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Blog Potato wine, false creamMonday, July 21, 2008 'Do you have any real cream?' I ask, as I put the tub of Elmlea on the counter.The young girl looks as me with suspicion - this is obviously a trick question. 'Um, that is cream?' she tells me, which she manages to turn into a question right at the end. 'No,' I sigh, 'it's a mix of vegetable oil and various E numbers, not cream at all. Look,' I point to it, 'it doesn't say cream anywhere on it.' 'Oh, right.' She laughs a little bit. 'No, we've just got that.' I don't know why I bought it. I never tried Elmlea faux cream before. Maybe it isn't too bad, I think to myself. Perhaps all those E numbers make it taste just like the real thing? So, it's pretty awful. The wife whips it up. We taste it and pull faces. It tastes very false. 'I'll add honey and vanilla,' she says, 'maybe it will help?' 'Hmm.' We eat it with Strawberries and crushed chocolate biscuits. It's like spooning foamy vegetable oil into your mouth. We finish, as we're distracted by TV as we eat it. Then we feel sick. Very sick. I have stomach cramps for godssake. So, remind me why this stuff is made and / or sold again? What else happened? Well, the Colonel came round and ate 11 of my pickled chillis, desite my warning that more than 10 could lead to complications. Cue much later grasping of belly and moaning. On Friday night we went to an after-party, the first that has happened in months, pretty much. Well, weeks anyway. I had been pretty restrained in the pub, apart from the unaskedfor whisky that the Colonel bought for me. So arrived pretty fresh. And probably a bit over-excited. With a bottle of home-made potato wine. Ah, 12 year old potato wine too. Yes, it *did* taste and look like Sherry, and normally, well, who would drink a load of Sherry at a party these days? You only get drunk on Sherry once in your life, usually when in your early teens, and usually it was from your parent's drinks cabinet. Once is enough. Really. Sherry drunk is not pretty. And it hurts, really hurts the next day. So, I drank the Potato sherry. My father had been keeping it in his garage for the last decade or so. Very nice of him. Due to uncontrollable forces, I was full of life until about 7am, when I was escorted home, oblivious, by two nice people. They probably stopped me from staggering into the canal, something that is not worth dwelling upon. Next day was a noon-eye-opener. Blank periods swirled around the void that was my mind. The house was empty. I made a potato rosti before I even woke up and stuffed it, at burning temperature, inside me with the coffee. Numb all day, I did little... Labels: alcohol, cream, elmlea, late, party, potato, sherry, wine Blog Saturday Night PartyTuesday, June 24, 2008The proposed shindig at Clougha was rained off, so people went to the Brit instead to drink more alcohol than is sensible and listen to one-chip-tatty play. At 8pm. I mean, these days, who goes out at 8pm? *and* the had a late license for some reason... So that's 6 hours of drinking time. *sigh*. I started quite well, in the beer garden, as the pub was jam packed and I didn't feel for that much. I sipped bitter, avoided spirits, shied away from rounds. But in the end the time gets to us all. By 1am I was sloshing them back with everyone else, but things didn't get out of control. Not really. The police came, of course, but just to investigate a noise complaint from the usual irritating neighbours. When the police arrived there were three of us sitting outside, quietly smoking our cigarettes. The police looked nonplussed. The wife and I didn't want people back to ours, the sheer amount of people and the excessive alcohol made the prospect vaguely bad. So DrC and the Colonel pimped out their house for the evening. Off we go then, I get carried away and invite more people along on the way out. It takes the Grue and I some time to get to the party as Tintin is feeling belligerent, but we manage, in the end. Things start to get a bit more hazy at at the party. I talk at people quite a lot, then simply sit in a chair and interfere with the music for a while. Then it's 5am and time to go. All manner of interesting things occur after we leave, of course... Sunday was a write-off. A non-starter. I padded around the house all day, read books, took a bath, ate, little else. Labels: alcohol, brit, Clougha, drinking, party, police Blog Pre-Party at EasterWednesday, April 11, 2007And just before we left for the party: 
Blog Ug! A party...Monday, December 04, 2006The whisky had been blessed with magical powers, this night. So I tend to shy away from it and instead stick to the three bottles of Stella Artois and two bottles of real ale that brought. I sipped at the whisky instead, and insisted the the Colonel drank the lion's share. The theme for the omens of the night, was Turkey. No sooner had I finished murdering 'thank you' in Turkish to a girl downstairs, than I found myself repeating them to a different girl upstairs. As all Turks seem to, she looked non-impressed with my pronunciation, but begrudgingly allowed that it sounded almost correct. I had arrived upstairs, hoping for the toilet, bursting with urgency that only beer can bring to a man. 'Oh god, why do people wait until the last minute, to when they really need to go desperately, when at a party?' I ask the Turkish girl I haven't met yet. 'I'm a pretty nasty person,' she says to me, 'I wouldn't speak to me if I were you.' Which is certainly an interesting conversational gambit. However, I take the bait. 'Surely, that's for other people to decide, not you?' The door opens, and she gestures for me to go in first. 'See?' I tell her, 'You're not nasty at all.' She gives me an icy glare of the kind only ever seen in science fiction films where the fearsome queen of the desolate ice-barrens is about to stab the hero through the heart. Downstairs and I'm talking too much, loving the sound of my own voice -- I get cocky with alcohol, filled with the mistaken imagination that I'm pretty goddamm cool. I have advice for everyone, if they want and / or need it or not. I find myself saying to Delia, 'Look, if your hiccup cure doesn't work it's because you're not in control of your body. Not in complete control. But look, this is your body, you should be able to decide if you hiccup or not...' I'm surprised that people take the time to listen to me at all sometimes. And so it continues until only a few of us remain and I'm drinking half a glass of flat cider, which is all I can find left on the house. So we leave, in the pouring rain, at 5am. |
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