On Saturday night my camera died during dinner in a Chinese restaurant on Blackpool's Clifton Street. As wholly awful as this occurrence was for any insurance auditor looking to value my personal wealth (due to camera's death: now down 70%), it was probably the best thing that happened to me all night. Sometimes the path to self-denial is easiest achieved through locking painful memories away in the safe at the back of our minds.....even if the key to which it opens will forever be the smell of Aftershock Red mixed with Katie Price's most recently discounted fragrance.
Pictures or not, that night will forever haunt me.
Due to the camera's untimely demise I thought it prudent to note down my alcohol intake in the red diary given to me by the deputy editor of FHM. Trawling over those disinfectant splattered pages now, crumpled and torn at their edges by a local prize fighter called 'Walter', I shudder with a revulsion only akin to my recollection of 'the incident,' circa 2009.
Over the course of the evening, I drank the following:
- Tsing Tsao bottled lager, to start dinner
- Bottle of white wine (cabernet sauvignon, apparently), with dinner
- Jack Daniel's and Coke, in pub called - so I've handily jotted down - The Counting House. May have made an error with spelling. Remember watching test match highlights on big screen over the bar though, so maybe not
- Pimm's and lemonade x2, in bar populated by cast of Last Of The Summer Wine on annual field trip to Amsterdam
- Jager Bomb, to numb myself to the fact that I was in a bar that resembled the cast of Last Of The Summer Wine's annual field trip to Amsterdam
- Another Jack Daniels and Coke, in 1930's drag queen dancehall called Roxy's. Had a shot of vodka added to my drink because I was 'enjoying the music too much'
- Pint of Snakebite (half lager, half cider, topped up with Ribena: to those who skipped university) in Walkabout, whilst winning third test of epic table football five-stage tournament
- Second pint of Snakebite, whilst chatting to girl with one ear about eventual defeat in epic table football twelve-stage tournament
- Third pint of Snakebite, to recover from having to retrieve my wallet from boyfriend / brother of girl with one ear, who said I was 'one of them southernings' and who offered to 'punch me back to London with his fist'
- Bottle of WKD Orange, strawpedoed, as a racing style drinking game
- Bottle of Orange Reef, strawpedoed, as fine for losing previous drinking game
- Fourth pint of Snakebite, whilst having a discussion about how my personal failures are similar to those of the Egyptian national infrastructure
- Second Jager Bomb, because they were £2
- Third Jager Bomb, because the last one was £2 and it seemed cheaper than the last one
- Bottled beer in strip club, so that I could use the line 'I'm busy drinking this beer,' to fend away horrid local strippers
- Second bottled beer in strip club, so I could use the bottle itself as a weapon to fend away horrid local strippers
- Third bottled beer in strip club, to celebrate being in a Blackpool strip club above a kebab shop
- Fourth bottled beer in strip club, to mourn being in a Blackpool strip club above a kebab shop
I'm ashamed to say that I spent most of the train journey home on Sunday throwing up in the first class toilet. I'll admit: partly because of the alcohol. But also partly because a one-eyed stripper with facial bandages and a horribly ruthless rhetoric spewed some insults so cutting in their intellectual scope, and so humiliating in their profanity-addled delivery, that as a result I have endeavoured to change forever. And by that I mean become the type of person who will never return to the north-west, under any circumstances.
Be under no illusions Octopus. It's a depressing thing to drink yourself to oblivion to blind yourself to the fact that you're in Blackpool. But it's even more depressing to be in Blackpool.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Well said!
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