bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel

I am sitting on a sofa at three in the afternoon, drinking a can of lager. I have never done this before, and it makes me feel glamourous, like a wino. Still, you can’t really afford not to drink the afternoon away when you can get eight cans of Carlsberg for a fiver on Junction Road. I genuinely am only drinking this as there is no Coke in the flat and lager is cheaper, healthier and makes everything you do totally brilliant. Fortunately, I have to nip down the East End and talk to some people in a bit before stopping off at Camden on the way home to talk to some other people, thus avoiding what may have very easily turned into an impromtu all day solo drinking session. I can think of few things more depressing than sitting in a silent flat under a filthy January sky, drinking can after can of competitively priced lager – price wise it’s competing with milk and food for fucks’ sake – and passing time online until ten o’clock finally comes round and the weeping starts. Bloody hell. I bet that sort of thing happens to people all the time.

(Yeah hitting Read More now will reveal excellent plans for replacing Pikey Dave’s teeth with mineral quartz deposits and a public reassurance that I am not, at time of writing, an alcoholic]

When I get to Camden, I shall be chatting with former smackhead, current dickhead, but nonetheless impressively-equipped-in-the-trouser-department East Yard handbag and sunglasses vendor and no stranger to these pages Pikey Dave. Dave is currently undergoing pretty extensive mouthal surgery to have what remains of his teeth removed. The sight of Dave’s teeth could make a horse bolt, and even the merest glimpse renders you panic stricken. Not panic stricken like you would be if you woke up from a deep sleep to find your legs on fire, but a kind of lower level but nonetheless frantic panic, like you get from realising you are going to sneeze imminently with a mouthful of roast potatoes while having dinner with your girlfriend’s parents for the first time. Dave’s teeth look like Stonehenge, or a row of bombed houses, or the big cylindrical metal bins round the back of a supermarket after a severe gale. Look at a row of binary code. That is how an old skool computer would represent Dave’s teeth in a video game.

Anyway. Dave has decided that he wants his replacement teeth made of flint, so that he can generate sparks by grinding his jaws together at moments of stress. Not only is this an excellent idea, but it will be good value on Bonfire Night, and beats my suggestion that he should just have his remaining dentition completely removed, get little shelves put up instead, and get his tongue carpeted. Then, he could have his face tattooed in the manner of brickwork, and pretend to be a very small detached house located in a prime location at London’s famous Camden Lock. Admittedly, this is unlikely to transpire, but I reckon he would do better out of tourists than that fat bloke with piercings all up his face that sits by the canal all summer mugging tourists for photos at two quid a pop.

Postscript

Yeah my old dear reads this these days, so to calm her nerves – and indeed the concerns of anyone anticipating an entirely understandable descent into alcoholism on my part – may rest assured that after two cans of Carlsbergs I successfully left the house and spent the rest of the day consuming nothing more morally ruinous than coffee, biscuits, and a Kinder egg with a little skateboarder in it I got from a newsagents in Old Street.