I’m in a very strange frame of mind. Akin to being blind drunk but with all my faculties intact. Disconnected if you will.

Last night, and I can’t recall a time when this was the case, I didn’t have a drop to drink nor a crumb to smoke. The reason was probably to do with the bug attack the previous evening, forcing me to sleep in and abandon my blog for the first time in 2 months. The buggette has been going round the office and ends with the screaming abdabs, of which I have a mild dose.

But there was another reason I abstained, simply to see if I could. One is very aware that one likes a drink, to the point that not a single day goes past without one, my particular peccadillo being wine. Needless to say the evening was stultifying dull, the early part of the evening being the worst and I was feeling so lackadaisical I found myself watching fucking Eastenders, I’ve not done that since the halcyon days of Den and Ange, it’s still a vicious little peak into the miserable lives of awful slimy cunts to the point one feels like a shower afterwards.

I ate a very healthy meal of broccoli and chicken, this was the peak of alcohol craving, then channel hopped for a bit and read. Falling asleep wasn’t easy either though I managed to have a relatively early night and must have slept 9 hours straight.
I feel as if I have a un-hangover, I feel stiff and vague, my vision is skewed and I’m fucking livid about something, just not sure what exactly. I’m sure this has nothing to do with a very mild dose of the cacks, I’m fairly sure that this is what it feels like to wake up sober after eating well and avoiding toxins… as Frank Sinatra said –and in my opinion this is the only reason ol’ blue shouldn’t have had them poked out with a pencil- ‘I feel sorry for people that don’t drink, because when they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’ll feel all day’. My apologies to regular Piqued readers if I’ve said this in previous pages, take it as a sign of my malaise.

The office is virtually empty which is just great as I’m on deadline for a fucking important project. It was all hands on deck yesterday, obviously a little bit of work has knackered the little cunts out and they most likely are lolling about in bed pulling duvets over eyes. It is a stunning spring day, however, bright, sunny and the groan of cold is being suppressed by a more temperate climate, I saw some blossom this morning and in spite of my pissed off state I did feel something akin to ‘pleasant’.

Still, looking ahead, the weekend looks as if it’s going to be fun. Doubtless meeting with pals on Friday for a few beers, most certainly my bro who I’m still chuffed is back and on Saturday one of my best friends has invited me and a lovely close friend (with tits) another good friend and his wife, to celebrate the formers engagement with his fiancée on Saturday night. I do like eating out with close friends, indeed, I think it is one of the true advantages of getting old(er).

But before all that I have to suffer the fucking day at the office, un-hungover and feeling a little dicky. Poor Dicky.

No blog today, I’ve been up all night barfing at the moon, didn’t get much sleep as a result and I’ve lost the power to, whatever.

I’m fucking shit at DIY -when I say ‘DIY’ I don’t mean that as a euphemism for wanking, because I’m fucking ace at that- no, I’m shit at actual real DIY. After yesterdays blog I emptied the bathroom of it’s contents, which was tiresome to say the least and began to prepare the walls, for what I’m unsure. Using one of the sanding blocks from a previous failed project my initial enthusiasm for the task in hand instantly dwindled when I realised that I’d not thought any of this through.

Basically, and this is boring but I have to get it off my chest, when I painted the bathroom a few years ago I didn’t use anti-damp paint because it takes longer and smells like a wino’s tongue. As a result the paint has cracked in various places and in varying degrees. I convinced myself for a while that it gave the bathroom a rusticy ruralish ‘french’ sort of a vibe until a person with tits told me it resembled a Turkish prison cell. I was rather hoping to ‘sand-off’ the cracked bits; smooth the walls down or something. What happened was that cracked paint either fell off or refused to budge despite elbow grease. After three quarters of an hour of this crap I decided I was into Turkish prison cell chic, painted over the bits where I’d revealed the original undercoat, put the contents of the bathroom back and simply threw the fucking brush away as I couldn’t be pissed to clean it. Utter waste of an hour and a half where I could’ve been doing proper DIY, eh lads…

Following this disappointing interlude I had a shower and set off to meet my brother at our usual hostelry in Clapham. I arrived first, just in time for a table to come available and suddenly there he was. It seemed like he’d been away for ages until I saw him, then it seemed like it had been mere hours, oddly. We played catch up and he settled into his travel tales derived from couple of weeks in New Zealand and a few days in Sidney and Hong Kong. In short he went to wonga morra and Katie Katie on a catamaran, it rained in Sydney and he was freaked in Hong Kong. He also stood on a wasp.

We had a few pints and a whisky and all too soon it was time to go. Is there anything worse than leaving a pub on Sunday evening? To make matters worse it was sheeting with rain and my umbrella made me look like a brown hatter. I got back to my flat and ate smoked salmon which was a challenge in itself as the flat stinks, Cunt and his dad have been slamming and banging downstairs all weekend and the adhesive they’ve used to seal the wooden floor is cadaverous. As I was leaving for the boozer yesterday I got a half arsed apology for the noise. The noise has been appalling but over the past 9 fucking months I’ve sort of got used to it (and it’s no where near as bad as Cunt and his guitar) but the fucking smell radiating from downstairs is dreadful.

What is particularly cruel is this is just the sort of smell I was wishing for, a smell that would indicate the cessation of existence, but instead it represents progress. And it affected my eating of smoked salmon last night and for that vengeance will be mine (maybe).

I made a half arsed attempt to not go to the pub last night. I’d been discussing the possibilities with my mate from up the road by text but nothing was fixed. By 7.30 I’d decided, irrespective of his decision to go up the road with his missus that I would be good and stay in. I blew him out by text ‘going to stay in tonight mate’ he replied ‘Sure? We’re just setting off…’ and my willpower went out the window, it doesn’t take much. However, I didn’t spend too long there as I wasn’t feeling that good opting instead to return home, lazily cook corned beef hash and have a few glasses of Beaujolais in front of the TV. Danny Devito’s role In War of the Roses I hasten to add is a triumph…

Earlier in the day the hangover from Friday night had reduced me to crawling pace, nasty vicious spiteful fucker it was, caused by a numerous variety of boozes with every single one conspiring against me. I had woken late, sweating like a freshly convicted nonce with my stomach filled with hellish liquids that really would’ve been better jettisoned. Being sick in the morning is for birds what are knocked up the duff, so I grimly clung on, sensibly establishing that it was food I needed. After a bath I made bacon and eggs on autopilot, which is a shame because lately I’ve taken to poaching the eggs in the traditional manner of swirling boiling water in a pan and plopping the egg in the vortex, it’s never really been a 100% successful until yesterday and can’t remember exactly what I did, but I do know I employed ‘other’. The eating had the desired results and I began to ponder the matter of the dreadful weekly shop to the hypermarket. In the bath earlier I’d vetoed the project but as I was beginning to recover I made the decision to give it a shot.

I listened to the Saturday play on the radio (it was a beauty, ladies and gentlemen, 2.30pm every Saturday, try it…) managing to smoke a cigarette without my brains spinning like a jumble sale blender and tentatively set off. I arrived, parked, recycled some glass and shit and went up the escalator to the cathedral of consumerism. This place is roughly the size of two football pitches –why on earth I am using ‘football pitches’ as a yardstick I’ve no idea, it’s a sport that is played and watched by queers- and it was fucking rammed with cunts, families of cunts, single lonely cunts, fat cunts, thin cunts and, of course, retard cunts, the latter being the worst by far. From the outset I was struggling to maintain calm, panic was sat crouched a few inches below my throat restricting my breathing, focussing on the task in hand relieved the fear but mid way through the shop a screaming cunting child set me off. Abandoning my trolley I lurched towards the toilets. After ten minutes of face-splashing and cradling my head in my hands in a cubicle I returned to the store. My trolley was as I’d left it and I continued as if nothing had happened.

Mission accomplished, I returned home and unpacked, cut the lilies and read the paper, still feeling decidedly less than well I contemplated the pub and recalled the previous evenings events that had caused my malaise. After leaving work I got a lift to this fucking awful cocktail bar in Wimbledon with some work colleagues. I despise Wimbledon; apart from the very, very occasional exception I don’t think I’ve seen a single pretty face in a decade of passing through it to work. It’s such a vacuous little town, insular, pathetic and here I was involved with post-work chitchat with those I work with in a dimly-lit cack hole. After a couple of pints (I spurred the overpriced luminous swill in idiot goblets) I was actually starting to relax, but not sufficiently to give up on a drink at my local with my mate from up the road who’d unexpectedly found himself at a loose end, and my very old friend with whom I’d spent a long night a few weeks ago. We three drunk well and my old friend and I decided, foolishly, to continue our conversation in my flat. I grabbed a fresh pizza and some wine from bloody Tesco and we came back, both of us the worse for wear but determined to enjoy just one more. Typically, the conversations refused to show any signs of slowing, the wine was drunk, then G&T’s, then whisky and ginger, then I had a full on white-out. It was one of those nasties where ones overweight head fills as if it’s made of solid brass until moved, then it takes on the quality of a slopping bladder of sour milk triggering the stomach to slowly rotate and pushing the contents of the bowel into the chest. Even after I recovered I persevered with my drink, the conversation still being lively though somewhat garbled and backed by a fucking brilliant soundtrack of early Hawkwind, Mark Lanagan, Velvet Underground and Nirvava, dear, dear Kurt. I’ve no idea what time my mate left, 4 maybe? And I don’t recollect what time I subsequently went to sleep, all I can tell you in that I’d almost poisoned myself and was deliriously happy.

As I write this its Sunday afternoon, 4-ish and I’ve just eaten Sunday lunch, roast chicken breast with streaky bacon, crispy roast Maris Piper potatoes, organic broccoli and a single, perfect, red onion and pork sausage. Jealous? Don’t be, it was alright. Following a bit of restoration in the bathroom I have one, splendid task to undertake before saying farewell to the weekend. My brother is back from his trip; I’ve not seen him for precisely 3 weeks, the longest I’ve not seen him since he was born and I am disproportionately excited. Incidentally, I’ve had 3 good shits today each one bearing forth at least 3 fat turds, making a grand total of 9. Can anyone beat that?