Word of the Day

Couchette: (n) Female of literary persuasion who spends most of her time on her agent's chaise longe, downing industrial quantities of foreign sounding lager and bemoaning the fact that she has yet to break out of the bodice ripper market.
(n) A very laid back vegetable of the marrow family.

Well, what a long, strange trip it's been. Someone asked me to go with them and give blood yesterday. I had to decline and enlighten the poor innocent as to the exact extent of my alcohol consumption over the, for want of a much better word, holiday period.

The reason for my having spent Christmas in a malt induced fug can be traced back with some degree of accuracy to a Hungarian TV programme it was my misfortune to have watched in the days leading up to the event. It featured a hopelessly inept presenter and one of our local catholic priests (it was Kanizsa TV, you see) and consisted of said inept allowing said buffer to witter on without interruption or contradiction for what seemed an eternity in purgatory about the 'real meaning of Christmas'.

Well, I ask you. Might as well have blathered on about the real meaning of Monday for all the sense he made. To give you some example of the total bollocks produced by this self righteous, smug and yet totally illogical Christian soldier, I can only bring myself to reproduce the following, bilge and dishwater as it may be.

"Christmas is a time for the family." Okay, we'll overlook the fact that this sentence, to any right thinking speaker of any language, means absolutely bugger all and we'll try and understand it as he meant it. The only problem then is that, by implication, the rest of the year is not 'a time for the family'.

The same logic I applied to the rest of his cheap and meaningless little homilies.

"Christmas is...

...a time for reflection.

...a time to think about the message of Jesus.

...a time to think about others.

...a time of peace and goodwill to all men."

Well, I'm afraid that after all this bobbins, the corks were popping at fairly frequent intervals, I can tell you!

I could also tell you that Christmas is a time of last minute shopping, of disappointment, of not having enough batteries and having pharmaceutical resistant hangovers, but I have a suspicion you know that already.

I recovered long enough to fulfill my contractual obligations with respect to the number of examination scripts I was expected to mark but this took me until about 5 o'clock on New Year's Eve. The relevance of this will become apparent later.

Just before Christmas, a very good friend of mine, a fellow biker, had invited us to spend New Year's Eve with his family at a friend of theirs, also a biker. As this was in the home town of my partner, we thought we would avail ourselves of the opportunity of leaving our daughter with the mother in law and having an evening out together for the first time in longer than I care to remember.

We went down in convoy with my friend on the 30th, dropped off our stash of alcohol and comestibles at his friend's house, got to know our hosts and headed for her mother's. So far so good.

I worked all day on the 31st and we arrived at the party at about 7.30. My strategy was, Stella and whisky chasers as is my habit, take it slowly and everything will be hunky dory. Now, our hosts' 25 year old daughter had a drum kit in their cellar/bar/den and the last thing I remember after treating everybody to a rather fine, extemporaneous solo on the drum kit was demonstrating to the aforementioned daughter how one didn't need instruments to make music by means of another solo on the sideboard of said room at about 11 o'clock.

After that...well, I woke up at her mother's feeling none too bad but with absolutely no recall of anything after the sideboard solo. I downloaded all the photos from my camera today and I was still taking photos after the point at which my memory failed so I was active and in some kind of control afterwards. But, is there anything worse than that feeling of "Christ, what did I do? Did I throw up over the host's wife? Make a clumsy pass at his daughter?"

My partner assured me that I was quite charming all evening and only threw a slump drunk but even that information was enough to throw me into a trouser squirming fit of embarrassment. We returned to our hosts' on the 1st and they did indeed let me in which I took as a good sign. They all spoke to me as well which relieved my anxiety somewhat. The real and only test that I will be satisfied with however, is whether they invite me back again!

I can only put it down to the fact that I had been working hard for days before and right up to the time we left for the party and hadn't taken that into account when devising my strategy for the evening. My friend brought back the case of Stella I had taken and there were only six empty bottles. Six Stellas, six whiskies...a mere bagatelle. Maybe someone forced champagne down my throat at midnight...I just don't know.

Anyway, I have in my possession pictures of before during and after but due to not having a URL, they cannot be published here. Requests by e-mail will be considered on their individual merits.

If you have been, I'm sure you will understand.

Oh, and you may all wish me a very happy birthday for tomorrow!