Drunk Blatherings

(Originally written Saturday 13 Jan, 4.51 AM)

I really do wonder why I keep deluding myself about staying in and doing work when it’s so patently obvious that this just isn’t meant to happen on Friday nights. I started off well, deciding to pass up watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with Russ in favour of going for choir practice and a Singaporean Catholic prayer meeting type thingy, thinking I’d better show up for the first sessions of the year because I know I’ll skip enough of them later on. On the way into the hall, Lauren, Michael and Stephanie were on their way out to see the same film and asked me if I wanted to go along. Again, I held firm, said no, and marched resolutely into choir practice. After that, I found that there was no meeting thingy this week, so I went down to the dining room and had dinner.

At this point the cosmos, not content with its failed attempts to shove Russ, Lauren, Michael and Stephanie between me and mastery of concurrent civil liability, sent Matt as well on the same mission, asking if I wanted to go to University of London Union (ULU) for a drink.

This is how I ended up at ULU with Matt, Dave, Mary and Ruth till 1 am. On coming home, we joined Chris, Alec, Michael, Joseph, Emma, and Avril in the dining room, and after we’d helped them finish the two bottles of whiskey they were working steadily through, I went upstairs to get my litre bottle of Jack Daniels…

So this is how I’m writing this now, after four hours of drunkenly absurd conversation, which included topics like Matt’s grandfather’s cock, sheep versus goats, Irish pride (this involved very loud singing of Irish drinking songs, led by the very Irish James, who tottered in completely drunk somewhere along the way) and unorthodox erogenous zones.

The breakup of the party began when a comment about Jaco Pastorius led to a discussion about fretted versus fretless basses, and which Pastorius album was his best. This bored everyone else at the table except me, Matt, James and James’ friend, so they eventually drifted off, leaving us to indulge in more drunken arguments about which Metallica album was the best, which led to an argument about musical elitism and the fashionable practice of exalting some obscure limited edition EP just for the sake of oneupmanship over people who haven’t heard it, which led to an argument about whether music can be objectively judged or whether it is purely subjective, which led to an argument about…

I can’t quite remember when I left, but given that I now find myself here writing this, I must have left at some point. Hmm. Sleep looks good. Good night.