Thursday 10 March 2011

You're all my best mates


Like isolated John, up there in Wales, I too have been feeling a bit lack-lustre recently. I have been blaming it on the weather, which has been set to winter mode since the premature close of autumn last year, sometime in mid-november.

I think the weather - which today is being blown across Britain by a 30 mph wind up it's arse - has also been a contributory factor in my back problem (getting much better, thank you), and that problem itself has been a major contributory factor in the way I have been dealing with idiots, or people who I have been unjustly treating as such, due to back pain. I have rediscovered that the absolute best, short-term remedy for back pain is alcohol, and I have been self-medicating in my local pub every evening before I go home and continue the treatment with a few glasses of wine over dinner.

Booze certainly relaxes you, and muscle-spasms all but stop after a few drinks, but it also loosens inhibitions, which can have negative as well as positive effects. We all know the positive ones when using it to soften up a female dinner-guest prior to jumping her (sorry ladies, but I thought I would just come right out and say it), but I have reached the age now where such opportunities are few and far between, so instead I end up softening myself up and making inappropriate suggestions to bar-personnel who are young enough to be my grand-children.

Pubs are not only frequented by idiots, but they are also the favoured haunt of violent men. It goes with the territory. Back-pain tends to make the average male feel extremely vulnerable to physical attack, and as we all know, the best form of defence is offense. My technique in dealing with tricky situations like these is to drink as much as possible, choose the most violent-looking person in the room, then be as offensive toward him as sobriety will allow. So far, this has worked, but I think that my age has saved me in later years. I like to think that I exude an air of indisputable authority when I am shouting foul language in a slurred voice at night-club bouncers, but it could be the case that my victim feels a sort of disgusted pity for me, and cannot even bring himself to touch me, let alone hit me.

So there we have it - I have spent the last week or so sitting around in my local, occasionally letting out an involuntary scream of pain as I limp to the lavatory, and leaving the pub manager wondering whether he should bar me for sexually harassing the staff, being unacceptably rude to other customers, or both.

I have one very real fear which is attached to getting extremely old (not that I will ever become so if I carry on behaving like this), and that is losing my inhibitions. Inhibitions - I have come to understand - serve a very valuable purpose in society, and one loses them at one's own peril.

I really don't want to become one of those old men who roll their trousers up to their knees in public parks, swear at children and young women or ask total strangers for oral sex. That would be just so undignified - but would I care? It's the 'not caring' bit that is the most scary to me as I sit here, staring through an open door which leads to a short - if untrammelled - future life on the other side.

15 comments:

  1. geez....I didn't know you were such a despicable person.

    Get over yourself! You would be so fucking boring any other way!

    btw..can I really ask strangers for oral sex?

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  2. My mother lost her inihibitions as a result of a stroke. No more social controls on what comes out of her mouth. Now her loose lips tell us we need to lose weight, dinner wasn't so good or how much she doesn't like my brothers girlfriend....she can find herself in a spot of trouble. Thank God she doesn't drink or she would be kicked out of the nursing home.

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  3. There is still light at the end of the tunnel as long as you don't ask the barmaids: "So, do you come here often?"

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  4. You need some Vitamin D Tom...you've got the winter blues.

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  5. It could be worse......you could have called a female police office PC NIPPLES
    (read the blog)

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  6. Oh Tom, I so love your blog. I do love your blog.
    When I was a teenage barmaid doing the day shift, old men stonemasons with f*cked backs would come in for lunch and a pony. They were THE BEST. Those and the house painters, whose eyes bagged with the kind of fumes they inhaled.

    Just don't stay drinking 'til the five o'clock skimpies come on(or is that only in Australia?). that is when things got SAD.

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  7. You can try, Groucho - make sure Jesse is there with a video camera when you do.

    That was what MY mother used to do, even without a stroke,Raz. I think that's where I get the tendency from.

    Too late, Iris.

    'Five o'clock skimpies'? Sounds interesting. I might stay up tonight with a few tinnies and look at international TV - Just don't tell Sarah T, she's got a bit of a pre-menstrual rant about porn going on right now.... oh, you ARE Sarah T....

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  8. P.S. (and this is a true story) Last night I came within a gnat's whisker of telling the tall, young and beautiful barmaid that I had a brilliant idea for Red-Nose day, to raise a bit of money for charity.

    Her indoors has been left with a load of red-dot stickers from last year's exhibition. I hatched a plan whereby the girl could sell them for £1 each over the bar, then the buyer could place them on her chest in a 'Guess where the nipple is?' grand draw. All proceeds to starving children would still not get her to see the funny side, I fear.

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  9. I think we suffer from two of the same things. Winter depression, and bad-bloody-backs. Alcohol is certainly one good remedy, and the other is exercise; swimming being particularly good. Swimming plus alcohol could in fact cure both for good!

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  10. I've had that kind of back pain that you have, so I totally know that deep, dark, unrelenting excruciating pain...it's ugly pain. But now it's gone, I'm pain free...you're body can heal too.
    So here's some sunshine for you...
    I love you
    you're talented
    you're creative
    from the little glimpses I've seen of you, you're probably drop dead gorgeous
    you're quite brilliant, I'm sure of it
    So...here's my two cents...try to stop being the naughty boy in the pub, put down the glass and pick up the pen, there's so much creativity in those hands of yours to share!

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  11. You poor sad old git! Reading between the lines looks as though 'jumping' anything (even a five barred gate) is beyond your physical capabilities now - more crawling! Go to a physio, do the exercises religiously, take walks, breathe deeply, drop the drink and you'll be as sexy as a jumping flea in no time.

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  12. PMT or stuck pig?
    Whatever my rant, it is guarenteed to generate another one. It's the beauty of cycles yes?
    Swimming and alcohol are both good. Barmaids are best. :)

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  13. Thanks to all of you for your wonderful comments (especially you, Victoria - you're right about most of them, particularly the 'drop dead' bit), but I have to tell you that this thing about me being depressed is a rumour started by someone who is into Chinese whispers. I am NOT depressed - far from it. I just said I was a bit lack-lustre, and then went on to explain why.

    Swimming in alcohol with a barmaid, Sarah? See the next post update.

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  14. So sorry to hear you're still suffering with the backpain, Tom. Hope it eases off soon.

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  15. Thanks Amy. When it does, I will have to (like Winston Churchill) find another excuse to drink!

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