hooray ‘enry

5 am, outside the Conrad Hotel Chelsea I come across a well-dressed young man wearing a huge Rolex and very expensive hand made shoes, lying unconscious on the pavement. I lean over him and ask him if he’s alright. Nothing. He’s breathing okay and there are no signs of injury, I conclude, like me, he’s pissed. I call again, this time louder and shake him on the shoulder; he sort of stirs but isn’t responding. I’m tired and dawn is breaking, I can’t leave a man down like this, so I slap him, hard, once across his face. He leaps to his feet and stands unsteadily on the pavement trying to focus on me. ‘You should be more careful where you sleep’ I say before walking off. Saying nothing the young man stumbles off in the opposite direction. What an ungrateful little fuck.

I spent yesterday in the flat recovering, after eating the biggest kipper in the world and the Grand Prix, Myfwt came over and we lay on the couch watching TV. The hangover wasn’t as bad as it should’ve been, though it took a couple of glasses of liberated champagne in the evening to finally see it off.

It had been quite an intense weekend. Jamie came over on Friday night. He’s one of my closest mates, we’d not seen each other in a while so before we’d even started we both knew the score. We got to the pub at 8-ish it was fucking packed out with Rugby types watching the Rugby. My desire to drink ale drove us through a thick wall of shouting men to a seething bar. If it wasn’t for the fact I was a regular I would’ve been stood for at least another 10 minutes before I was served. So bad was it that the first 2 rounds Jamie and I doubled up. We sat in the garden in relative peace, smoking and laughing about disgusting things. At some point a bunch of fireworks went off, we staggered out before midnight and went to the Lebanese café for some food. After a session of Dio period Black Sabbath and some more beer we finally turned in.

I woke up to the sound of Jamie farting, startling volume, which I countered with a very long controlled emission that was compromised only by my amusement. We had breakfast and watched Saturday Kitchen whilst we sobered up. As we’d been on beer all night the aftermath wasn’t that bad, by lunchtime Jamie and I were both safe enough to move the day on. I hit Sainsbury in a military strike, in and out in 30 minutes, a personal record. At 4pm I began to prepare for the evenings horror by taking the clippers to my balls. Every few months I’ll clip the hedge, I don’t want my clackers looking like David Blunkett, nor do I like half my lad buried up to its waist in pubes, besides it’s more comfortable, hygienic. Grade 2 for the top half, grade 1 for the clockweights. I was just finishing off the latter, when on an upstroke I managed to snag some of my scrote in the gnashing teeth of the clippers. I yelped. It hurt rather. A lot of blood appeared in a worrying short period of time and I decided that I mustn’t faint, it was quite a hard decision as it was awfully red. I may have admitted in the past in this very blog to nicking the bag once before, that was nothing in comparison to this. After I’d calmed down and examined the area in more detail, I spied, to my horror, a 2 cm strip of ballskin hanging down like a dork. I had no option but to clean my nail scissors and undertake surgery on my self. In one clean and relatively pain free ‘snip’ a part of me was flung into the sink and washed away with a sneer.

I took a hot bath after the blood had subsided. When I got out the bath I checked myself, all was good. Then I towelled myself dry and hit the spot I’d forgotten to ignore, instantly there was blood everywhere. This time it took half an hour to stem the flow. Even as I type this I’m acutely aware of my healing wound.

I arrived by cab at the Albert Hall for 6.15, suited, booted, groomed and annoyed. I met my colleagues and we went off for pre-concert drinks. I was shoving champagne down my neck as fast as I could without it spilling out of my nose. Being drunk wasn’t an option. I had a total of 3 hours of misery ahead save a 20-minute break in the middle. Now, I’m not going to criticise the Proms music, I’m sure it’s excellent, I just don’t happen to like classical music, it leaves me cold for I rock. What I am happy to fucking moan about are, on the whole, the awful (last night) audience. This is particularly problematic in the second half when the ‘fun’ takes place. ‘Fun’ being letting off balloons that make a ‘funny noise’. The reaction from the audience is staggering, as if they were all suddenly 5-year-old school children who’d never seen a balloon before. The interval drinks were having the desired effect though and in the latter half I was able to engage with Danny Boy (wonderful lyrics) and Jerusalem (I like William Blake) before all the jingoistic nationalistic stuff regurgitates itself out of the guts of the Victorian Empire where we enslaved nations and gave the darkies what for. I’ve not decided if this part is just awful or actually offensive.

At last it finished, I popped out for a quick burn with a colleague and we went back in for the after show party, as we were going up the stairs a fight broke out among 5 people, not one a day under 80. An old man with a stick holding an old woman with mild Parkinson’s, who also had a stick, pushed an old lady (without a stick) over so that she fell into the lift. Two horrified friends of the now recumbent lady in the lift took objection to this and began barging into the protagonist and his companion. As I passed I loudly said ‘what disgraceful behaviour’ as belligerently as possible though I was actually trying very hard not to laugh and point. It was fucking ace, but on the other hand it may give you some idea of what I was up against.

There were more drinks at the after show party where we mingled with the cream of the world of classical music. Doesn’t mean much to me I’m afraid but the wine and the canapés were excellent. My mobile went off, I discreetly answered, it was Jerry. He and a friend were in the Mandarin Orient hotel in Kensington and I was invited to join them for (yet more) drinks. I was going to decline when I though ‘fuck it’. It was gone midnight and I wasn’t done yet.

I jumped into a cab and arrived in the marble lobby, for once not feeling like a spare prick at a wedding as I was perfectly dressed for the place. Jerry and his friend, Sean were already lolling about chatting to a quantity of expensively attired women in their late 30’s early 40’s sipping champagne. I had some more wine and mucked in. By now I was getting to the point of inebriation but I maintained some sort of social reasoning. The bar shut at 2 am and I was flung into a large cab with Jerry, Sean and three of the women from the bar. To my surprise an American one began to repeatedly kiss to the driver on the mouth as he was driving causing the cab to lurch across the road. Not even the shrieks of objection from the back would quell her passion.

Mercifully we arrived at the Conrad Hotel in one piece and went to Sean’s suite where the mini bar was taken to task. The three girls were totally unfazed (worryingly perhaps) about relaxing in a room with three men they’d met a mere few hours before. The particularly refreshed American one, arseholed might be more apt, insisted on telling me over and over how she’d ‘kick my ass’, she was quite a big girl, I wasn’t going to argue with her. One of the party was a very well spoken Englishwoman, mother of three apparently, lived in Dubai with her husband. Just before they all left at around 4am I was waiting for Sean to come out of the WC so I could take a leak. The Englishwoman came into the bathroom, spotting some sort of a queue decided she could no longer wait and, without so much as a by your leave, pissed in the bath.

It’s Monday morning, the worst part of the week. This bloody song has been going round my head all weekend, I fucking love it.