Excess

A couple of Sunday mornings ago my eyes wrenched themselves open to the sound of frantically raised voices in the street outside. With a jerk my body flung itself upright, possibly leaving my brain stuck to the leather sofa behind it.

‘Urgh,’ I groaned and for a moment wondered where the hell I was this time.

I got to my feet, swayed slightly, picked my jeans up from the floor and pulled them on. I slipped a shirt across my shoulders but left it unbuttoned – for some reason that felt too much like hard work. I opened the blind and mid-morning sunshine streamed in soaking the chaos and disarray in a warm light. The glow twinkled off the ten (‘Ten, Christ,’ I counted) empty bottles of wine and scattered glasses. On the table were half-scrapped plates congealed with the ends of dinner. Next to my makeshift bed there were two goblets, each with a mouthful and a half of white wine left in the bottom. All around the pervading fug of smoke clung to the air.

‘It’s really late,’ my friend said appearing suddenly and making me jump as though she’d bellowed right into my ear. She wore jeans and a t-shirt rather than a dress, but the make-up was still the remnants of the night before.

‘Yeah,’ I replied, buttoning my shirt suddenly overcome by mild embarrassment and a loss of memory. 'What happened to everyone else?'

‘They managed to go home. Shall we get some breakfast?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ I managed just about.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Not really.’

‘No. Me neither.’

Out we set into the streets of west London. I felt ever-so-slightly elegantly wasted, as though I was temporarily some kind of bohemian refugee from nineteenth century Paris. But I probably just looked pathetic; a too-old, over-weight, drunken fool struggling to shake off the inadvertent giddy highs of the night before.

We sat outside the bistro and ordered eggs benedict (well, it was west London) glad in the fresh air not only because the claustrophobia of being inside, with all the smells and sounds of cooking, would have overwhelmed us both, but because it still felt like the death throes of summer were there to be taken advantage of.

‘Crap,’ I said once someone had furnished us with coffee. ‘I’ve got to go soon. I need to get all the way home, get changed, get cleaned up and then back up to north London to meet a girl.’

My companion lit an early morning cigarette.

‘This isn’t going to be good,’ I continued wallowing in the self-pity of my churning head. ‘She’s already said she doesn’t drink much and I’ve kind of indicated I don’t either, so to roll up for a second date reeking of wine and fags with two deep black rings around my eyes probably won’t impress.’

She exhaled. ‘Neev-ah gonna work,’ she said.

‘Hey,’ I was momentarily indignant and then my body reminded me of all the other times I’d woken up after a night out with her and how often I’d shoved it through the alcoholic grinder of dehydration and nausea and I had to concede that she might have had a point.

‘Look at that,’ the girl I used to share an office with said earlier in the summer as I returned to my desk, coffee in hand. ‘It’s no wonder you can’t sleep. What number coffee is that?’

‘Only my second,’ I replied defensively.

‘It’s twenty past nine,’ she continued regardless. ‘Just think of the roller coaster you’re putting your body through. You drink seven or eight of those rocket fuel coffees a day and then go out and get drunk. Up and down your metabolism goes; from one extreme to the other every day.’

‘I don’t go out that much.’ We both looked down into the corner of the room where the pile of dirty shirts I’d screwed up and discarded looked bigger than usual. ‘Besides, it’s not seven or eight coffees. I drink tea in the afternoons.’

But it was true. I wasn’t sleeping and so was ploughing my system with caffeine to make it through the day and I was drinking every single night one way or another. Not drinking to excess every night, just a couple of beers after finishing writing. It was no different to what I’ve always done, wasn’t it?

I’ve always liked a drink.

I realised recently that I navigate around London almost entirely by the location of pubs. If I can’t name a decent boozer, then I don’t know the area at all and tend to feel a bit uncomfortable going there. All the directions I give are along the lines of “Turn right at the Princess Louise, cross the road near the Wheatsheaf, go down the alley past the Ship and cross the square towards to Rose and Crown.”

‘Oh yeah, I know. Just past the Lamb and Flag.’

When Oliver Reed appeared on Wogan, back in the eighties drunk out of his face, he was asked why he wasted his life with drink.

‘I’ll tell you why,’ slur-growled Ollie, ‘because some of the most fascinatingly, wonderful people I’ve ever met have been in pubs.’

‘Lived round here long, then?’ asked sun-glasses Dave in the Brockley Jack as I tended bar for the afternoon last year.

‘Few years,’ I replied. ‘You?’

‘All me life.’ He rocked, a little unstable, on the heels of his feet. ‘Know everyone and everywhere. Know the best pubs and the worst. Know the best place to get a pint at seven o’clock in the morning – that’s the Carpenters Arms in Catford, by the way.’

‘Thanks,’ I nodded and then wondered why I earth I’d ever find that useful, but still my brain filed it away for the future.

I’ve never been.

A few years ago I fell out of the back of the Lord Nelson off the Holloway Road, which used to be the sort of pub that stayed open after hours before it was legal. It was a craphole of a pub. It was full of scum and the beer was so rank only the Guinness was just about passable. It played appalling music and had all the ambience of a vandalised public convenience. Yet you met the most amazingly mad people in there – and besides it was the only place open at two in the morning.

‘Thing is, drinking doesn’t make me sleepy,’ explained my then boss. ‘No matter how much, so I just keep going until I get bored. And I don’t find pubs or people boring.’

‘I better be going. It’s a long way back to Brockley.’ I stuffed my hands into my pockets and lowered my head slightly. ‘See you in the morning.’

And I would. I’d be there around eight o’clock, coffee to hand, booze sweats on the go and a shuddering electric bolt through my face. But I was there.

The other day, as I headed to work feeling fine and dandy for once, I noticed a guy sitting on the newly ornate steps to Brockley station. His one hand held his head reluctantly upright, the other gripped a can of red bull and a cigarette dangled off his lower lip. He was wearing the sort of shirt that had definitely come from the night before.

‘Hey pal,’ he said as I got closer. ‘Where the hell am I?’

‘I think the problem is,’ she said pushing her plate away, the eggs benedict devoured in a way only the hung-over can manage, and lighting up, ‘that I – and you’re the same – don’t have a stop switch. Other people get to a point when they’ve had enough, but we just keep on going.’

‘Maybe,’ I nodded and squinted in the bright sunlight.

‘The thing I love about London,’ said the gaunt bespectacled manager way back when I first headed south, who was teaching me that Friday afternoons in the office appeared to be optional, ‘is that there’s always someone, somewhere up for a big night out.’

True, but sometimes I like to stay in alone, read and enjoy a few drinks – just me and the voices in my head.

‘You’re not an alcoholic,’ shouted my ex during one particular argument about whatever I can’t remember, ‘you just like to think you are to make yourself sound more interesting.’

Ouch.

She was right, though, I am not an alcoholic. Of course, I’m not. Not in the sense of the guy who died from liver failure at the age of twenty-two and drank several bottles of vodka a day. Not in the sense that I’d drink anything, or that I’d turn to something like White Lightning Cider or Sherry (apparently, a “drinker’s drink.”) or take a hip flask into work. I rarely drink during the day. I can take weeks off from drinking without any problem, but it could be argued that I have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

It’s hard to explain. It’s not to do, necessarily, with moderation, but it’s about feelings and association of feelings.

I might not be addicted to booze, but I probably do have a problem with caffeine. The vicious circle of insomnia and a guerrilla combat against daytime exhaustion is hard to break. I sit behind one computer or another aware of the growing black-grey-and-red shadows under my eyes and the increasingly haggard look to my face and all I can think of is waking at two o'clock as though powered by lightning and the hours of staring at the ceiling in the dull city glow peeking through the gaps in the blinds.

Then someone says, 'Cup of tea?'

'Love one.'

A new editor or copy reader or something (I can’t remember the story and now can’t find where I read it, so none of this may be true) of Kingsley Amis questioned the realism of a character, upset or angry or just alive, going into a pub alone and drinking pints of beer into double figures.

The response of a more seasoned editor or whatever simply replied, “Ah, but then you don’t know Kingsley.”

I frequently find myself writing about drinking. My characters meet in pubs, they enjoy a drink, the way they drink and interact socially and within the dynamics of their relationships, the way those interactions change if they become drunk, interests me. I might not be an alcoholic, but the lead male character in what I am currently writing certainly is. Whilst we rarely see Harry actually drunk, although often he is glimpsed drinking, I have written several hang-over scenes often including the remains of the night before. Occasionally the quantities involved have been questioned and I have to think, “ah, but you don’t know Kingsley.”

I arrived early to meet my friend Ben in the White Hart back at the end of May. The summer was just kicking off that Sunday evening so I wandered over the grassy patches under the shadow of the London Eye to finish my book. As I sat, crossed legged, in the sunshine I became aware of the activity around me. Everyone was drinking. From the couple with the bottle of white wine perched between their thighs as their lips clawed at each other, to the gaggle of kids on skateboards with two litre bottles of Strongbow; from the guy lying with the News of the World spread over his face and crushed cans of Stella Artois at his feet, to the group of Polish guys mixing a near empty bottle of vodka with fruit juice. Everyone was at it, but in the early evening calm and soft stroking light it was somehow rather lovely.

I have always had a tendency to see alcohol as more glamorous than it really is. I’ve always cherished that midnight blur where everyone feels like they could be Shane Macgowan for life. That life is just better, easier, more enjoyable when we’ve had a few drinks.

We’ve all done it in the evening when everyone’s your best friend and the world is full of love and the music sounds like it’s whispering the secrets of the universe to you and then you have to stagger off to throw up.

And in the morning after too, provided you’re not too broken. There’s something beautiful, for example, in too many people piling into a car in a village just outside Leamington Spa, the Fratellis thrashing out the tales of drunken misbehaviour you lived the night before, and gingerly driving off to try and remember where the other vehicles were abandoned the night before.

We all find camaraderie at the bottom of a bottle, but perhaps so of us search for it more enthusiastically than others.

Although I tend to drink beer, my tastes spread far and wide. I love wine, particularly red wine. I’m rather partial to an ice cold decent vodka every so often. Strangely, I’m even beginning to like a proper cider in the summer. I adore good whisky. And brandy. Jesus, I love brandy, but I think we’ve all heard that story once too many times, don’t you?

‘I think I’m getting bored of drinking,’ she said, not for the first time since I’ve known her, as we walked back to her flat before I began my mad dash across London.

‘Are you?’ I asked, not entirely believing her. ‘Or are you just getting bored of days written off feeling terrible?’

‘Actually, that could be it.’

‘I don’t have that problem. I almost always struggle on through. Get stuff done anyway. So it doesn’t really get in the way.’

‘Well aren’t you lucky,’ she said sarcastically.

I guess I am, but luck, in the end, always runs out and what then?

Ah, I’ll worry about that when it happens. Cheers.