I’m on the town every night. If you see me, wave. I’ll be at the back, doing whatever I can to ensure the greatest good of the greatest possible number. I am the greatest possible number. I’m propping up the designer formica bar in Chez Jiss, a new rah hell-hole stuck out on the more fashionable end of Jericho. I’m drinking orange juice, because I’m supposed to be doing Finals. This is not a good thing. I’m completely sober, and I’m coming to terms with reality. Reality is rather like a tedious parent you try and avoid seeing – I don’t recommend it, and I’ve only got a small glass of orange juice to drown my sorrows in. I must count my blessings. After half an hour of counting my blessings the glass of orange juice has been drained, and I’ve counted up to two. Two blessings. I can read and write. Which at least gives me an advantage over most people at northern colleges. I always wondered why people went to northern colleges, until I helped out on an Access Scheme event (spilt Pimms everywhere, hit a pikey about the head with my teddy bear) and asked Someone Who Knows About These Things. She told me people apply to northern colleges because they are illiterate. They look through the pictures in the Oxford prospectus, see some ugly buildings made out of concrete and phlegm and think, “ooh, that must be Magdalen.” The arsehole barman asks me if I’d like to pay £10 for another orange juice. I grunt sexily, and he sends one down the counter to me in a Wild West (Midlands) style. I can’t be fucked to pick it up, so it sails down the counter and ruins the Che Guevara T-shirt of some flakey OUSU no-mark who has come here to Chez Jiss on holiday to see how interesting people live their lives. I find this incredibly amusing, but that’s because I’m regressing to the intellectual and emotional state of an infant. Well, that’s what the last girl said. Bloody nauseating woman. I didn’t believe her, and neither did my imaginary friend with the quintuple- barrelled name, Vince Nipplering-Who-I-Have-Invented. Vince is great. He does all the bad things people try and blame on me, like smoking too much, smoking too much, smoking too much, and breaking into the last girl’s house at three o’clock in the morning to serenade her with an inept version of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Second Hand Shoes’ played on open chords on my unamplified Telecaster before chundering wifebeater all over her Finals notes. Which is how I got the restraining order. Bloody nauseating woman. Fuck the orange juice. I’m seriously tempted by a pint of port and brandy, but the trouble with a pint of port and brandy is that one’s never enough.
ARCHIVE: 4th week TT 2003
On the Town
