Tag Archives: alienation

Accidental booze cruise

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Friday, 1700h, I’ve just finished programming a total hog of a Dell XPS 15. The rain knocks on my window and I’m compelled to literally run outside to demonstrate my quasi-youth (thirty one) by taking part in a typical Friday night out, that will no doubt involve significant use of the the sound ‘woooo’. I’m drivin’ out of the industrial estate where I work and buzzing with the adrenaline of a man who knows that within one/two hours (tops) I’ll have traversed the B2264, the A1273, the M1, the A1145, and the B4432, the doors of The Regal, and the upper annulus of a tapered glass cylinder with a blocked end that contains the first pint of like seven/eight with my mates mate.

But today, unlike the Fridays of 27/04/2012, 20/04/2012, 13/04/2012, 6/04/2012 etcetera, I’m feelin’ hot. Hot with the ecstasy of electronic conquest, bathing in the fizzing glow of slave central processing units and magnetic storage devices yielding to my deft touch. Today I’m wild. Today I decide to go on an unplanned trip to Eurodisney just for the fuckin’ shit of it. This is the sort of thing an employed single man’s disposable income was invented for mate.

Hour after hour whizz past the window of my Ford Focus. My mobile telephone not beeping a single bleep of “mate, why aren’t you comin’ out with us?”, “mate, seriously, when do you think you’ll be here?”. “Ha” I chuckle to myself, if they aren’t even texting me they must be really mad! I group text them “don’t worry lads, you’ll have an ok time without me, sure – not as good as usual, but Mickey calls! wink wink. I’m sure you realise that the implication of that is that yes, I am off to some text missing” [sic]. This weekend is going to be fucking awesome mate!

I arrive at Eurotunnel at 2345h, still essentially hot. “I’ll have one return to France comin’ back Sat’ bro’ ” I bark at the automatic ticket machine in a language it evidently doesn’t understand. A trip to the office, and I’m gettin’ somewhere. “Two hundred and fifty pounds! Are you fucking serious?! Jesus fuckin’ hell. Mate! Seriouly, mate”.

***

Saturday, 0900h, I’ve got my passport, a speeding ticket, and I’m sporting a jittery caffeinated mania. I’m back in Folkestone, and before I can say “which carriage?” car plus train equals transport symbiosis and a potent symbol of technological and diplomatic progress. “Freight? Am I freight? Shit. Shit. Shit”. Articulated lorry to my fore, articulated lorry to my aft, am I to be crushed? Is this my last moment on earth – Tired, groggy, and with an unsatisfied appetite for Disney products and theme parks? No. The driver brakes with the virtuoso ease only a professional haulier knows.

A minibus is collecting all the drivers to be taken to the restaurant carriage and I’m cheek to cheek (arse and face) with flabby tattoo riddled arms from various EU countries. All the while concealing my true identity as a non-commercial-driver. And then, I take a long smooth inhalation through my two nostrils. An unharmonious funk filters through my olfactory canal and nerve bundles overwhelm my brain with wave upon wave of atonal funk. I mean no offence to professional wagon masters, but based on this (admittedly small) sample they stink disproportionately. The apparent leader (the fattest) is talking to the minibus driver using only the response “fuckin’ ‘ellll”. By the return journey I will have developed an ear for these smells and will understand the joy to be had from that sharp vinegary BO cocktail. An odyssey of exotic flavours from that sense organ residing at the very centre of one’s face.


Figure 1. A new notation system for malodorous humans.

I digress. Ok. How should I put this? Lets just say me in Eurodisney is like a drunk old man in a pub with free beer: I’m drunk and a man and I can have as many gos on space mountain as I like, but I’m not old (thirty one). By 2200h I’m back at Calais. A short stop at Boozers: The Spirit of Calais, and my voyage of self/theme-park discovery is complete. By Sunday 0300h I’m tucked up in bed tired, drunk and completely satisfied. I can’t wait till next friday and tellin’ my mates about my awesome… accidental booze cruise. I haven’t seen Neil since I told him he was my best friend. He changed the subject – clearly moved to the point of silence. After I tell him ’bout this he’ll almost certainly invite me to his BBQ on Saturday. A perfect opportunity to give him the 1.5m Winnie The Pooh teddy that I (tried to win and then gave up and just) bought him.

See you Sat’ lads,

Yeah?

Sheer Power Alert

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As you almost certainly will have heard, last summer I holidayed in [Las] Vegas (baby!). Trouble is, whilst I had arranged to go with my mates, there was a catastrophic breakdown in communications and I ended up arriving a week before them, thus being forced to holiday alone in a big bad city of sleaze and high crime rates (even by American standards and this despite there being very few activities that are still illegal in the state of Nevada – babyyyyy!). Essentially when they said 13 June, they had actually meant 20 June, an easy mistake no doubt, and there is no doubt in anybody’s mind that it was a genuine mistake. No doubt whatsoever.

I have seen the photos mate, where they were reduced to consoling themselves with alcohol to the point of vomiting, due to my absence, and their lack of proper planning, I was taking a luxury helicopter ride for one over the strip/Hoover dam (the original pump priming – gives you a lot to think about) ($300 is too much, I’d recommend seeing on foot). ‘Is it just you’ said the helicopter pilot surprised. ‘I’m flying solo. Affirmative. What’s the ETA on this bad boy?’ I said, displaying an impressive knowledge of helicopter terminology. ‘Bet you don’t get to many MPGs on this baby’ – I added, further cementing my status with the fifty year old driver, a man with a saggy bag of a face hidden behind cheap aviators.

It is true that I did pass vomit due to a highly unorthodox turning manoeuvre that the old fool beside me insisted was the ‘safest way to land’, but there is no evidence that I cried and/or shat myself. None whatsoever, and I challenge anyone to produce any. I was busy telling the man that whatever the reasons for my not fighting in Afghanistan, cowardice is not one of them, when he span the iron bee on a sixpence and plopped it down on an H sign.

Anyway, all this is by the by, I haven’t said anything that we don’t already know for certain. After the first day’s thrill ride I was running out of activities faster than shit down a scared man’s leg (note to self – that’s a good simile – use in conversation at work). I sat in my motel room looking out the window at a car park with an argument going on in it. I guzzled some beer, which had the effect of jolting my mind into an important realisation and causing my mouth to emit a slight burp. Suddenly, I knew what I had to do that week, I would start working on my screenplay, and ASAP.

Ever since I saw a film I knew that I’d quite like to write one, so I went out to the shops and bought a pen. I went back out later remembering I needed paper, stocked up on beers galore and ‘potato chips’, and began. It’s called Sheer Power Alert and I plan to blog it as I write it so that I can get feedback before I send it to Spielberg et al. SexyPete99, please stop leaving comments telling me to ‘f*$% o&* it’s s*^%’. I wont publish them. It is trolls like you that ruin good forums.

Here is the first segment (segment/section/scene?).

***

Sheer Power Alert

A Screenplay by Raph Shirley

INT. DAY. A LAS VEGAS MOTEL ROOM.

The camera peeps at the rippling flesh of Ken Goodman. There is a beautiful/sexy woman lying on the bed naked except for a tattoo of a computer mainframe on her bum cheek. There is no question as to whether she wants remuneration, because she does not, and Ken is the sort of guy who knows. There is no question as to whether he has homosexual thoughts, because he categorically does not. Ken is counting the bullets left in his machine gun (Steve, should I be more specific – M16?).

KEN
Fuck, I need more ammo man.

WOMAN
Come back to bed Ken, I know you are a secret agent for the US government but can’t you take a break from trying to stop the rise of the machines for once.

KEN (raising his eyebrows)
Women! You know as well as I do that there is a terminator [will there be copyright issues here? – exterminator? abolitionist?] out to get us.

Ken is flicking through TV channels, there is genuinely nothing on.

KEN
There is genuinely nothing on. Perhaps I should get nothing on too.

WOMAN (giggling)
Yes, you are so good at jokes and… sex.

KEN
I know. So are you.

They have sex. (What can we get away with here Steve?) During lovemaking The Abolitionist smashes through the wall and opens fire with a helicopter cannon.

KEN
Fuck!

WOMAN
Fuuuuucccckkkkk!

KEN
Get down! (good time for innuendo maybe) Shhhiiiiiit.

Ken has been badly hurt but he managed to destroy The Abolitionist after the woman put a bag over its head like you would an ostrich to sedate it.

CUT TO:

EXT. NIGHT. A LAS VEGAS MOTEL CARPARK.

The woman (Sarah? Claire maybe? Claire Sarahly) is pushing Ken in a wheelchair at full speed in to a McDonalds! She grabs some tissues with which to cover Ken’s stumps. They get Happy Meals and get the ‘hell outta there’. The scene fades as Claire pushes Ken into the sunset and the desert.

***

Let me know what you think. Please send any funding offers or contracts to Flat 6D, 16 Rushworth Gardens, Blanche Road, Hemel Hempstead, HH13 6TR.