It’s good to try new things.

On Saturday I managed to indulge in three new experiences.

1) I’ve never read any of my fiction out loud. Or not in a formal environment, anyway. Sure, I wander around the house reading parts to myself, irritating the neighbours by repeating the same two paragraphs again and again, altering just a single adverb. It’s a useful part of the editing process. It forces me to think about how words sound in other people’s heads as well as how they scan on the page. Also, by enunciating every syllable typos are revealed - as though the part of my brain that controls the eyes expects to read words correctly and so does; it’s only when the mouth becomes involved that I realise there’s no q in picture, or whatever it may be.

There was the opportunity to perform (for want of a better word) at the college open day and I decided this would be a reasonable way to ease myself into reading to an audience, popping my vocal cherry as it were. As most of the listeners were fellow students it would, in theory, be a unhostile audience.

I haven’t been nervous about speaking in front of people for years, but for some reason on Saturday morning my stomach was making unusual twists. I was a cluster of indecision; changing my mind from minute to minute over which part of the story I’d selected I was actually going to read; wishing I’d picked another, better, short story in the first place.

Preferably written by someone else.

Plus I seemed to be losing my voice.

I’m strangely susceptible to sore throats. It does that whole rasping, tin-foil crackling thing. It sounds like I’m rumbling through a million cheap cigarettes.

The indecision was made worse by the part of the story I’d originally chosen, the part I thought was the best bit, the lines I’d been practising all week, but hadn’t really grasped that I was going to have to sing. I’d been ignoring the fact that there are Beach Boys lyrics playing the background; woven into the narrative.

I can’t sing. Even with my pipes working perfectly I am utterly, utterly tuneless. Somehow I’d allowed Beck to convince me that it wouldn’t matter.

“You sound fine,” she’d said. “You can pull it off.”

Evil, evil, evil.

On Friday I found the recording function on my mobile.

(Shudder.)

So, my hasty rethinking was still taking place when I walked into the senior common room with the whole story printed out in an oversized font.

Then I spotted the free wine.

“I’ll just have a glass. To help me relax. To loosen up my nerves and my voice,” I thought to myself but in my mind’s eye there was that look Beck does so well.

One, of course, became three and red wine in a warm room doesn’t really help already dry throats.

Still, I got away with it. Just about. I think.

And afterwards there was a little surge of adrenaline that pushed another three glasses down before I’d even noticed so as when Amy said “pub?” I went “yeah, all right then. A quick one.”

A pint was all I had time for because I was pulling the six to twelve shift at another pub, the one they pay me spend time in, which leads us to…

2) …Being a bit pissed whilst working.

Technically, I probably have done this before. The large media company I spent for two and half years working for had a very boozy culture. The pub was the most popular lunchtime destination five days a week. In fact, I once bumped into an editor coming out of the pub at one o’clock who closed one eye to focus on me and said: “Shit! Is it lunchtime already? I only nipped in for a quick one before heading up to my desk.”

One pint was fine. I could work with that. Two or more and I’d do nothing for the afternoon except hide from the telephone in the photocopier room. So whilst I may have been a bit pissed inside an office I didn’t actually DO any work.
(Which is why after a while I either stopped going to the pub at lunchtimes or sneakily switched to shandies).

Working in a pub, however, doesn’t really offer any hiding opportunities. A busy Saturday night is not the time to lurk around the cellar pretending to collect the bottles needed for restocking the bar.

Initially it felt like the rest of the world was on fast-forward around me. Voices came across as a high pitched scramble that needed translating. People left templates of themselves in their wake, glimmers of where they’d been moments before.

The physical act of doing stuff, though, is always sobering. Concentrating on adding rounds up in my head rather than relying on the till, drinking copious amounts of water also helped and two hours in I was back to normal.

Well normalish anyway until we get to…

3) …impersonating Vicky Pollard.

Right. I’ve never watched Little Britain, as anyone who knows me is aware, most discussions about TV tend to get greeted with a blank gaze, but actually my knowledge isn’t as bad as I sometimes make out. I do know who Vicky Pollard is. I just don’t find it funny.

(In fact I’ve been trying to appear less of a cultural snob after suffering a fantastic put-down by someone on my course. We were sitting on the college back field with a bottle of wine - and how much does that make me sound seventeen again; honestly we do more than just drink wine - when Sera says to Catherine something along the lines of “is that the new copy of Heat?” “Yeah, look at the state of Amy there,” Catherine says and then without missing a beat turns to me “Amy Winehouse is a popular singer, David.” Ouch.)

Anyway. As it approached eleven-thirty I’m persuaded by the deputy manager that all new staff are challenged to ring the last orders bell in an allegedly amusing fashion as a rite of passage. After some debate they decide Vicky Pollard would be apt for me.

Not that there’s anything even remotely amusing about a complete lack of comprehension of the rules of grammar, but there you go.

So I slam the bell and bellow in what’s left of my splintering voice “yeah, but, it’s last orders at the bar, innit.”

Everyone behind the bar bursts in hysterics whilst I grumpily serve two guys with bemused faces. Only once they’ve regained some sense of comprehension do I learn that new staff are challenged to ring last orders in an amusing style…

But no-one’s actually gone through with it before.

Oh well. Next week, expect me to be heading up a Girl’s Aloud tribute band followed by leading a intellectual debate on the virtues of CSI Miami versus CSI Shitback, Utah or some such bollocks.