Finishing too much beer, too quickly, before you enter the tube station reeks of adolescence and the easy desperation of a man used to 'seeing it away'. Well, I wasn't going to take it on to the tube, was I? I'm a generally law abiding model citizen and I wouldn't like to make people feel uncomfortable by openly drinking around them. Indeed, I would rather struggle to keep down bubbles and bile outside the station, whilst trying to neck a lukewarm can of Red Stripe, than go against Big Bad Boris and quaff beer on our hallowed rail.
So my partner in crime Ricky and I hit the London Underground on our way to Clapham with beer in our bellies and the underlying groggy nausea one gets from a stomach frothed up to the size of a whale's chin. We made small talk in between moments of me burping eau de lager, my breath peeling the yellow paint from the handrail on the train. I can't remember the exact conversation but for some reason Slough came up and at that exact moment two young fellas jumped on and, without missing a heartbeat, loudly proclaimed: "SLOUGH, WHAT A SHIT-HOLE". Now, this is a bold opening statement in any case. There is not a situation, that I can think of, where loudly proclaiming "SLOUGH, WHAT A SHIT-HOLE" isn't a bold, bold social manouevre. Perhaps made even bolder for the fact that he was wearing a large pair of purple rimmed plastic sunglasses at 9:30pm on a Saturday night, dozens of feet below the surface of the earth.
So, "SLOUGH, WHAT A SHIT-HOLE," it could have gone two ways: we could have defended Slough's honour and integrity, taking a stand against the cruel rap it takes as the bum-stain of Britain; or we could have laughed along with them and discussed our experiences with Slough and how there used to be a Quasar there and that the cinema wasn't actually half bad but now the place is a derelict wasteland and that actually that was perhaps unfair as I hadn't been for more than a decade apart from that one time I went to the STI clinic for a check up... We happened the shit out of option two.
These two chaps were each carrying a 2 litre bottle of Coca Cola each and, having wrapped our discussion on what makes Slough a grubby nought, they offered us a drink. I said, rather astutely, "I don't believe that that's just cola, is it?" "Nah mate," he replied, "It's got some fucking JD in there, hasn't it?" Here's me, gut distended from guzzling body temperature lager-swill to make sure I finish it before boarding, and these yoots have their alcohol still to hand and no one is batting an eyelid! Touche, youthoftoday, touche!
I, of course, declined the invitation to drink his more-than-likely-half-saliva/half-cocktail mix and complimented him on his ingenuity. "You don't travel on the tube much, do you mate?" he said, accusingly. Well I almost spluttered out my marmalade right there and then, my posh flusterings indignantly manifesting themselves as haughty huffs-and-puffs and knee slapping...
Fortunately, to save this awkward situation [George vs The Peasantry] the other fella offered me a look through his purple sunglasses; they made all objects look like they were surrounded by a rainbow aura and I thought, this will be a good night.
With your bold conversational openers and jovial tube banter, London... you're doing it right!
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| Dreadful. Just awful. |
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