Back To The Now

I'm looking for somewhere to live at the moment, our tenancy on the current place runs out in May and a friend of mine has decided he’d like to move in with Ally and I. I met Dave (or variously, Beehead, Beeface, Beefy – I know not why…) through the football team, and he now assistant manages Chris’s Sushi restaurant. This apparently entails him being shouted at a lot and covering for Chris when he’s hungover/smoking/having sex with strangers. Still, it evidently pays him enough to want to come on board the piss-your-money-up-the-wall express, which Ally and I currently drive. Well, I drive it, Ally’s more of a ticket inspector really; maybe an over-eager guard who reads out the names of all the stops after every station, causing passengers to take their earphones out just in case there’s an important announcement being made, but ultimately leads to huge disappointment and/or anger. I don’t know where I’m going with this.

We’re booked to look at a couple of places on Saturday morning, but unfortunately three bedroomed dwellings in the town centre seem to be few and far between. There are plenty of options for two sharers – there are masses of new developments all over town – but finding space for one extra arse on the sofa is proving far more difficult.

One of my worries about moving in with yet another single, virile young man is that the cloud of booze that has descended over my life currently is only going to get thicker. I’m sober at the moment – having not drunk for two days - but I’m being honest when I say that that has only been the case recently from about 10am – 6pm on most weekdays, and not even then on a weekend. Things have been getting a little crazy on a regular basis (which I’m not complaining about – far from it), but I can only prophesise that things will become even more irresponsible once Beeface joins the ranks.

The current routine on a weekday currently resembles the following:

7.30 am – Get up, crawl up the stairs in to the shower, zombie my way though dressing myself, leave the house and onto the train
9.05 am – Arrive at work, fumble my way to lunchtime, try to absorb myself in my work so that I can’t feel the pain anymore
11.30 am – The sandwich man arrives (who isn’t allowed to shout anymore to announce his arrival – per an official email from up high)
11.35 am – Hungrily munch my way through a greasy sandwich and a bag of Monster Munch. Drink can of Relentless
11.37 am – Feel much better. Work through till 5.30, drinking coffee and more Relentless, and get on the train home
6.10 pm – Arrive back in Reading, go straight to Sushi one0eight. Chat up the staff and drink Asahi
7.30 pm – Decide not to go home and eat, stay in restaurant till it closes at 11 (ish)
11.00 pm – Hit Revolution/Walkabout/Pitcher and Piano (or all three)… Drink whiskey
2.00 am (approx) - Stagger home

And thus has been my life since the turn of the year. There were two major incidents at the beginning of January which really bought all of my friends closer together, and whilst these incidents were very negative, the long term effects of them, at least for me, have been extremely beneficial to our social lives, if not our wallets. I’m not telling you what these incidents were – I am sworn to Rule 114 – but needless to say they have since changed our lives.

Makes you wonder what’s going to happen next…