The twat’s restaurant survival guide: 1. Insult all the waiters by racist banter i.e. hey Punjab, can we have some more drinks?
2. Tell all the waitresses that they’ve got fantastic breasts.
3. Order something really inappropriate i.e. egg fried rice in an Indian restaurant or chop and chips in a pizzeria.
4. Pretend you know what’s in every dish on the menu and then order something you don’t like and spend the rest of the evening saying things like ‘I think they overcooked the sauce a bit’, leaving the meal untouched.
5. Tell the waiter at the table you want to order the best champagne in the place, nip to the gents and whilst passing the bar change the order to the cheapest without telling anyone.
6. Say hello to everyone who walks through the door as if you’re really popular when really you don’t know a soul.
7. Try and get a discount off the bill by telling the staff they need his repeat business.
8. Try and flog the head waiter some dodgy fags you’ve just smuggled into the country.
9. Embarrass all your female guests by telling them you’re in love with them.
10. Embarrass your wife by telling her in public that her tits are sagging.
11. Order red and white wine and when one runs out start drinking the other before the next bottle arrives 12. Insist in having a double brandy in your coffee.
13. Flash a load of notes every time you have to go into your pocket when you owe everyone money.
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14. Tell disgusting and bigoted jokes loud enough for the entire restaurant to hear.
15. Drink some more
16. Drive home.
Ninety-one
I can’t concentrate on this next film that’s showing.
Not just because it’s a dreadful film but because my mind’s not here. I don’t know where it is. The chap next to me keeps flicking between channels impatiently. He’s got something on his mind too. You can tell. He’s fidgety. I want to take his hand. No words. Not in any sexual or suggestive way but just to let him know I know he’s thinking. I won’t. It would be too complicated. Taken the wrong way. Our species would be better if could just drop all barriers and hold each others hand for a while.
Watching the slight judder of the wing. If I was ten inches to my right I would fall away and get lost to the clouds. The wing looks old, it has developed its own markings. Looking at the screws holding it in place, it all looks so fragile. Yet I feel safe. The constant whirr of the engines is comforting. The sound of the wind against this alien body. I wish I could reach out and touch it. If I fell out of the sky now, I wonder where I would land. It’s an odd recurring thought.
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Ninety-two
I stopped falling. I fell through a roof and found myself sitting at a worn but homely wooden table. I was surrounded by a small group of people. A family.
They had a Latvian look about them. It was cold.
Someone passed me a hat. I put it on. No one spoke. I looked up to the hole in the roof. Above it I could see the first stars appearing. I looked back to the table.
There was a bowl of soup infront of me. It smelt good.
I turned my head and looked at the small boy sitting next to me. He smiled at me and offered me his bread.
We all laughed long into the night, sat at the table, drinking and laughing. We didn’t speak. We could not understand one another through language. Late on, as the children were nodding off to sleep with their heads on my shoulders, I knew I had to leave. I floated back up towards the roof, through to the chill night air. I took off my hat and threw it down towards the small opening, now quickly fading, so that I could feel the breeze. I was back where I belonged but sad in a way.
It was a nice place. I had wanted to stay.
Ninety-three
My favourite state of drunkenness is when you claim to be perfectly sober. You’ve been out all day and have run out of fingers to count how many drinks you’ve had, have talked nonsense to everyone you know, including those people you hate so much you wouldn’t usually even say hello to and had a real struggle just to get yourself the few yards home 80
without falling into a hedge…..and still, once through the door, you vehemently believe that you are sober as a judge and if anyone says otherwise, you come up with a wealth of excuses, such as, well I had some chips so that soaked it all up, or, I didn’t mix my drinks so I’m absolutely fine, I wasn’t really in the mood for drinking anyway so I took it easy……soon followed by, I knew the door was there, I was just testing you, it wasn’t me who couldn’t get in, it’s this key of mine, it never bloody works, have we got any sausages in the freezer, I could eat my own head, I can’t get my trousers off, this bloody button’s been going for ages, I meant to drop all this change on the floor just so I could see how much money I’ve got left…or my personal favourite, re-emphasizing your comments, even going so far as to say, I know you don’t believe me but I feel like I haven’t touched a drop, I’m as sober as a child, getting in bed, rolling over, off the side of the bed and falling headfirst into the pot plant.
Ninety-four
Why is there red tape everywhere you turn? Simple.
So that you can always be controlled to some extent.
Just trying to get a reduced rate flight when working in travel for a while is like trying to piss in the wind.
You have to have worked here x long, you have to get it cleared with eighteen different people, most of whom, no matter how long you’ve worked there, will even give a flying fuck what your name is, then you have to contact someone through someone else and provide them with a form that you can’t understand after studying it for three hours and if you eventually 81
get your head round all the fucking nonsense you sit there for two weeks, checking your emails on a minutely basis only to realize that no fuckers read your useless form, no one’s going to read it and if by some chance they do pull it out of the bin next to the fax machine and can be arsed reading it, you may get a short reply. Sorry, this isn’t applicable. Go and take a fucking running jump.
Abductions. Some people are truly screwed up. I don’t know whether society and its confines are responsible but things like that make you sick to the stomach. You suddenly become afraid to be a free person, afraid to walk alone in the evening, afraid of peaceful places, afraid for your friends children.
Afraid of the unthinkable but knowing all the possibles. Rape. Murder. Even if you lock yourself away in your own home, it doesn’t mean you’re immune, it just depends who’s watching you.
My ovaries are throbbing again. Aching. My body yelling at me again. I can feel my personality changing as I am sitting here. Hardening. I do become someone else.
Someone I don’t recognize. Someone from my past.
Vulnerable.
I look at the hands typing. Are they mine? I don’t want them to belong to me.
Ninety-five
I have just been interrupted by the air steward serving breakfast but it was a wasted interruption considering 82
she had no vegetarian breakfast. You would think in this day and age a reputable airline would cater for people who prefer not to eat pigs ass. It’s so frustrating from time to time. I keep my mouth shut. I could have really fancied a croissant. I think I’ll go back to looking at the wing.
Everyone’s eating. I’m hungry. The poxy bread roll I was offered didn’t seem at all appetizing. This is a world where people don’t like you to have too many choices.
A new day is beginning. I can see the sky lightening out of the cabin window. The view is restricted but for most of us shouldn’t be too much of a difference. I turn my head a little further back and see the blackness still behind us. There is someone back there who still doesn’t know I am gone. It may be some time before they notice.
Ninety-six
I really do drink too much. I was on holiday with a man. I spent the evening in a comatosed state after drinking too much local brandy. We then met some folk who’d bought a house in the Cypriot hills. We were invited for drinks on their outdoor terrace which I’m sure was lovely. I drank until I couldn’t see and my partner drank until he couldn’t speak with even an ounce of intelligence. I gave up first and decided it was time to leave the party. Our hosts, full of concern for the weird girl, who looked at this stage of the evening like something of a liability, decided that my partner should stay and finish his tale, the one which he was making up as he went along, and their sixteen year old son would walk me home. No, the story isn’t 83
going that way at all. Anyhow, the one thing I was to keep in my clouded mind all the five minutes back, was to remember to give the key to the sixteen year old after I’d let myself in and he would bring it back for my partner so he could get in later.
I made it back without being sick which I considered something of an achievement, ignored the poor, bewildered sixteen year old boy, who was looking at me in disillusionment. This wasn’t how women were portrayed in magazines. Surely after a few drinks we were supposed to look sexy and alluring, not uncoordinated and cross-eyed. As he attempted to say goodnight, I fell in through my door and shut it in his face. A few minutes later when the floor stopped moving as much and I managed to get myself somewhat vertical, I was still clasping the key. Never mind, I’ll just stay up. I decided that staying up would be much more comfortable if I put my baggy sleeping t-shirt on. This completed, after falling over twice trying to get my pants off, I decided waiting in bed would be better for me. No problem. I could stay awake and read.
I was woken quite rudely by a knock on the door. It was a slow knock and each one felt like it was on the side of my head. I grumbled and turned to tell my sleeping companion that someone was knocking on the door. Then I made the mistake of opening my eyes, for of course my companion wasn’t there. He’d been curled up on the cold marble entrance, in the brisk mountain air for the previous five hours.
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Ninety-seven
Would you punch someone who didn’t give you the remote control? Roll around on the floor using every wrestling technique you could think of?
I know a man that can.
Why are kids crisps so damn nice? I know the answer to that and it’s quite sick but it doesn’t stop me eating eight packets at once when I’ve got a hangover. I go round to my friend’s house just so I can nick her kid’s food. It’s all so fucking shameful.
I often wonder what early humans would think of us.
Not just early humans, but medieval knights, Roman prostitutes, Victorian housemaids. I often wonder what they would make of our world as it is now. I wonder what I would say if they were sat in the passenger seat of my car. Imagine being an early human and seeing a car, a medieval knight looking up at an aeroplane, a Roman prostitute watching women in trousers working in previously male only environments, a Victorian housemaid watching a dvd on a plasma screen. I’m not kidding. I’m totally fascinated by this. They would probably commit suicide within a week. At first, it might seem attractive and new, glorious and uplifting but after a while, it would sink in that deep down the world is just the same. Human nature hasn’t changed, only its guises. We appear civilized but as most of us know, appearances mean little when the essence remains unchanged.
I hosted a murder mystery night once. The theme was Hollywood. You know the idea, everyone has a part 85
delivered to them a week before and has to come as their character, act in character and drink as much as possible. Amongst the chaos, we had a dried up old actor, a leading member of the mafia, Robin Hood, a pirate and a cowboy, complete with guns and spears.
Well I hadn’t laughed so much in fucking ages. We made death punch which made most of us keel over although we weren’t the victim. Any drink we didn’t like that came through the door went in it. It was quite palatable but absolutely lethal.
Most people forgot who they were after an hour and I collapsed in a drunken heap on my windowsill and stayed there asleep for two hours whilst everyone took photographs of me. I still think about the man who had the task of putting Captain Hook to bed that night.
I walk around with cards with my name on. It’s supposed to be a privilege but if truth be known, it’s only a reminder that most people you meet don’t give a crap and need a card to remember who you are and what you do. It’s only natural, you can’t remember everyone you meet but when your card sits in a pile amongst countless others on a dusty desk, you can’t help but feel insignificant and delete-able.
The truth is we are all insignificant. None of it actually matters in any way. No matter how much we think we are advancing, we will all die and unless we develop the technology to leave this planet, then our race will eventually be engulfed by the sun. If a meteor doesn’t get us first. I actually believe we ourselves will be the cause of our own destruction, if not deliberately by war then stupidly with no ozone layer, no forests, global warming and pollution. Take your pick. Our race will not be a constant in time. It will have an end. Somewhere. I don’t know if the human race should develop the technology to inhabit 86
other planets, other solar systems. Just imagine how much damage we could do.
Ninety-eight
I re-visited a conservation zoo recently. Not for a holiday. I felt the urge to return even though last time I went I was very nearly physically sick after watching a chimp do a big dump in its hand and then shovel it into its mouth for a nourishing meal. I was very close to hurling just thinking about it. At least evolution has benefited us in some ways. I can’t really imagine that sort of behaviour around a dinner table.
I love animals. This particular zoo has a bat cave and honestly, you could spend hours in there. Well, those people that aren’t touched by that female pathetic-ness we are so accustomed to. After being in there for a while, your eyes become accustomed to the dark and you start to make out shapes hanging from the trees.
I’m talking about fruit-bats here and they are the cutest animal. If you sit down, they fly right past your head. You don’t notice at first but they’re all around you, dodging you using their sonar awareness. It’s fabulous. It’s a peaceful experience and leaves you feeling exhilarated. I took my friends kids in there.
They were afraid at first but after I’d told them about the bats and that they were completely harmless, they lost their inhibitions and boldly walked in. I couldn’t get them out, they loved it so much. Yet, if I’d have walked in with them nervously, shrieking every time I saw a shadow, like a few people we saw, I’m sure the kids would be terrified for life. Funny, isn’t it, you don’t understand how many of your unfounded fears 87
rub off on your children. Goes back to what I was saying about a lot of people being fucked up. Like follows like. Unless you reach a state of awareness where you don’t allow it to happen any more.
The orangutans simply looked at me with a bored expression. If they did have the power of speech I’m sure all they would ask for is their freedom. Yet we can’t do that. The species that try to preserve their race is the same species that try to extinguish it. These animals can never be truly free. They are like escaped convicts, always being hunted. Always running.
Running. I hate running. Only because I can’t do it.
I’ve got odd legs which humiliate me every time I need to run. They’re long and lean but unfortunately I have the most useless knees. Two operations on foreign bodies located there. Foreign bodies. I love that. Only small operations but enough to mean that I have a great excuse for not doing any strenuous exercise. Even if I didn’t have any problems in the leg department, I’d still find an excuse. I fucking hate exercise, unless it’s walking. I still have vivid memories of trying to improve the way I look so other people would accept me. The vision of my mirror image, in cycling shorts, t-shirt, badly fitting sport’s bra and a face as red as a tomato, leaping around in a gawkish fashion on a running machine will never leave me.
I still run away a lot though. Just not for fun. No physical exertion necessary.
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Ninety-nine
I wonder who designed the overhead cabin signs?
There’s one with a plumped out stick figure holding a tray above its head with a cup on it. I gather it’s supposed to be pressed if you need assistance from the crew. I think if you actually pressed it and asked for a cup of tea you wouldn’t be popular. Besides, stewards don’t carry trays above their heads. Even if they did it would be most stupid. People don’t realize the danger of hot liquids.