Adagio
All of us that drink deeply know the feeling of intoxication, even if it’s a sensation we are not entirely comfortable with; it is a lapse and a drop in standards that can lay a curse on the day that follows. It is perhaps the moment when your voice seems to become distant as if being spoken by someone else, though sometime during the next day we will hopefully feel patched, retreaded, and approved for the road, but you do wince at the behavioural altitude you reached. This identification with intoxication might have as its central axis the story you had been trying to tell, which was then interrupted by someone fallen in a similar manner to you, and with this break in transmission you forgot at which point you were at and the story was lost. Intoxication is also the sudden lurch in a direction that you do not want to travel, feelings exposed, anger maladjusted and the pub you are in turned into a fortress of loneliness.
Scherzo
I wrote in my journal once after a previous night’s debatable behaviour:
‘Got thoroughly hammered last night. The beer sluiced through my system and took away all the dignity that existed in the brain before that. Wazzered, Gazza-ed, pie-eyed, thumpingly soaked, robbered in the juice, coddled in ale — at about 10.45pm I announced to all and sundry that I was pissed. That was all there was to it; this was not the noble outgoings of a drunkard for whom life was a tale always being told. Consequently I felt rather ragged round the edges this morning. Rather pissed, if the truth be told. I find that I cannot take that extra pint anymore; have I come to the end of my gallon days? I hope not. I know a lot of people would disagree but there's something splendidly irresponsible and Rabelaisian about being able to sink a gallon of ale in a session and not fall over and still tell tall tales and discuss the political situation in the heartlands of central Europe.’
Forte
I am at a beer festival several years later in the middle of the Somerset Levels. The bloke in front of me is half cut and looks like a study in the architectural style of brutalism (buzz cut, angular face with rain-streaked scars across its surface, clenched fists), especially when he talks, as his words deliver the knowledge that he ‘likes fighting with coppers for a hobby’. He then says that he was well pissed the night before: ’I was fast asleep in my car at 3am and woke up at 10am and rolled back here to the festival.’ I ask if he's still got his car and he replies of course he has, and then I mention something about how there is bound to be a lot of police around if he drives off later that night. ‘I hope there is,’ he says, ‘so I can fight them, anyway there are only two of them in a car and that's more than enough for me.’ He points to his forehead: ‘This part of my cranium has been across the bridge of a lot of coppers’ noses before now.’ He then asks me what I am drinking. I say a locally brewed stout; he pauses, ruminates and says dark and sweet. He says he doesn't know what his beer is. I suppress an instinct to say bitter. I spot him later in the evening — we had spoken not long after 6-ish. He is still standing, or perhaps, more accurately, swaying, and buttonholing all kinds of people.
Coda
Intoxication is bad for us, bad for the soul, bad for our blood pressure, bad for our social skills, but now and again it is a balm, a basic sighting of where life’s passage is going, an opportunity to let loose the bonds of civility and — with a basic sense of restraint, for let’s face it the level of aggression that the intoxicated, police-fighting man demonstrated (I wonder if he is still alive) is not acceptable at any time — a chance to show off the basic absurdity of intoxication if the notes I have often taken when three sheets to the wind are any indication. It is also épater la bourgeoisie and nostalgie de la boue, and yet as I get older the desire for intoxication becomes less visible in my soul and it is I who see the intoxication in others as I witnessed on a recent Saturday night in a local Wetherspoons.
Staccato
I don’t like nosy cunts, let’s go to the Lucombe, no Ron, you’re trying to stay straight, a grimace and a mention of the kids on his tattooed arms, tears and sniffles, no music, dressed up to the nines, as flash as a flotilla of the harried, hats and bows flirting with the air, fruit machines dazzle and gulp down your money, missed dates and lost dates, no dates and a date that I never forgot, shit in a bin in the bathroom didn’t he, laughter, the screech of a vengeful owl, white beard and hair sits there, arms folded, deep browned eyes flickering about the loaded bar, alighting here and there, table next to him, energetic movement of arms as a tale is told, but there is sadness in the space as well, as a slow dabbing of eyes shows, while a woman listens to music, arms folded, jittery and jinxed she says, I am followed by bad luck, true it is, man spies a friend and hides, I owe him money, a lot, he’s coming my way, hello pal, I’ll come and see you tomorrow, good lad, look forward to it, I leave them to it, and no matter what gloss I put on it my glass is empty. Goodnight ladies, laters lads, bon chance, I’m going home. Ta-ra.