A weekend and a half. Still broke, even more so in fact, but with some nice memories.
Started Friday night as usual at the pub. An electro-hip-hop band from Oakland called The Hornay Troof were playing in the back room and everyone went crazy for them. They should be big – best show of the year so far, no contest. Everyone was in a great mood afterwards and chatting to the band, etc.
Further details of the night elude me. I recall somebody was buying me Becharovka shots, but apart from that all I have is a vague recollection of drunken happiness turning slowly into fucked up drunken crap. Same old story and don’t want to dwell on it. At 5.30 Hamish + I were left at the Blind Eye with nowhere to stay. Chrissy offered his place, so we left as the bar was shut and tried to get into a gigantic taxi, but the driver wouldn’t take us.
We got some keys, promised to be quick, and decamped to a Herna with Dean from Pumpster.com, where we drank watery Gambrinus and watched Teletubbies.
One beer was enough, we had to get to Chrissy’s house. Stopping only to get some junk food in Wenceslas square. It was past 7 when we got there, only to find the key wouldn’t work in the main door, and we were stuck without beds.
After a long long bottomless coffee in Bohemia Bagel and a third unticketed tram journey across the city we got to the Clown + Bard hostel, where we found the bar closed and therefore unsuitable for hanging out in. Johnny’s doorstep was the next location, but we couldn’t wake him so we just sat on the porch and insulted people walking past for a while.
There was only one real solution – to go back to the house and hope Jacques wasn’t in. Fat chance.
“Hello”
“Hi, this is Hamish, we’ve come to get Russ for a game of football”
“He’s asleep”
“Oh, that’s ok, we’ll come and wake him up.”
“Hmmm….”
The door buzzed and he let us past. For two hours we had to sit at the dining room table pretending to be awake until finally at 12 o’clock he went out and a bed of sorts could be had.
I awoke at 8pm, feeling a little better, and got down to Blind Eye for the 1st anniversary birthday party. The place had gone very punk for the night, with leather trousers and studs everywhere. We hid in the back room for a while, taking advantage of the free beers. When the bar got a little quieter I decided to return to the house, using some keys I’d picked up off the table earlier that day. I must have been a little dazed when I took them because on getting to the front door I realised they were the keys to the deadbolts we never use and that I was locked out.
Twenty minutes later I was back at the bar and everyone was getting out of the place. Johnny, dressed in bow-tie and tails for the occasion, took me, Tim + Hamish down to a Herna bar, stopping along the way to jump through a window, dance with an old lady (“…you boys want to come back to my Pension and dance with me there?..), break into an apartment block and buy disgusting Haribo crap at an early morning grocery shop.
The Herna bar was packed with gambling derelicts and we subconsciously took it upon ourselves to piss off every one of them, using various techniques. Johnny’s special skill was sitting down at tables and chatting up girls while sitting next to their boyfriends. Mine was more along the lines of falling asleep with my feet on the table.
When the second round of drinks came around, the crone at the bar took the opportunity to ask us to leave, giving the excuse that we had to have more than one beer between the four of us. The other punters, goths, gamblers and raving tramps, having had more than enough of our antics, turned on us at the same time and told us there was a problem with our staying.
We could have had a fight but instead we all went for a sleep in Johnny’s house.
Then on Sunday we had a quiet day. It was Tim’s last in Prague, so we went with him to a bizarre fake castle folly thing in Vrsovice, which I really can’t bring myself to describe. After that we had a meal in a dodgy pub where the meat was about as suspicious as possible. Tim didn’t want his “girlfriend in a korma” so I had it, then felt sick.
There was a free movie, but it was one we’d already seen, so we went back to the pub and Tim did a good DJ set, combining equal measures of early house music and Prince. It was a great night, everyone seemed to be at the bar and in a good mood. At 4 it was already over and I was left with Alex. There was one other figure in the bar, a hideous old queen who was buying me and Alex drinks to try and get us back to his house. I didn’t mind him calling me darling but when he offered me a blowjob in the back room I though it was time we’d better leave.
This morning I woke up on Alex’s sofa and watched some Simpsons, a ‘Lord Of The Flies’ episode I hadn’t seen before, then met up with Amanda to go to U Houdku for Lunch.
And that’s about it. I’m really not an alcoholic and will prove it by not drinking all week. Well, not much anyway.