Little Voices
I'm conscious that this has been a bit ranty and heavy going recently. While all this catharsis and close-quarters navel inspection is no doubt deeply good for me, it's time for some diary type stuff.
Went with the LOML and a whole bunch of mates up to the big Brummy smoke on Saturday night, to a comedy club, and it was ace. I laughed a lot, had a reasonable amount to drink, a few pints, but was ok on it. Didn't want a hangover Sunday, so listened to the Little Voice in my head which said "Probably enough warm lager now, CwhatC. If you get any drunker you're not going to enjoy yourself any more than you are now."
Not so a friend of mine. Nameless, she shall remain. She had a couple of drinks before we met up. When we got there her man was drinking Guinness, so she went for the white wine option, and bought a bottle. And drank it. And apparently bought another too, and was about halfway down that when we left the club, about half twelve, in high spirits.
On t'minibus on t'way home, her mood changed. The subject of money had somehow come up. You can safely be spared the details, but it was about family, and that's always the worst. She shouted at her man through gritted teeth - we were amazed just how loud you can be without opening your mouth. She went on and on and on, louder and louder, apparently oblivious of everyone else. He was super tolerant, though he must have been mortally embarrassed, and made the smart decision not to say "Come on love, you're drunk, we'll talk about it in the morning" because she certainly would have given it the old "I'm NOT drunk how DARE you you patronising BASTARD you're all the fucking SAME etc" and belaboured him vigourously about the cranium with her handbag. He just kept calmly refuting her points.
No-one knew where to look. No-one else was even remotely close to being that pissed. We didn't dare giggle because we all knew the "and what the fuck do YOU think you're laughing at?" option was open and available to her. I spent some of the time entertaining myself by fractionally dropping my eyelid in a micro-wink at Mrs Tony Bloke to try and make her laugh. Everyone else spent pretty much the whole journey minutely examining the ceiling of the bus. It was grey, and padded, by the way.
It took me maybe fifteen years of drinking - I was certainly more than thirty - to realise that there is a point during the evening at which you are at maximum entertainment capacity. The Little Voice was finally - finally - being heard. Drinking any more at this point is both a waste of money, will maybe make you ill and is potentially embarrassing. The great thing about the Little Voice is that it's a very slidy scale. For me, the absolute minimum Voice-intervention is about two pints for formal sort of times with important people who aren't drinking. Third pint, I might get just a little gobby, with only very slightly embarrassing results. The other end of the scale is the rubgy club players' dinner, where the round of four bottles of red wine every twenty minutes for a table of six is entirely reasonable. Oh, and a bottle of port. The Voice might intervene here to avoid death from alcohol poisoning, but only for that. It might call on its cousin, the you're-about-to-suffer-some-extreme-pain Voice, however. Or its bastard inbred step-brother, the this-is-going-to-be-really-fucking-expensive-if-it-goes-wrong Voice. This might have avoided the driving-naked-round-the-lanes incident, and the quad-bike-wheelies-up-the-village-street-four-up incident, and the British-bulldog*-in-the-graveyard incident.But that would have been dull, so we didn't listen. Should have, oh we so should have. But we didn't.
Who are the Voices? Where do they live? And why aren't they always there? Tell you what, if you knew that, you'd make an abso-fucking-lute fortune saving people from themselves.
I wonder if my mate's I-told-you-so Voice was to be heard on Sunday.
*for our American cousins: it's a bit like the NFL, but imagine everyone with a ball and only one tackler. Get tackled, join the tackling side for the run back across. There's lots of big gravestones in the churchyard.
Went with the LOML and a whole bunch of mates up to the big Brummy smoke on Saturday night, to a comedy club, and it was ace. I laughed a lot, had a reasonable amount to drink, a few pints, but was ok on it. Didn't want a hangover Sunday, so listened to the Little Voice in my head which said "Probably enough warm lager now, CwhatC. If you get any drunker you're not going to enjoy yourself any more than you are now."
Not so a friend of mine. Nameless, she shall remain. She had a couple of drinks before we met up. When we got there her man was drinking Guinness, so she went for the white wine option, and bought a bottle. And drank it. And apparently bought another too, and was about halfway down that when we left the club, about half twelve, in high spirits.
On t'minibus on t'way home, her mood changed. The subject of money had somehow come up. You can safely be spared the details, but it was about family, and that's always the worst. She shouted at her man through gritted teeth - we were amazed just how loud you can be without opening your mouth. She went on and on and on, louder and louder, apparently oblivious of everyone else. He was super tolerant, though he must have been mortally embarrassed, and made the smart decision not to say "Come on love, you're drunk, we'll talk about it in the morning" because she certainly would have given it the old "I'm NOT drunk how DARE you you patronising BASTARD you're all the fucking SAME etc" and belaboured him vigourously about the cranium with her handbag. He just kept calmly refuting her points.
No-one knew where to look. No-one else was even remotely close to being that pissed. We didn't dare giggle because we all knew the "and what the fuck do YOU think you're laughing at?" option was open and available to her. I spent some of the time entertaining myself by fractionally dropping my eyelid in a micro-wink at Mrs Tony Bloke to try and make her laugh. Everyone else spent pretty much the whole journey minutely examining the ceiling of the bus. It was grey, and padded, by the way.
It took me maybe fifteen years of drinking - I was certainly more than thirty - to realise that there is a point during the evening at which you are at maximum entertainment capacity. The Little Voice was finally - finally - being heard. Drinking any more at this point is both a waste of money, will maybe make you ill and is potentially embarrassing. The great thing about the Little Voice is that it's a very slidy scale. For me, the absolute minimum Voice-intervention is about two pints for formal sort of times with important people who aren't drinking. Third pint, I might get just a little gobby, with only very slightly embarrassing results. The other end of the scale is the rubgy club players' dinner, where the round of four bottles of red wine every twenty minutes for a table of six is entirely reasonable. Oh, and a bottle of port. The Voice might intervene here to avoid death from alcohol poisoning, but only for that. It might call on its cousin, the you're-about-to-suffer-some-extreme-pain Voice, however. Or its bastard inbred step-brother, the this-is-going-to-be-really-fucking-expensive-if-it-goes-wrong Voice. This might have avoided the driving-naked-round-the-lanes incident, and the quad-bike-wheelies-up-the-village-street-four-up incident, and the British-bulldog*-in-the-graveyard incident.But that would have been dull, so we didn't listen. Should have, oh we so should have. But we didn't.
Who are the Voices? Where do they live? And why aren't they always there? Tell you what, if you knew that, you'd make an abso-fucking-lute fortune saving people from themselves.
I wonder if my mate's I-told-you-so Voice was to be heard on Sunday.
*for our American cousins: it's a bit like the NFL, but imagine everyone with a ball and only one tackler. Get tackled, join the tackling side for the run back across. There's lots of big gravestones in the churchyard.
posted by crisiswhatcrisis at
11:17 am
3 Comments:
Best not hold your breath, apparently.
By
crisiswhatcrisis, at 9:04 am
oh, that's an embarrassing situation to be in. I've been there. (Not being the drunk , being the unwilling audience)
Isn't funny about the little voices. Unfortunately, as you get older, the start chirping with less and less provocation. Now, since my children are still little and I never get enough sleep, I know that two drinks is about all I can have and not suffer. If I go for 3 or even 4, I'm not an unbearable drunk or anything but I do get an unbearable hangover. Disgusting.
By
Kyahgirl, at 6:56 pm
I'm utterly convinced that hangovers get worse as you get older. Doesn't seem fair.
In no time, I'm sure we will be getting no sleep because we are waiting for our children to come in from clubs. Then we'll moan about that as well.
By
crisiswhatcrisis, at 7:11 pm
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