Apologies for the relative inactivity on here at the moment. This is due to two things. 1) My internet connection at home is up the spout, frustrating my quest for the ultimate cow-porn website. 2) I am working very hard at the moment in preparation for a job interview. If I never mention this again, then I didn't get the job. If I do mention it in lingering, boastful detail, then I did. Pray for me. Either way, this is restricting my ability to either write anything silly or indeed publish it. Not for long though. In fact, I have come to realise how much I resent this intrusion of real life into my interweb activities, and there is every chance that I might tell them to stick the job even if they offer it to me, and become an internet hermit. Once they fix my home connection. So, in fact, if I never mention the job again, its because I chose not to take it, not because I blew my chances due to my nervous habit of unconciously undressing in high-pressure situations.
So there it is.

Monday 22nd September, 2003 – The Shocking Truth About The Shocking Truth About Binge Britain.

BINGE BRITAIN! Britain is being DESTROYED by louts who BINGE on BOOZE and then get involved in TUSSLES and SET-TOS! And it is costing the tax-payer LITERALLY BILLIONS of pounds a year. STOP THESE BINGING YOBS!

The above is a humorous and satiric summary of the headlines that have filled hundreds of column inches in the papers over the past week or so, and have been filling the spaces between the ‘bongs’ on The News at Ten over the same period. As I so presciently and uniquely wrote a couple of weeks ago, the crisis-obsessed media are always searching for a story to strike fear into middle-class hearts. Asylum seekers are good. Paedophiles are great. But if the menace is in your own home – maybe even playing his tapes upstairs, or sullenly brooding in the kitchen, then so much the better!

Ha ha! I laughed. Smugly. See how the media spoonfeeds us this rubbish. And see how the curtain-twitching masses take it to heart and spend the next day repeating the shower of poorly-researched ‘facts’ from the previous night’s news, complaining about how terrible it is, and how things were different when they were lads / lasses. Ha! Ha! Ha!

And ha! Ha! Ha! I would laugh again as the news rolled out the same archive CCTV footage that they have been using on variants of this story for years. Staggering, alcopop-wielding, arse-bearing women on hen-nights. Wobbly, half-cut men, having those swingy-armed, flaily post-pub fights. Ha! I would say to myself. And then pontificate on how the media is obsessed with selling us negative images of ourselves, and most importantly of each other, dampening our spirits slowly, insidiously, by making us believe we live in a naturally frightening and unpredictable world, and that the best thing we can do is lock ourselves away with our products and close our ears to the real horror and injustices of the world, lest we fall prey to the beasts and villains on OUR VERY DOORSTEPS!

Ha ha. I then pat myself on the back, congratulating myself on my expert cynicism, but also on my laudable, humanistic attitude. I alone realise that we are not pigs, but KINGS. If only the bloated media plutocrats would allow us to recognize this, then we would live in heaven on earth. ON EARTH.

Except, it is not true. We are all pigs. And all it takes is a BINGE DRINKING session for our true pigiosity to emerge. Because this weekend, I BINGED (the definition of binging is consuming 4 pints or its equivalent….or more of course). Worse still, I nearly became the wobbly, swingy-armed fighting man after a run-in with some aggressive Poles.

It goes like this….I had met up with some friends from university who I hadn’t seen in a long while. We were walking past Hammersmith Bridge at around 9 O’Clock at night, looking for somewhere to have a drink. I was not drunk, but according to medical criteria, I had BINGED. We approached a large white building with flashing lights, music and laughter coming from inside. It looked like some kind of clubhouse. There were two lank-haired men in their mid-20s sitting on a bench outside. Marianna said something about how we should gatecrash the party, but she was joking as we are too timid to gatecrash parties. But one of the lank-haired bench men overheard this and made a rude comment – that we should fuck ourselves, or something similar.

I was annoyed, and muttered something back. He called for me to repeat it and – I don’t remember if there was some rush of adrenalin or testosterone or what – but I shouted back that perhaps HE is the one who should fuck himself. They shouted some more, and I responded with a number of European hand-gestures. You see, I was obviously drunk enough that I thought arguing with these men was the right thing to do, but not so drunk that my brain wasn’t able to detect what seemed to be foreign accents – Polish, perhaps – and decide that I should scour my memory banks for some appropriately European responses. So, I did the thing where you raise one fist, and slap your other hand against your bicep of the fist-arm. I also did the thing where you put the back of your hand under your chin and flip it outwards with an aggressive look on your face. They seemed to hate this, and their shouting increased in volume. But they didn’t get up.

I walked away feeling like a big man.

Unfortunately, when we reached our destination a couple of minutes later, it was full so we had to turn back. This meant walking past the bench-men again. Shit.

They recognised me and began to shout. I responded with more gestures and chest-puffing. What a twat. I made the hand / chin gesture again, and it was too much for them, their Polish / Slavic pride was mortally wounded and they sprung from their bench and raced toward me. I felt strangely defiant. It was the BOOZE that I had BINGED on. The lankest-haired man came very close to me and slurred aggressive broken English into my face. I felt less cocky now, and repeatedly – shakily - told him to ‘fuck off’ and ‘go home’. I now realise that this last comment might have been interpreted as racist and inflamed the situation. It wasn’t meant to be, and I apologise to the lank-haired, bench-dwelling, aggressive Pole if he took it this way, and if he is reading. He probably isn’t.

Either way, there was the kind of uncertain standoff that tends to take place in these situations. Where two people who suddenly feel less hard than they did 30 seconds are go are faced with the reality of their big talk. To fight or not to fight. How to defuse the situation without losing face,

I wanted it to end. This is unambiguously true. But – though I have no idea what was going through his mind – a small part of me was saying ‘kick him in the balls now, while you have a chance!’ I didn’t. But I could have. That is the scariest thing.

In the end, male friends did the polite thing by coming between us, as if we were two mighty caged beasts who had to be separated by brute force, rather than two drunk Europeans who had talked themselves into an embarrassing and slightly scary situation.

All the same, I could have listened to my little voice that said ‘kick him in the balls’. And he could have listened to his little voice, that was probably commanding him in a thick, rasping, Slavic bark, to rip out my tongue and destroy my testicles with the heel of his jackboot. Thank God we didn’t. I am still left with a little pride. And my tongue. And my testicles.

But it was still a chastening experience. How could I have been such a macho twat? Was it the BOOZE that I had BINGED on? Or was it just something inside me that slightly regrets that I have never had a real, proper fight, and would secretly relish the idea of rubbing some Polish (or similar) man’s face into the ground as he begs for mercy in a mother tongue that I cannot understand?

We don’t know.