I had hoped that having a laptop was going to make my life easier, I had thought that it would enable me to immediately place my shafts of wit and flashes of brilliance into the public domain. I had forgotten that the source of some of those shafts of wit and flashes of brilliance was the disinhibiting effect of alcohol, and that while those SoW’s and FoB’s were fulminating under the carapace, I would have to be able to type, which is difficult when your fingers and eyes are equally disinhibited, which is why I’m transposing this from a barely legible scrawl mainly written in block capitals so that I can translate it.
There comes a moment in an evening’s drinking where one attains a transcendental state resembling Godhood (Dionysus or Bacchus, I suspect), you can do no wrong, every thought is hilarious, you are the epitome of Adonis and Casanova combined. All this can be instantly undone by catching a glimpse of oneself in a suitably reflective surface – the Dorian Grey Moment. It’s also undone, though with a considerable longueur, the following morning when one becomes the epitome of Job and Lazarus combined.
Just before Christmas I had succumbed to an offer in my local supermarket; two bottles of liqueur for twenty five pounds, I had selected Drambuie (sweet whisky) and Cointreau (a confection of oranges). The thing about liqueurs is that they are sweet, and because they are sweet, they can do you no harm, they obviously contain no alcohol.
I had been out for an evening with Dean: Doom, Gloom, Optimism, Serenity, Pragmatism (ascribe as you see fit, they were all covered, apart from Optimism, which kept itself hidden under a rock, and is likely to stay there in the present work climate). Arriving home I decided on a nightcap and stupidly embarked on a trip around my liqueurs, a trip into a dimension several removed from self-denial, but hey, it’s only sugar and fruit it might even be good for you – my arse.