and dreading a phone call from a clingy immigrant.
Ye gods, I am a twat.
At least the match was fun though.