I am a creature of pure hangover

Because last night we went and saw our friend, The Boy from Brazil, playing with his band at the UTS uni bar. The bar had absurdly cheap Jameson (your tax dollars at work - thanks, uni subsidies!) and a bartender whose freepour technique was to start pouring and only stop because there was no more glass left to pour whiskey into. I am also suffering a bit because Little Lord Frenchelroy invited me to share a cigar, and I am far too weak to say no to a cigar of moderate quality when I'm a bit pissed, and so my whiskey hangover has a cigar hangover to keep it company. The two of them have got nice and cosy down in the back of my head, and I can just tell that they're going to lurk there for the rest of the day. I have already had a medicinal cupcake and a litre of water, and while the hangovers did appreciate being thus propitiated, I don't think I've convinced them to leave just yet. Maybe later I will try sacrificing a large felafel burger to them.

But my hangover is totally justified. We had a really nice night and caught up with The Boy from Brazil and his lovely girlfriend, who we haven't seen in years. The band was very good, though they did have one small problem. This is how I break their performance down;

Guitarist A+

Bass Player A+

Drummer B

Saxophonist A+

Trumpet A+

Keyboards A+

Female vocalist A++

Male rapper (SHOULD HAVE BEEN) ABSENT FAIL

That's mean - he was quite good, and was obviously having fun with it and not taking himself hugely seriously, but still... I was tolerating it up until he started doing the old 'I say hip, you say hop' bit to a room of about thirty people. 

Frenchelroy was in a bit of a mood about something, which was not helped by some drunk girls trying to balance a cocktail menu on his hat. Though I did cheer him up by confessing my weakness for beaujolais, which gave him something to sneer at and perked him right up. Ah, the French. So predictable. Next time he needs cheering up I'm going to tell him that Australian brie is better than anything you can get in France.

We met some really lovely German guys who humoured all my inane questions about Germany with patience (given that I was asking them a lot of searching questions about rural volunteer fire brigades in Bavaria, this was above and beyond the requirements of polite social interaction). As a side note, why do Germans have such a reputation for being humourless and severe? I've met a lot of Germans over the last year or so, and they have all been the loveliest, kindest and funniest people, with perfect English and nice teeth. Something else I've noticed about Germans is that they all seem to be really curious about what German words English speakers use, and it occurred to me that our selective knowledge of German must be a bit odd for them. Outside of a few bits and bobs (yes, no, hello, goodbye) I don't know any of the basic German words or phrases. But I do know words like zeitgeist, shadenfreude and weltanschauung, which express relatively complex ideas. Most of the Germans I've spoken to are totally unaware that we have adopted these words into common usage in English, and it must seem strange that someone who can't even introduce themselves in German knows a word like senchut.

It all gets a bit blurry after that. We'd managed to miss the last bus home, so we jumped in a cab. We came home and woke everyone up by stumbling around and giggling, which we promised we wouldn't do this time. Then I woke up and realised it was going to be a hangover day. And that's everything that has happened in my life up until now.

I am wrong about something and also homicidal about something

Some of you may remember me talking a while back about how admirable I find the attitude towards drinking in Spain. No?

Well, I was basically gushing about how wonderfully restrained they are here, and how there is a general disdain for public drunkenness. This is sort of not true. 

At all. 

It depends really on where you go, and at what time. Being old and married, we tend to get our drunk on, eat ice creams and be home by about 1a.m., which is shamefully early in this country, as 1a.m. is when the young folk are really just getting started. 

Anyway, so there are lots of drunken idiots in this country too, and we have been woken up by them several times a week for the last few weeks at around 4a.m. But only during the week, for some reason, not on the weekends. 

I actually wouldn’t mind if it was the weekend, but on a Tuesday morning it just seems unreasonable (I say that as if they’re waking me up and I’m pissed off because I have to get up early in the morning to go to work or to uni, or to do something constructive, when the reality is that the next day I have to get up at some point before mid-morning, then spend the day crumbling biscuits down the front of my pyjamas while I read novels, but my point remains valid).

And if it was just people talking loudly I wouldn’t mid. Just because I’m a biscuit-eating recluse doesn’t mean I expect everyone else to be one too. 

No, what I object to is that the people who awaken me from my hard-earned slumber are the kind of knuckle-dragging mouth breathers whose family trees probably go sideways rather than up and down, and who think that the height of sophisticated comedy is kicking roller doors and hitting dumpsters with sticks. 

On an average night, this is what we hear;

Dipshit #1: Hombre! Ver el que, me tiene un palo!*

CLANG CLANG CLANG

Hur hur hur

Dipshit #2 Eso no es nada, me peuden expulsar esta puerta muy bien**

THUD THUD THUD

I have considered retaliation, perhaps by keeping some water balloons handy. Or maybe some tomatoes. Though we are on the third floor here, and the cans might actually kill them, when all I really want is to maim them horribly. 

Luckily, the intent of the phrase ‘fuck off, you brain dead morons’ is clear enough in any language. 

*Hey man, look at me, I’ve got me a stick!

** That’s nothing, I can kick this door real good