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Dreadful Nonsense

"I've read your blog. it's really funny. you should write a column." - Jon Ronson

We were out last night for the final night of me being slightly younger than I am today, thanks to the ravaging effects of time. A night out in Dublin is usually a good night out, but a night out on a Thursday seems to have a magical effect on everyone involved, in that it can go one of two ways. Either (a) everyone suddenly throws caution to the wind, gets drunker than they’d consider doing even on a bank holiday weekend with a week’s holiday already booked in advance to get over the ensuing hangover, and we all wake up in Germany, or (b) everyone stays quite sober and upright and proper, and you have lovely soft conversations about kittens and literature, and everyone goes home with a clear head and conscience. I’d like to say we all had the former last night, but apparently it was just me.

I’m not sure what happened. After a week of relative sobriety in London (I suddenly found that, while on British soil, I was unable to drink with any kind of conviction. This has never happened to me before, and hopefully is something that will pass, and soon), I presumed I wouldn’t be able to drink all that much in Dublin either, and said as much to Maire on our way in to town. I think that might have been my first and most serious mistake.

It being my not-birthday, drinks were bought for me at a tremendous rate, and I didn’t notice when I finished one pint and started the next one. This meant, of course, that I wasn’t paying any attention at all to what was going on. Being surrounded by kind, intelligent people who were all having kind, intelligent conversations with each other around me meant that I was distracted by the kind, intelligent conversations and when you’re all having a lovely chat, you don’t notice that you’re slowly getting quite seriously squiffed.

As Edel so kindly put it this morning, what seemed to happen was that I stood up sober, went to use the little girl’s room, and emerged drunk as a judge. I don’t remember this, but then, of course I wouldn’t. We even got the highly social and not at all disgraceful first night bus home, and I was tucked up safely in bed by about 2am. And I’ve checked my phone messages, I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have to anyone that I shouldn’t have, so I think I got away with it. Just.

I’m too old for that kind of messing around.

This entry was posted on 05 November 2004 at 5:25 pm. 0 comments

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