Life's Unanswered Questions?

Last time I had a house party, my parents kindly donated a bottle of Vodka. Said bottle wasn’t just the standard Smirnoff or any of its equally commercial friends. Far from it. This vodka was something really special that had been lurking away with the bottle of Cherry Brandy and some other brown tar-like liqueur in my parent’s alcohol cabinet since... well, a hell of a long time ago!

“Did you know this vodka is from the U.S.S.R?” one of my friends asked.

“Well that must mean its good stuff then,” I reply. The U.S.S.R is Russia, right? I know I teach English but I did get an A* at GCSE geography. Evidently I didn’t take History, otherwise I would have known that the U.S.S.R was dissolved in 1991, which would have meant that in 2010, when I moved into my new flat, this Vodka was upwards of 20 years old. Added to the fact that it was a gift to my dad when he went to Russia (which he hasn’t done since I’ve been alive!) we were probably in for a rough night. After unscrewing the top and practically getting drunk of the alcohol vapour emitted, I decided that this, along with most other vodkas, was not my friend and steered the bottle in the direction of my drink hardened friends. After sinking the majority of the bottle between three of them, by the end of the night it wasn’t their friend either. Even the mention of the dreaded tipple can cause hangover like symptoms; no joke!

Fast forward a year, and after months of trials and tribulations, I was eventually settled in my new abode and ready to warm it in true binge-drinking fashion. Following the customary trip to my parent’s alcohol cabinet, where I managed to unearth a much more palatable bottle of Jack Daniels, and a full, but slightly dubious looking bottle of a Bourbon called Canadian Club whose date of manufacture pre-dated last year’s vodka, I was ready to welcome the revellers. Among the guests were various friends and acquaintances including the colleague who dances like Vanilla Ice and her equally awesome side-kick, the blogging supremo, and most worryingly, the previously mentioned, bad influence and instigator of mischief extraordinaire, Hayley. On spotting the Canadian Club, she remarked with glee that it combined her two most favourite things in life, Canadian’s and whiskey, before setting about devouring the bottle with a little (a lot!) of help from yours truly. If it carried on like this, it was going to be a very messy night!

In order to safeguard my cream carpets from my growing drunkenness, and especially after making such a song-and-dance about everyone bringing non-staining drinks (after all I am now a homeowner, thus take full responsibility for vomit on the carpets, whether mine or otherwise) I decided it was time to steer the gang in the direction of a local cocktail bar, for water of course.

I started to realise that I was on the slippery slope to complete inebriation after trying to limbo under the barrier at the multi-story car park (why we were even in a multi-story car park still remains a complete mystery to me) followed by trying to pole dance on a lamp post.

Just to be on the safe side I carried on drinking as I was pretty sure that I wasn’t entertaining enough already and threw in a few dares just to add to the excitement. After completing many thrusts and singing to randomers, I turned the tables onto someone else.

“Your dare,” I slurred to my colleague, “is to sing ‘You’re just too good to be true’ to that man over there,” as I point vaguely in the direction of someone I’m hoping was male. Surprisingly, not only did she understand what I had asked, she actually did it! If I could do that Ali G style finger clicking and could pull off a fake Reggae accent, now would be the time that I would say Respect! Nonetheless, after harassing the majority of the cliental, it was necessary to make a well timed exit as this was a place that I actually quite like, so didn’t want to run the risk of being ejected... as that would seriously narrow the amount of places that I was able to visit with a shred of dignity intact.

Now for those of you who know Birmingham, there are very few choices to head on to when you are in that state of drunkenness (Broad Street excepted of course, as in fact I was probably way too sober to be heading in that direction!)  apart from the alcohol dependent and wastrel’s Mecca that is Snobs. To give you an idea of the type of place this is, the last time that I had been there (at the end of a date nonetheless... nothing says romance like Snobs!) I witnessed a drunken guy who was passed out on the pavement wet himself. Yet I still went back for more and shamefully, embarrassingly, and probably any other adverbs to describe my drunken actions, this was the second time that I had been to Snobs in the space of a week and if I was not so wasted at this stage I would have been thinking please don’t recognise me, but instead focused on please let me not seem too drunk to be refused entry!

And this leads me on to how I decided on the title for this blog; Life’s unanswered questions, (and don’t worry, I’m not about to get all deep and philosophical and break the habit of a lifetime!)

But I will now pose the following questions:

After discovering the Facebook status... Jack is lost somewhere is Snobs, a particularly sympathetic friend pointed out that it is laid out in a circular pattern and so forming the first question of How the fuck can you get lost in a circle? Well it’s not exactly an unanswerable question if you subtract the near lethal quantities of alcohol from the equation, but it’s still a bit of a doozy.

The second question: What exactly did happen in those three (yes three) hours that I spent at Snobs until four in the morning? Which the leads me onto my third, and most puzzling question.

What. The. Hell. Were we all doing that night to mean that the hardened 6 who remained until the bitter end, woke up the next morning (admittedly horribly hung-over/ still drunk in my case) with our necks completely locked?!

Answers on a post card please.

Don't mess with the routine.

Every day at 6:11 my alarm clock goes off, happily telling me that it’s time to start my day. I then happily ignore it and put the snooze on.

Every day at 6:16 the snooze on my alarm clock goes off, telling me more firmly that I really should be getting out of bed by now.

Then, at 6:17 I check Facebook on my phone (naturally!) to see what excitement has happened since I last checked it, seven and a half hours previously when I went to sleep, no later than 22:40.

All this means that by 6:19 I can be in the shower and by 6:31 I can be sitting down watching Bill and Sian on BBC Breakfast, munching on a Pop-Tart and feeling a lot more human and a lot less like the walking dead.

Needless to say, this is a well oiled routine that demands the upmost of respect in order for me to have the type of uber successful day that befits a young professional such as myself, and if this routine is out by even a minute it can cause an absolute disaster. Say for example, if I decided to let the snooze on my alarm kick in again I would get up at 6:21 which means I would then be in a massive rush to get showered and dressed in order to be sitting down with Pop-Tart in hand by 6:31, which would then mean that I would still be sitting there when the Irish weather girl who tells you, in an unnaturally perky voice for such an ungodly hour, that it will be raining today, and pretty much every other day in the Great British future which really gets my goat. This is turn would mean that-I-didn’t-leave-the-house-until-seven-which-meansthatsI’llgetstuckintrafficandbelateforworkandhaveaprettyFUCKINGMASSIVEMELTDOWN!  

(And breathe!)

I’m sure you get the picture?

Anyhow, as it happens, last Friday morning played out exactly in line with the daily routine which meant that I was about to leave my flat at 6:50 by the clock on the cooker and head down to the car.

Now, in the days leading up to Friday I had been having some problems with the electric clicker to raise the metal security door and let me out of the garage (all of this had been compensated for time wise by getting up at the first ring of the alarm at 6:11 rather than the more desirable 6:16) which meant that a few precious minutes would be lost whilst clicking. Well today, after the previous weeks average of two minutes clicking time I realised, much to my trepidation, than the minutes were slowly ticking away, threatening to mess up the routine.

After five minutes of clicking I resorted to hitting it hard on the steering wheel of the car as that, in the past, had worked.

Not this time.

After ten minutes I decided that I would get out of the car and try and find the receiver for the clicker’s remote. Again, no such luck.

Whilst all this was going on the radio in my car went from playing the usual chart toppers to Scott Mills gleefully announcing the first play of a Christmas song on BBC radio this year, and so, to the warbling tones of Mariah Carey telling me about all I want for Christmas at 6:55am, in OCTOBER, I saw red.

So I swore. Then I swore louder, and then more explicitly. And then I kicked the door just for good measure. I even tried asking it politely to open, much to my own disgust.

None of this made the blindest bit of difference mind you; the garage door was still well and truly shut.

Desperate time call for desperate measures: I was going to have to phone school to explain my current predicament. As most of you know, I had previously been sent home from school for ripping my trousers so this should not come as a complete surprise.

I’m stuck inside my garage so I will be late, was the message I sent to my boss.

Good luck in there! was the reply I received a few minutes later, containing considerably less sympathy than I was hoping for. The fact that this excuse wasn’t even questioned obviously shows that they were more than familiar with my idiocy already.

Anyway, after a further half hour of sitting there getting more and more irate, making an angry phone call to my building manager (who is a relatively butch chap, yet his calls go through to the answer phone of a husky voiced Brummie called Sally) I was eventually saved by the arrival of a man in a Audi with a correctly working clicker and I was once again free!

I’ve escaped! was the message I sent to my boss to let work know I would be on time after all.

Think of the blog was the reply.

And so I did.

Do I look like a parking warden?

“Can I park here?”

A perfectly reasonable question you might say? Of course. So reasonable in fact that I didn’t think this question was destined for me! Yet as I walked across the village car park whilst back home in the ‘shire I hear this question repeated once again.

“Excuse me? Can I park here?”

I glance around. Nope, no one else within ear shot so this disembodied voice must be talking to me. It was way too early in the day to be having auditory hallucinations so I start looking around for where this question is coming from and notice the man in the blue car. He is staring at me intently even though I am wearing my usual neutral slash uninterested slash I haven’t had my morning coffee yet so you can fuck right off expression, yet his questioning persists.

“Well can I?” he says again with added gravitas.

“Er... yes?” I say uncertainly, as it does seem to be a pretty silly conversation to be having... in a car park. Come on, it’s not exactly cryptic.

“Yes I know that,” he says, “but do I have to pay?”

As I have already established, yes this is a car park and, to elucidate further, yes, it is pay and display. Still with me? I know it’s complicated but I’m sure you can keep up.

“Well it is pay and display. Has been since the start of May,” I say before yet again discussing the 10p for four hours parking charge debacle that has been, well, quite possibly the most controversial thing that has happened in Ellesmere in pretty much forever. Or at least since the last murder, sex scandal or the like. I’m kidding. No, that all happens in the next village along. It’s all go in Shropshire, that’s for sure!

“Can you make an exception?” he then asks, looking at me earnestly.

This is getting ridiculous I’m thinking, looking down to check that I haven’t by some miraculous coincidence somehow acquired a parking attendant uniform or even the appearance of someone who gives a shit.

My bemused silence is obviously not what he was hoping for.

“I only need a piss,” he says as if that will somehow validate this whole conversation, “Do you want me to just do it down my leg?”

If we are talking about stuff that I want him to do, urinating in front of me is not exactly high on my list, in fact it doesn’t even feature within the top ten.  I could quite easily provide him with a range of ideas of things that I would like him to do, starting with this; leave me alone, you weirdo!

“I’m disabled,” he continues.

Mentally? I want to ask yet think better of it. By this time my patience is wearing thin and I now have only 3 hours and 55 minutes of my own parking time left in which to buy the newspaper so I’m sure you can appreciate the urgency of my predicament.

“It would appear that you have already made the decision that you are not going to pay the 10 pence, so I think that regardless of what I say it will make very little difference to your final action,” I retaliate, flashing a winning smile at the same time to diffuse the mounting venom.

At this, I decide this is a logical point to stop this conversation before it turns into a whole to-do. Judging by the fact that following my last comment he then drove off to park his car, in the car park, so did he.

On my return to the car park a few minutes later, I see the man once again, this time at the ticket machine. He must have heeded my advice, I think and feel a momentary swell of triumph. As I carry on walking I smile at the lady passing by only to hear this from behind me as she reaches the machine a few seconds later:

“Do I have to pay for parking? I’m disabled!”

And so the cycle continues.