Restoring one's faith in humanity
24th August, 2006
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When measured against the excesses of past years it wasn't a big night, though we could easily have survived without those last couple of glasses of red. We had, however, been home in bed by 10:30pm, resisted the temptation to have a "nightcap" and had slept the sleep of a thousand babies.
The nightcap syndrome continues to confound me. How is it that you can decide, quite sensibly, you have had your share and hail a cab yet by the time you arrive at your front door decide again you haven't had quite enough? That what you need to ensure a good night's rest is one more glass of wine? What you really need is for someone to padlock the fridge and wrap your mouth in masking tape. Instead you sit at the table with your fiancée, review the night's events in case someone insulted you and you missed it, and talk for an hour about everything and nothing. Tiring of your company, your partner turns on the television, which is the equivalent of taking 15 sleeping pills. You wake in each others' arms as dawn begins to seep between the blinds. And there, sitting accusingly on the coffee table in front of you, is the nightcap, half consumed. Hmmm, you think, maybe we didn't need it after all. You then go through the practised ritual with which anyone who has ever supped too freely will be familiar. First you check that your door keys are where you always put them when you walk in the door, and then you check your wallet. I have become so paranoid about losing my wallet that I now refuse to carry one, putting some cash and a credit card in my coat pocket, figuring I'll lose one or the other, but not both. I'm sure this logic is flawed but thus far it's worked for me. Next you check your glasses. As I have recounted previously, I once arrived home with someone else's glasses and still don't know how this happened. I still have them and whoever it is still, I presume, has mine. So I check not only to see that I have my glasses but that they are the right ones. If I feel my eyes being sucked from my skull by the lenses, I know I have a problem. The last item to check is the mobile phone. Usually this can be found on the kitchen bench with the slightly rumpled $20 bills smelling faintly of beer, the business cards of people you don't recall meeting, the bottle top that somehow ended up in your pants pocket, and your credit card. No phone. Losing credit cards is inconvenient. Losing a phone is maddening because you will have to pay it off until the contract runs out as well as sign up for a new one. It also means you'd have to be a mindless tosser to walk out of a pub and into a cab and lose your phone. I used to live near a couple of pubs, and the street outside the house early on a Saturday morning often would look like a scene from the St Valentine's Day Massacre. There would be bodies scattered along the footpath and beside each one, lying a few centimetres from their splayed fingers, would be their mobiles - for alcohol, idiots and mobiles are incompatible. I rang my own number. This sometimes works, and I've found the mobile ringing under the lounge, in my bed and, once, in the pantry, for like the Lord, phones move in mysterious ways. It rang and rang but no-one, not even a phone thief answered. It was gone, and with nine months left on the contract. I went to work and searched my desk in case I'd imagined going out with it and had instead left it on my desk, but it was not to be. I flicked on the computer, opened the emails and as they cascaded down the screen I saw one titled "Phone". My thanks to new-found friend Owen. It's truly heartening to know that, as well as dopes like me, there are some genuinely nice people out there. |
