Today – well, for the rest of this week, actually – the song I shall mostly be listening to is
I’ll Never Go Drinking Again by Squeeze.
Happy New Year to you all.
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Drinking
Try not to faint: you are reading a blog post by someone who stayed in on on New Years Eve.
That’s right, you aren’t dreaming – Nelson Galaxy and I did not go out to the pub on New Years Eve. That’s a first for us.
Graham, the drummer from Enormous came round on Tuesday, the night before and the three of us went to the Devonshire Arms – the only pub in the village that was open for business – and proceeded to get incredibly drunk. As one does.
Then, in the day on NYE, Nelson and I worked hard in the studio on some of his new songs – not an easy job when one has a blazing hangover.
Thus it occurred, for the first time ever, at 7pm on New Years Eve, when I suggested to Nelson that we make a meal and stay in for a change, his reply was: ‘Good idea.’
How’s that?
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No.30
You will go to a Christmas party and wake up at 6am on someone’s sofa next to a girl who looks like she wrestles bulls for a living.
You will say something outrageous like: ‘I’m sorry.’
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Nelson returned to his London home yesterday leaving behind a very sad me and Audrey who will now wander from room to room for a few days, dejected and close to tears, sighing heavily in our perfect isolation.
He has pledged to return again in November, to witness Enormous’s return to the stage after an eight-year break.
We have tentatively promised each other that we will not drink too much on that occasion. Well, I have undertaken to adopt some kind of policy of sobriety when he comes to visit: the hangovers make his absence so much harder to tolerate.
Nelson is a little younger than me and has a few more years of heavy drinking still in him. I am trying hard to convert him, though – constantly evangelising about the benefits of being dry. I’m not convinced I’m getting through to him.
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Five blueberry smoothies – that’s the best way of curing a hangover; the best one I have so far discovered, anyway. Add a little vodka to each one and within twenty minutes you’ll be feeling marvellous.
I tried working in the studio, playing guitar on some of the new Nelson Galaxy stuff, but I could not properly coordinate any of my appendages. I caught sight of myself in the mirror behind the mixing desk and I looked like a sweaty octopus trying to unhook a bra.
We used to have a fellow in the band that played guitar with his knees, so I tried adopting this method for a while but couldn’t manage it at all. The augmented-fifth chords are the trickiest to pull off when playing this way.
In the end, I decided to simply get drunk again. The decision was a kick in the knickers to my previous resolve to remain sober for six months but who cares? I’m a punk rocker, me.
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It isn’t my birthday until tomorrow but I have already had scores of friends on MySpace sending me their best wishes and reminding me that they have a new album out at the moment or a gig in a few weeks time. It’s a jolly good job that they have kindly elected to send me these reminders because, my addled and now middle-aged brain being the glorious colander it is, I must admit that I had completely forgotten about most of their releases and upcoming concerts.
By way of marking the occasion, Nelson has invited me to London for a few days to ‘see what trouble we can get into’ but I am just too busy to go. And anyway, I am beginning to feel a little too old and weary for yet another spectacular adventure with my glamorous friend in the capital. And Sonny Starr rang me this morning and offered to escort me around Paris for the weekend, partying and carousing with the locals and ‘visiting the zoo’ – whatever that means. I had to turn him down.
I resolved last year that, from now on, my birthday celebrations will be modest and uneventful affairs. This year I plan to spend the day working as usual and then enjoy a quiet evening in with Audrey.
You can bet your bottom dollar that I shall not, however, dispense with tradition when it comes to ingesting alcohol. It is more or less guaranteed that by ten o’clock I shall be once again sinking into an inebriated nether-world of cold beer, red wine and mental derangement, acting out some monstrous comedy with only Audrey and the full-length mirror in the hallway to witness my shameful and embarrassing displays.
I shall try my utmost not to let things go that far, but you know how it is. After the first drink, good intentions seem to evaporate into the ether, helped along as they are by lager-propelled belches and large helpings of gay abandon and self-loathing.
If things get out of hand and I have a coronary before I pass out on the sofa or I find the bottle of Glenfiddich I tried to hide from myself seven months ago and become so drunk that I devolve into a monkey, I would just like to take this opportunity to thank you all for being my friends and for taking the time to listen to my pathetic bleatings. Thank you. Oh, and: Happy Birthday to me.
And I would also like to remind you all that my band ENORMOUS has an album out at the moment called Almost Everything which is available to buy on our website www.enormousreloaded.com – just in case it had slipped your mind.
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